Vicente Fox's One-Two Punch

On May 13, 2005, Vicente Fox, President of Mexico, made a statement expressing his confusion over America’s negative backlash to large waves of Mexican immigration because as he said, Mexicans were willing to do jobs that “not even blacks” were willing to do. Huh? Was that really necessary? It would have been more rhetorically powerful to say “that no Americans” are willing to do. But no, he singled out blacks. I could not understand the motivation for his statement until I saw the new Mexican stamp being issued by the Mexican Postal Service.

The stamp, pictured below, features Memin Penguin, a popular comic book character in 1940s Mexico that is STILL BEING PUBLISHED TODAY. The hapless, but loveable Memin Is frequently the butt of jokes by the comic’s white characters. The Mexican Postal Service explains that the Memin stamps are one of a series of five stamps that will celebrate popular characters from Mexican comics.

Is that Aunt Jemima in the background wiping her hands and lamenting that she “don’t know nothin’ ‘bout birthin’ no babies” (or, que “no sabia nada de dar luz”)? And is the greasy-faced Memin marching off to school dreaming about burritos and fried chicken? The stamp is breathtaking in its offensiveness, sweeping in its warm embrace of outdated stereotypes. Why Mexico even had a Sambo comic book character is beyond me. As far as I know, Mexico’s native black population are scattered among various communities around the southern Pacific coast and there was never American-style slavery there.

From my brief Internet research, I have learned that Mexico was home to tens of thousands of Africans, may of whom lived in communities of escaped slaves called “maroon” communities. Their descendants still live in towns such as Yanga (named after its black founder), El Ciruelo, Corralero and Cuajinicuilapa (try saying that three times fast) in the states of Veracruz, Oaxaca and Guerrero.

I also tried to hunt down pictures of these “Blexicans”, so-called by a Blexican rapper in Los Angeles, to counteract the ugly images put forth by the Mexican Postal Service. The real people look a lot less like Sambo and a lot more like blacks living in the Spanish-speaking islands of the Caribbean such as the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. A young Mexican male whose skin has been colored by his African ancestors is pictured below.

No Sambo there.

Vicente, I am not in your constituency. You do not have to apologize to or placate me. However, it doesn’t make any sense for Mexicans and black Americans to be enemies. It also doesn’t make sense for you, Vicente, to continue with your shell game of shifting attention from what should be your true focus, improving Mexico’s economy so that it can provide living wages for Mexican citizens, to crabbing about America’s immigration policy with a cheap shot at stereotypes about lazy black Americans.

Stop the madness, Vicente. Leave black Americans out of your political drama. While you’re at it, you might also show some respect to the Mexicans of African descent who have been faithful citizens at least since the early seventeenth century and stop issuing national stamps that caricature them and belittle their contribution to Mexican culture and society.

For more information:

You can read the CNN story on the stamps here.

Africa’s Legacy in Mexico from the Smithsonian

Black Mexico from MexConnect