Brush the Dirt Off

Well, we’ve had a long week, spending most of it at the conference: “Diaspora, Nation, & Difference: Populations of African Descent in Mexico and Central America.” We’ve been really busy with attending hours of panels and doing work for class while we’ve also had to figure out a new city. It takes a few days to get situated to where the best places to eat are at, where to do laundry, and of course where to party. All of Veracruz seems like one big party at times. Often times there’s more going on at 12am than at 12-noon.

My Spanish is coming back, slowly of course, but then again it was never excellent and I’m still trying to work on it. The problem is that I’m speaking too much English right now (that problem will be fixed as soon as I get to Ecuador, where there won’t be many people to speak English with where I’ll be staying). Anyway, most of the conference was presented in Spanish and I didn’t get the translator headphones so I didn’t catch everything. Just listening in Spanish forced me to pay closer attention and try to translate things myself. I understood enough between the English presentations and the Spanish ones with slides though (when I can see words in Spanish now I usually do pretty well with translating).

Mexico (and Latin America in general) is still dealing with how to move beyond its colonial past concerning race and racism. While in many ways, most people in Mexico are accepted as being mestizo, or “mixed,” this definition is extremely complicated, especially when taking into consideration people of African descent. The discussion of titles, self-identification, and colonial terminology repeatedly came up and was one of the more interesting discussions. Whether “Afro” or “negro” should be embraced or rejected by Latin Americans of African descent is definitely an issue that strikes close to home for me. It became heated at times as some people argued vehemently that they were “black” first (e.g. Afro-Cubano, Afro-Mexcicano, etc.), while others took the stance that they identified most closely with their national identity (e.g. Cuban, Mexican, etc.).

Oh, we also experienced some pretty strong elitism as our group got kicked out the closing conference reception tonight cause we weren’t “guest speakers.” We were all dressed up and already sitting at one of the big round tables about to get our free-eat on and were rudely told to leave. It was cool though, our group went to get some drinks (I grabbed a couple 26 peso tortas - cheap & good!), and then we went out and partied tillat this place with a stage right in the middle of the club with the band playing. They Dj spun reggaeton and electronica in between the band’s sets and we danced until almost 4am. Brush the dirt off your shoulder and keep it movin.