Friday, August 7, 2020

Mexico's Underground Railroad for African-American Runaways

In 1829, Mexico's president, Vicente Guerrero, son of an African slave mother, inadvertently spawned a Mexican underground railroad for African-Americans runaways by signing a decree banning slavery in the Mexican Republic.

Felix, a Texas slave was quoted in, "The Slave Narrative of Texas saying that he and other slaves used to laugh at those abolitionists who came along inviting slaves to run up north to be free when all they had to do was walk south across the Rio Grande.
 

In 1822, more than 20,000 white slave owners settled into Texas, which was then a Mexican state. Texas (or Tejas, as it was officially named) did not join the American union until 1845. Even though Mexican Federal Law clearly reasserted the nation’s commitment to defend the right of enslaved Africans to liberate themselves, Texas slave owners pressed for an extradition treaty which would require Mexico to return escaped slaves. 

 

Two hundred years before Mexico won her independence from Spain, Gaspar Yanga (above) estalbished a free black town, independent of Spanish rule, Nat Turner style.

After Texas gained independence from Mexico in 1834, the slave population in Texas as well as the number of runaways across the border into mainland Mexico grew exponentially

Mexicans living in Texas took great risks and invested enormous resources toward facilitating the escape of enslaved Africans. The Texas-to-Mexico routes to freedom constituted  major, unacknowledged extensions of the Underground Railroad. 

The Tejanos (Texas Mexicans) were accused of tampering with slave property, consorting with blacks, and stirring up a spirit of insubordination among the slave population. Mexican Americans stood their ground refusing to return runaways and continued to support slave uprisings. 

 

Mexico's president, Vicente Guerrero, son of an African slave mother and 
a Mestizo, peasant father, abolished slavery in 1829.

 

In 1857, the same year that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Dred Scott, an enslaved African who filed suit for his freedom on the grounds that his owner forfeited any claim to him after taking him into a free state, the Mexican Congress declared that enslaved people were free the moment they set foot on Mexican soil.

Even long after U.S. slavery was abolished, hundreds of Black migrants who were fed up with slave-like conditions and segregation, left for Mexico. These Africans in Mexico established branches of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA).

Marcus Garvey, head of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), had 10 African-American branches in Mexico.


Sadly today, while both African American and Mexican American communities are suffering racist oppression, I hear of conflicts and have witnessed polarization between African Americans and Mexican Americans in communities. 

Gone are the days when César Chávez established relationships with Coretta Scott King and members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Gone are the days when the Black Panthers were allies with the Mexican-American Brown Berets. And gone are the days when blacks in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) allied with the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA), a Mexican-American student organization on college campuses.  

I cite ignorance in both communities!

Wednesday, January 22, 2020

Don't Get "Played" Visiting Latin America



It was 11:00 PM on Friday evening when my plane landed at the Jorge Chávez International Airport in Lima, Perú. I was tired and sleepy after 16 hours of flying and changing planes in Atlanta and Mexico City. I still had another three-hour bus ride to Chincha, the hub of Afro-Peruvian culture where the family of the late-great maestro, Amador Ballumrosio, the Godfather of Afro-Peruvian music and dance was expecting me.

First, I had to get to the bus terminal, which was another 30-minute cab ride from the airport. Maribel, Amador Ballumbrosio's daughter, told me over the phone that the cab fare to the bus station is $25 nuevo soles ($7.25 USD). There were hordes of cab drivers in the waiting area of the airport, and several flocked over to me, this lone black guy wearing a Luther Vandross t-shirt, which was a dead give-away that I'm an American. Being my first trip, “fresh fish" was written all over my face.


One cab driver came across as being very sincere as he showed me his badge emphasizing, in impressive English, that I would be in good hands if I chose his taxi service over the rest. Because I wanted to use this trip, like I do with all of my Latin American trips, to practice my Spanish, I answered him in Spanish as we negotiated the fare that Maribel suggested.

The cabbie then escorted me to what was supposed to be a taxi stand, but there was no taxi. How strange I thought, as his buddy ran to get my driver's cab. When he returned, he leaped from the cab with his hand stuck out demanding five dollars for retrieving my driver's cab. Confused, I reached into my pocket and gave him only a dollar, and he left me alone. In my subsequent trips, I realized I got played a bit.


As my cab driver raced and maneuvered his way through the dark, hard, fast-paced streets of Lima, he himself became aggressive and relentless in trying to hustle me out of a fare four times greater than what we agreed. In response, I started using some Peruvian street talk and some curse words that I learned on the Internet insisting he is getting paid what we agreed, plus a tip.

What those cab drivers attempted to do, as they presumably do with other visitors, was charge me the gringo tax. What is the gringo tax? It's when you are being overcharged by shopkeepers and taxi drivers with what they can get away with because you are a gringo (foreigner). In Perú, however; if you are from any country other than Perú, you are viewed as a gringo even if you are of Latin American heritage.

When I was in Havana, Cuba, there is a famous ice cream parlor, boasted as the largest in the world called La Coppellia where they have a government-sponsored gringo tax; a pint of ice cream costs a Cuban one peso, but for visitors (the gringos), it was 20 pesos, which at that time was equivalent to an American dollar. 

In Quito, Ecuador, My Afro-Ecuadorian friend, Gloria (RIP) took me to La Mitad del Mundo (the equator) where I took pictures of me with one foot in the Northern Hemisphere and one foot in the Southern Hemisphere. Afterward, we toured the museum on location, which also had a government-sponsored gringo tax. Gloria used her ID enabling me to pay the local fee.

As a rule, I avoid tourist areas as much as possible where you can get food and other items at much cheaper prices. Furthermore, making friends with local citizens and even asking hotel staff or other members of the community for appropriate prices for the things you want will put you in a better bargaining position. 

In Chincha, the hub of Afro-Peruvian culture, I went to the market to shop for some chicken as a favor to my host family I was staying with. The market clerk immediately recognized my foreign accent (in Spanish) and quoted a price higher than what my host family advised. I called her on it and insisted on paying the appropriate price or I will go somewhere else. I paid the appropriate price.

It's also a good idea to carry small bills. In the nine Latin American countries that I've visited so far, I notice that merchants and cab drivers do not carry a lot of change. If you hand over a big bill, that can compromise your bargaining power. Therefore, I often go to a bank to change my money into small bills and loose change. In terms of tours, I've gotten much better deals hiring a struggling, hardworking citizen who can use some extra cash. Of course, it is necessary to be able to speak Spanish.

Before any Latin American trip, I network online. For example, in the Spring of 2009, I opened a separate Spanish-speaking Facebook account making more than 300 friends throughout Latin America. In Colombia, for example, there was an African village of former slaves who won their freedom from the Spanish 200 years before Simón Bolivar liberated the rest of  Colombia and other South American countries. I made it known on Facebook that I wanted to visit and received heart-warming responses from those willing to help. 

Before my first trip to Ecuador, I put the word out that I'm a sentimental fan of Ecuador's International Soccer team (I really am!), and that I wanted to visit the all-black town that produced their soccer all-star Augustin Delgado (the Shaquille O'Neal of Ecuador). 

Within a couple of days, I got a response from an Afro-Ecuadorian woman living in Germany with her husband. After months of Facebook communication, she introduced me to her mother who lives in Quito, Ecuador's capital. Her mother showed me around, gave me plenty of advice, and sheltered me from those notorious gringo taxes.



Friday, January 17, 2020

Has Your Foreign Language Skills Ever Been Tested in a Job Interview?


If you state on your résumé that you can speak a foreign language, be prepared because you are likely to be interviewed in that language. 


One year, I interviewed for a workforce development position at a prominent agency in San Francisco, California and passed the interview with flying colors.


Being that I'm so passionate about the Spanish language, I made it a point to emphasize my experience working with Spanish speakers as well as my travels to several Latin American countries. The job announcement itself stated that the ability to speak Spanish is a plus. 


Sure, I had Spanish in school, but like anything in life, the classroom is no match for the real world. 


I once had a supervisor who minored in Spanish in college, and I was so surprised when she asked me to help her with her Spanish. The difference between her progress and mine was that I always made it a point to seize every opportunity to converse with monolingual Spanish speakers.


When I returned for my second interview for that highly coveted position, I was as usual confident and ready to rumble. However, this time—there were two Latino managers waiting for me in the interview room. That made me unusually nervous because I knew my Spanish was going to be tested. 


Fortunately, the two interviewers spent almost the whole interview in English until they were satisfied that I was a good match for the open position. Then one asked me a question in Spanish. For the first time in my working life, I started stumbling over my words as I attempted to respond in Spanish. Finally, I just let it all hang out and stated (in Spanish) that I speak much better Spanish with those who speak Spanish only and no English. I added that bilingual people make me nervous and I begin forgetting simple words (a true statement!).
 

They both laughed and commented on how fine my Spanish sounded to them and let me off the hook telling me not to worry. 


There were other interviews where I did not get off so easily. At a predominately Latino employment services agency, the hiring manager, in the middle of our interview, insisted that we continue the rest of our discussion in Spanish. Reluctantly, I complied, but fortunately, I performed much better than I anticipated


When I apply for positions where the use of Spanish will be an asset, I want the employer to know upfront that I'm functional enough in the language to make conversation, conduct business in banks and shopping centers, but most importantly, do my job as a workforce development specialist and as a professional résumé writer.