By Marcia Chaiken and Jan Chaiken

Slavery is one of the oldest human institutions. Archeological evidence points to slavery being practiced in Mesopotamia over 5000 years ago. Each year, our family (along with Jews all over the world) gathers to retell the story of our people, the Israelites, gaining freedom from slavery in Egypt in 1513 BCE.

Slavery has been practiced in every corner of the world on every continent except perhaps Antarctica. Mexico was no exception. Long before the Spanish arrived in Mexico, the indigenous tribes enslaved captives taken in ongoing battles. Forced labor was commonplace for producing necessities of human life – food, clothing and shelter. And once Europeans began to colonize the “new world,” indigenous populations here became a source of slaves for building towns and cities and plantations, and for mass cultivation of agricultural products such as sugar cane for world trade. The encomienda system (see Julie Etra’s article on page 26) legitimized this practice. However, the introduction of viral and bacterial diseases to which the natives in “New Spain” had never been exposed and against which they had no natural immunity, resulted in massive numbers of slaves dying or being left without the physical ability to carry out heavy labor.

From Africa to Mexico

Relatively small numbers of slaves from west and central Africa were then brought to the Americas from Europe by the conquistadores in the early 1500s. In addition, free Africans were members of the crews serving the Spaniards and Portuguese who claimed lands in North and South America for their royal sponsors. Soon, however, the transatlantic slave trade became a major commercial operation, capturing Africans and selling them as slaves in the Americas. It began in earnest in the 16th century, peaked in the 18th century, and continued into the 19th century. New Spain was the major territory in which these slaves were first sold. Between the early 1500s and the mid-1600s, approximately 120,000 slaves were shipped from Africa to Mexico to work in the mines, on sheep and cattle ranches, and on plantations – primarily sugar cane plantations. Four areas were particularly populated by slaves: the Veracruz ports and plantations, the mining and ranching areas northwest of Mexico City, the stretch of land south of Puebla to the Pacific Coast, and the Valle de Mexico.

Although the predominant “Gone with the Wind” myth of slavery north of the border portrayed slaves as well-cared for, singing as they picked cotton in the fields, in colonial Mexico the resistance to enslavement was graphically made known by relatively high rates of suicide and infanticide among the slaves. Mothers would prefer that their babies die rather than suffer the life of the slave. The first threat of a major uprising of slaves in Mexico occurred in 1537 in and around Mexico City.

This threat led not only to brutal public murder of the Africans who were identified as leaders, but also resulted in the use of extremely repressive measures to control slaves. Official proclamations issued in the late 1500s penalized slaves who were runaways to hundreds of lashes, castration or death. Throughout the first half of the 1600s, small groups of former slaves, who literally overthrew their shackles and often joined with equally outraged indigenous people, terrorized cities and ranches around the colony.

The Emergence of AfroMexicanos

Over the following decades the number of slaves brought from Africa to Mexico began to decline. Perhaps because of the insatiable desire for slave labor on cotton and other plantations north of the border, sales of African slaves in Mexico were reduced in favor of sales in the southern British colonies. By the mid-1700s the population of Mexicans who had African ancestry – free or slave – had primarily been born in Mexico. Mandated by the Catholic Church, marriage of slaves was encouraged. And given the disproportionate number of men among the enslaved people of African ancestry, marriages commonly involved male slaves marrying indigenous women. Their children were called, in the caste system of Mexico, zambos, and they were either enslaved or at the lowest rank of the social-legal hierarchy. Woman slaves were commonly violated by Spanish colonists without the benefit of marriage and their children, called mulattos, were also typically slaves or essentially the same low rank as zambos. Children of mulatto and Spanish parents were called Moriscos and were somewhat higher rank than zambos or mulattos; children of Moriscos and Spanish parents were designated Tresalvos and were the highest rank among those with African ancestry. Although the caste system was very rigid and patently based on skin color and ancestry, there is documentary evidence that even though they were still legally slaves, mulattos and their children with Spanish parentage often received instruction in reading and basic information about their legal rights. One right was to redeem themselves from slavery for a set price or to be set free when their owner died.

The End of Slavery

The 1800s saw a major development in the institution of Mexican slavery. The revolutionary leader and priest Hidalgo, often called the father of Mexican independence, declared slavery abolished in 1810. Slave trade was legally forbidden in Mexico in 1824 after the successful revolution and the formation of a new government. The institution of slavery itself was declared illegal in 1839; in practice, however, slavery was far from abolished for several decades. Yet, given the existence of communities in Mexico where slavery was prohibited, many slaves in the U.S. and adjacent territories fled to Mexico to live in freedom. Although New Spain set the invidious example of colonial development dependent on enslaving Africans and selling them for profit, once Mexico threw off the shackles of Spain, the government set the example of striking the chains of slavery from their citizens.

In the United States, slavery was officially ended by the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, but the period that followed also saw a lengthy adjustment. Even today, the residual effects of the slave trade can be easily noted in demographic data about the locations of black residents in Mexico and the US. In the US, the Census Bureau has for decades tabulated and mapped the percentage of black residents in states, counties, and down to census districts. The maps show that communities having substantial black populations (as high as 80%) are still located primarily in Southern states with boundaries along the Atlantic Ocean or the Gulf of Mexico (where the trade ships made port).

Measuring AfroMexicano History

INEGI (Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía), Mexico’s statistical agency, traditionally accepted the reality that the population was a complex mix of racial and ethnic backgrounds, and so did not attempt to collect data on individuals’ self-reported race. In the 2015 survey, however, INEGI asked whether people considered themselves black, that is to say, “afromexicana o afrodescendiente,” for the first time. The results revealed the residual influence of a centuries-old pattern of slave trade – this one in the Pacific. In addition to areas around Veracruz and Mexico City mentioned above, concentrations of AfroMexicanos were found in rural areas near Acapulco and elsewhere in the state of Guerrero, as well as in the state of Oaxaca. Although the number of AfroMexicanos is nowhere very high (averaging 2.4% in the entire country), these Pacific coastal areas revealed some of the highest concentrations: 9.6% of the population of Guerrero (9.5% in 2023) and 4.9% in Oaxaca (3.6% in 2023). Most of Oaxaca’s AfroMexicanos live near Puerto Escondido and Huatulco.

The origin of these populations with African ancestry along the Pacific coast was not the transatlantic slave trade, but the 17h-century slave trade known as the Manila-Acapulco galleon trade route. (The galleons were large, multi-story Spanish sailing ships that had previously served in warfare.) At that time, the Philippines were a territory of Spain, facilitating trade from Europe and Africa through there. Slaves from various sources, including Africa, were sold in Manila, and some of them were further transported to the Pacific coast of Mexico. Their descendants are the AfroMexicanos now living near the Pacific coast.