2 - Marxism and Colonial Blackness

Summary

Chapter 2 explains how the constructions of blackness in Mexican history and society described in Chapter 1 coalesced in the 1930s, when Mexican politics radicalized and Marxist historical materialism established a basis for new social justice initiatives and a revised national narrative. With class conflict animating Mexican historiography and political and economic reforms, African slaves and their descendants entered a national pantheon that embraced blackness for the first time. Amid this historiographic consensus, slave resistance, epitomized by the maroon community founded by Gaspar Yanga, laid the foundation for Mexican anticolonialism and independence, the liberal claim to racial egalitarianism, and the Mexican Revolution. Focusing on the 1930s, this chapter argues that historians and historically oriented intellectuals -- chiefly Andrés Molina Enríquez, Rafael Ramos Pedrueza, Alfonso Teja Zabre, and José Mancisidor -- celebrated black bellicosity within a broader cross-class rejection of racial exploitation. With a materialist scaffolding to construct blackness as Mexican, they depicted historical figures, such as José María Morelos and Emiliano Zapata, as African-descended national heroes, symbols of the 1910 Revolution, and political theorists who set the stage for socialism in the not too distant future.