Afternoon scorches the sleepy lagoon pueblo
of Corralero, Oaxaca, host to the 9th annual Encuentro de Los Pueblos Negros.
A day’s worth of plenary sessions finds a young mother narrating her miseducation
and subsequent struggle for consciousness as an Afro-Mexican. Local fisherman
recount recent efforts to organize 13 nearby villages into a unified political
force to protect the saltwater lagoon that has been the economic heart of their
communities for decades. A group of junior high and high school students discuss
the accomplishments and inadequacies of their particular scholastic experiences.
They brainstorm for ways in which to overcome what educational obstacles lay
in their paths.
The discussions go on for four days and three nights. Each evening as the sun
lowers and the shade stretches, the plenary yields to audiences and local families
who happily overtake the conference seating in the town plaza. Kids sit on the
concrete next to photographers as an “artesa” is lifted and carried
into the center of the u-shaped seating arrangement. The artesa is a rectangular
dance platform about two feet high and eight feet long. Carved from a the trunk
of one of the region’s Parota trees, the artesa features a horse’s
head carved at one end and a tail at the other.
A line of young couples kick off their shoes and step up two at a time onto
the artesa. With a moment’s notice, a violin and guitar whine out a tune
in time to the rhythm a drummer taps onto a cajon. Stooped over his cajon the
drummer sings fixed traditional verses while couples climb onto the artesa in
turn and thump their heels into the hollow platform, adding a profound bass
to the staccato beat. “This is Ballet Artesa,” announces 78-year-old
vocalist Melqiuades Domingo Guzmán, “It’s what was used to
provoke slave owners.” With the start of another tune, the dancers once
again hop onto the artesa as if they are stomping on the horses of some grandfather’s
master.
This is La Costa Chica. For 400 hundred years, African, Indigenous, Asian, and
European descendants have evolved a culture of ingenuity, survival, and celebration
that publicly overlooks its African roots. The annual meeting of black townships
looks to be a driving force in the recognition and appreciation of what some
call the forgotten root, the Afromestizo population. While this population of
Mexico may for the most part be a voice denied official venue, to say that it
is a silent population is a complete mistruth.
In growing support of their voice, for nearly ten years Afro-descendant families
and supporters have made pilgrimage to the beach, lagoon, and hilltop pueblos
that alternate as hosts of the Encuentro and comprise Mexico’s Costa Chica—
the coastal region that runs south from Acapulco, Guerrero, to Puerto Angel,
Oaxaca. Originally organized by activist group Mexico Negro, El Encuentro de
los Pueblos Negros will celebrate its tenth anniversary in the town of El Ciruelo,
Oaxaca, in March 2006.
© MARCO VILLALOBOS 2005
Gasper Nyanga, a native of Gabon, West Africa,
was brought to Veracruz, Mexico, as one of the over 200,000 enslaved Africans
shipped to the country’s gulf and pacific coasts to work the sugar cane
fields and mines controlled by the Spanish crown during the mid 16th and late
17th century.
As with other instances of slavery throughout the new world, no sooner did the
initial ships disembark in 1537 that the first uprisings began. Throughout Mexico,
Africans and Indigenous alike escaped the mines and haciendas to create “maroon”
societies in the mountains.
After one of Mexico’s most brutal rebellions,
it was to the mountains of Veracruz that Gaspar Nyanga led 500 other self-liberated
peoples. For more than thirty years this community lived off goods secured through
raids on caravans in route to Mexico City. As the community grew and the raids
became more frequent, Nyanga became an increasingly hunted man: So fierce was
this hunt that over 500 armed men ware sent to destroy his colony.
Nyanga and hundreds of men living in the highlands of Veracruz battled against
the troops sent to capture them by order of the Spanish Crown. With hopes of
causing enough destruction to force the Spaniards into negotiations that would
help protect his people, Nyanga sent a message via a prisoner captured by his
men. This message asked that a free homeland be granted upon fertile soil for
his community of self liberated Africans and African descendants to settle.
At the end of a battle that suffered many casualties
on each side, Nyanga and those under his care arranged a move to the lowlands
of Veracruz. All African descendants and their offspring who had liberated themselves
prior to 1608 were granted legal freedom to settle in this town, San Lorenzo
de los Negros. In exchange, Nyanga assumed the position of mayor and agreed
to pay taxes to the Crown as well as turn away any enslaved peoples seeking
refuge within the city. Thus, Nyanga and his townsmen became the settlers of
the first free town for Africans in the western hemisphere, later renamed Yanga,
for its forefather.
Based on existing historical research and personal field research, the proceeding
text from “El Negro Mas Chulo: African by legacy, Mexican by birth,”
recounts this story through fictionalized letters written in the voice of Gaspar
Nyanga, addressed to a contemporary African American woman living in North America.
The images that accompany were photographed in the town of Yanga, as well as
in parts of Guerrero, and Oaxaca on the Pacific Coast of Mexico.
© MARCO VILLALOBOS 2004
Yanga’s 5th Letter, expressing his vision and tranquility before battle
This night’s quiet is undisturbed by the
chattering forest, as though the mountainside hushes us into a deeper rest.
I dream a great chain has been snapped. I smell the dust of rotted iron and
taste ages of rust give way to a determination beyond what can be forged of
metal. I smell the wet breath of the soil from which rises cane stalks that
sway against each other whispering in the wind. I slip again through the stalks
and my path is as resolute as it is narrow.
The moon silent, the clouds silent floating, all the stars silent watching the
cane stalks whispering to one another as I brush past. The soft sound of their
gossip gives way little by little to the babble of the river over its rocks
and in an instant the cane field opens up and is behind me as my legs step into
the chill of the fresh water. My knees and soon my hips are wet and now my chest
as I dip my head and let the current run over me for a moment until the fresh
water is my mother and I have crossed the river reborn now on the other side
where I slip out among the first roots of the forest to climb up over this first
hill and down its opposite side to climb then the next hill and the next.
The forest snaps and chirps until I have reached my tomorrow. The sun rises
with the glint of a thousand machetes all sharp and burning, surging like my
own machete held to the sky by my sleek arms extended through pitch night to
mid day, this willful arm unflinching that snaps the great chain and with this
iron machete slashes against the bondage that threatens to turn my very flesh
to bone.
With this machete now I rush into morning and running I hear the gasp of those
still suffocating; I hear the prayers that go unanswered beneath the tension
of lashes snapping. Horses rear back on their hind legs and their eyes flash
wild noticing how our shoulders share the same brands that stamp their flanks.
They find their snorts choked by the disastrous bits that grind their teeth
and rearing in shock they kick their forelegs for balance.
And then the wind shifts and time bends. The shouts of the slavers rise over
the swell of waves against a ship’s sides. A rush of water saturates me
where I lay in the dark. The creak of wood sounds around me like enormous trees
breaking in a storm. These trees mutilated in grand fashion, bent and twisted
they call out warnings to the deaf men above deck who pretend to steer toward
a destiny of their choosing this ship that simply sails itself toward time’s
edge.
And now there is another ship beyond the port waiting to carry us home, a ship
that would deliver us over the sea and through the nights that dropped us here.
We know it is there because its sails billow with the breath of our sleep; we
see how it waits ready just over the horizon, this new ship that remains empty,
waiting for our bodies to guide it home.
But we will stay here. We will not go back so that some one can trace or return
only to repeat the same atrocities that brought us here. We run only to the
next mountain where we will remain on this very land in these very bodies inhabited
by our spirits that no one ever succeeded in removing from anywhere.
We let the ship sink and watch it go down empty but for the cries it sounds—
they are not the cries of people, they are cries sounded by wood, the very trees
that disguise themselves in the form of a ship, it is those trees that cry out.
They say, Stay where you have landed, drop your sadness and remain, for the
wicked hands that once chained you in return shall feel a chain’s weight.
Let your blood boil and let it cool; let your heart burn and let it calm; it
is your mind that will take root in this turmoil; it is your soul that will
feed this land, not the blood and sweat that have mingled with the earth here
to form your new beginning, no, what shall be of greater legacy is the spirit
that rises from you. Let this ship sink but let your ears hear it call always,
reminding you that you have arrived here not by chance, but by a design and
purpose beyond the comprehension of men.
As I wake, I know that there are those among us who ignore such dreams, call
them illusion and let them fall away unexamined. But I also know that there
is no promise of liberty, that liberty carries no insurance: it is something
that is grabbed with a bloodied hand and guarded with a scarred one. There is
no freedom but the freedom that is looked after and tended to like an infant
in the wilderness. There is no time in which to languish; there is only time
to continue this vigil.
I sit upon the hill watching the trail below and I breathe knowing who approaches
and when. I relax only in guarding this fragile moment of peace.
Yours in Breath,
Gaspar Nyanga
Palenque San Lorenzo De Los Negros
Veracruz, Mexico
© MARCO VILLALOBOS 2003