Black Beans: Afromexican and Blaxican music to listen to year round

A playlist honoring Afromexicanos and BlaXicans, who exist, matter, and refuse to fade.

The history of Blackness in the Americas is deep rooted, even while largely dismissed by official institutions and national governments. The musical and political exchange between Black and Mexican peoples throughout history and despite borders, has also resulted in many beloved music genres, from Son Jarocho to Cumbia, Rock and Hip-Hop. 

This playlists includes Son Jarocho, Cumbia, Ballads, and Hip Hop from and influenced by AfroMexican and Blaxican music in the US and Mexico. 

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4j7FbL8MTGod9rQLnhcV2W?si=RhnpZQ34T6WiogRhKV5Rxg

In Mexico, which received up to 200,000 Africans forcibly brought by the Spanish conquistadores, African slaves and Indigenous peoples united more effectively than in the US and slavery was abolished in 1829, thirty six years before it in the United States.  

Afro Mexicanos, descendants of the slaves that were forcibly brought to the coasts of Mexico, specifically in the states of Guerrero, Oaxaca and Veracruz, where many of those communities have explicitly retained and resurfaced their African roots. AfroMexicanos’ place in the history of Mexicanidad and present day society has been deeply oppressed and until recently, invisibilized. 

For example, the footwork of Son Jarocho, a popular music genre borne of that region, is strictly afro-caribbean and was first used by slaves to communicate subversively. And Cumbia, also originating during the country’s period of slavery in Colmbia oand later brought to Mexico, literally comes from Cumbe, an African word for Dance. In the Caribbean, Salsa and Merengue are similarly rooted in Afrolatinx history and culture.

Today, more than 1.4 million people self identified as AfroMexicanos in a limited survey in 2015.The 2020 National census however, is the first national census in the country’s history to recognize and count AfroMexicanos. 

Today, with fascist restrictions being placed on migration all over the world, African migrants have to venture through Mexico to the US to avoid the dangers of migration by sea to Europe. Many, unable to cross into the US as Trump ramps up enforcement, are now settling in Mexico. 

Racism, specifically anti-black racism, persists throughout the Americas, from stereotypes and racist microagressions in society at large to systematized racism in education, the workplace and prison systems. 

However, so has a history of resistance, self determination and revolutionary action for racial and economic liberation led by AfroMexicanos. 

In the U.S. Mexicans and Natives who were caught in the border politics of centuries of colonization solidarized with slaves. Because Mexico abolished slavery before the U.S., many fugitive African and African-Americans eventually found reprieve from bondage in what became northern Mexico. Up to 60 families of Mascogos (black indians) settled in a town named El Nacimiento in the state of Coahuila. Not coincidentaly, the Mexican American War was largely prompted by racists white confederates who wanted claim to the territory to re-establish slavery. 

Similarly, nationalist border politics and continued migration of Mexicans into the U.S. since then, has naturally resulted in interracial marriages between Black and Mexicans who share a history of resistance against lynching and racial terrorism that both targetted these two communities and pitted them against eachother. 

Black and Mexican families pioneered integration efforts in education and neighborhoods throughout the 40’s and 50’s. And in the 1960s through the 80’s fought together and alongside other Central Americans and Asian immigrants, for Black and Brown workers rights and against racism and state repression.

In California today, many Blaxicans are now claiming and documenting their identity with pride through social media. 

The Black Panthers, inspired largely Puerto Rican, Mexican, and Latino youth to unite against racial injustice through ethnic organizations. Black and Brown students fought for educational opportunities, including Black and Ethnic studies in higher education. 

This multi-racial history has bore many great Black and Brown musicians, then and today from punk music to Hip-Hop, the latter which hailing from the Bronx where poor Black and Latinos,mastered and propagated its culture, eventually made its way to the West Coast and into Mexico. 

Today there are Hip-Hop influences in Mexican and Chicano and Latino rappers in the US who’ve come to great success in the R&B and Hip-Hop genre such as Miguel who has been very public about his mixed identity being Black and Mexican and Bocafloja, a transnational Mexican rapper based out of Mexico and New York City.

Newer artists, like Coosey & Exile, QUITAPENA, Flor de Toloache, Lila Downs, Reyna Tropical, Las Cafeteras and Santa Cecilia, have embraced and often mix the many musical genres they’ve inherited. They are bringing with their music, representation of their African roots and multiracial identities to a new generation of Latinos. 

When Celeste Marcial, an undocumented AfroMexicana living in the west coast opens up about her identity today, she insists:

I am so glad to have been born Afro Latina. My understanding of the world is so complex because my existence, being from Guerrero, Mexico, is complex. I had a love and hate relationship with our heritage and our African roots. At first, I didn’t want to understand it. I wanted to fit in with other NonBlack Latinos and perpetuated anti-blackness in the process. This was easy because I had never met other AfroMexicans and AfroLatinos. Besides Celia Cruz, there weren’t many visible AfroLatinos in the media. 

My father is from Cuajinicuilapa or “Cuaji” for short- a historically Black region in Guerrero. (google it and so many beautiful images of AfroMexicans pop up). I find pride and joy in being able to learn about the customs my fathers family inherited from their ancestors such as el baile de los diablos which is a ceremony done during Dia de los Muertos and special drinks like chilate which is a mixture of cocoa, horchata, and coconut water. 

By the same token, my father, as a result of generational trauma perpetuated colorism and internalized anti-blackness. My father made it a point to marry someone lighter than him. My mother who is also from Guerrero (Teloloapan) is not Afro-Mexican. She is fair skinned with straight hair and wanted her children to also have fair skin and straight hair. I've had to unlearn these standards of beauty that are rooted in anti-blackness.

This playlist is only a slice of a rich history we must not forget, but honor and highlight proudly as it speaks for decades of resistance and Black and Brown joy that is deeply needed in our society today as more of us question and embrace our heritages and traditions.  

Lupita Romero an undocumented Xicana of indigenous roots who resides in Queens, New York. She is a writer and self-taught mixed media artist. She works as a legal advocate for low income New Yorkers and is a proud union member with the Legal Services Staff Association.