Mandinga Analysis

An Encounter with Anti-Black Racism in Mexico

Mandinga is a coastal village located thirty-eight kilometers south of Veracruz, Mexico. I would not have paid attention to its mention in a guidebook had it not been for a conversation. A few weeks before traveling to Veracruz, I attended a Spanish/English language immersion school in Cuernavaca. There were four of us in class outside in the garden with our instructor said that it was time for our break. We passed the time by engaging in small talk. I don't know how it happened, perhaps someone mentioned Rodney King or Dr. Martin Luther, King Jr., but we started talking about race and racism. I do remember what the instructor said: "We don't have the problems you have with the blacks. All of our blacks live on the coast." By "you," he meant, the United States. He smiled as he said this, straight white teeth gleaming. I looked up at the sky to keep my anger from showing. I felt it rising, sticking in my throat, clawing to get out. I got quiet for a minute. And then I asked him what he meant. He said that all the government in Mexico makes all their black people live along the costal areas.

I went to Veracruz searching for more than just a black sand beach and coastal waters. When I read the word, "Mandinga" in the guidebook I thought about the novel Mandingo by Kyle Onsott, a

A little over thirty minutes later the driver turned off the coastal road and I saw the sign, "Mandinga." I got up and walked to the front and asked the driver to stop and let me out. He looked at me like I was crazy, but did as I asked. I walked to town along a dirt road. I was not on a nature walk—I searched for faces. And after a while I saw them, dark brown to black and no mistaking by their hair, lips and noses that they were descended from Africans. And it dawned on me that the only black person that I had seen during my entire visit to Mexico had been myself when I looked in the