Professor María Hammack tells the little-known story of Blackness in Mexico

Carter Kohli
Thu, 07 Mar 2024 03:42:37 +0000
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The “Things We Weren’t Taught about AfroMexican History” talk by María Hammack was presented in the Alonso Family Room of the Center for Belonging and Social Change in the Ohio Union. Credit: Carter Kohli

Students interested in learning about an aspect of Black history not commonly taught in the classroom were able to hear from María Esther Hammack, an assistant professor of African American history, Feb. 28 during her talk on the history of Blackness in Mexico.?

Hosted by the Center for Social Belonging and Change, the presentation, “Things We Weren’t Taught about Afro-Mexican History” was held in honor of United Black World Month and was open to all students to inform them about former American slaves who found their freedom through the underground railroad from the United States to Mexico.

Hammack, who grew up in Northern Mexico in the state of Sinaloa, said there is a gap in knowledge about Blackness in Mexico, and it is not something that is taught in schools; she was only able to start learning about the topic years after immigrating to the U.S.?

“When I finally was able to get my papers and go to college, that’s when I started asking questions and learning about this,” Hammack said.

In her research, Hammack said she found that Black women played a prominent role as the engineers of liberation in Mexico, being at the forefront of fighting for people’s freedom. They were leading the liberation process and underground railroad routes to Mexico, bringing their children and families along with them.

“The records that I have found, particularly in Mexican archives, clearly show women, and what I have learned is that when you find women, you find the children, you find the families,” Hammack said.

Hammack highlighted several historical figures, including María Juana, a woman who escaped her French enslaver in Louisiana in 1793 to San Antonio in Northern Mexico; Phibi, a woman who was born into slavery in North Carolina, where she was married and widowed after her husband was violently killed by her enslaver; Mathilde, a woman who escaped her enslaver in Louisiana and made it to freedom in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas in the early 1850s; and Silvia Hector, a woman born enslaved in Louisiana who came to Mexican Texas in 1826 with a white settler but in 1834 was able to secure freedom for herself and her three children.

Hammack said Juana helped others claim their freedom in San Antonio, including her son, who was taken from her by slave hunters.

Those helping people escape to Mexico were a diverse group, Hammack said. White Americans and former slaves were fighting for the freedom of others, but Mexicans of all backgrounds and Indigenous peoples played a key role. Many served as guides, offering their boats for transportation, food and money for those traveling to freedom.

“Mexican boat owners were known to ferry people back and forth across the Gulf,” Hammack said. “At other times, local Mexicans offered assistance in the form of providing food or raising money for people who arrived on Mexican soil with nothing but their clothes that they had.”

There were more enslaved people brought to Mexico than even the United States, Hammack said. This is what she refers to as the first diaspora — the movement of people of African ancestry — that shaped Mexico.?

“As soon as colonialism began, people were brought [and] forced from African nations, through the transatlantic slave trade,” Hammack said.

The second diaspora, starting in the late 1700s, happened as a result of enslaved people escaping the United States to Mexico, which abolished slavery in 1829 — 36 years before the United States, Hammack said.

Hammack said Phibi’s story, which contains interview records from an official asking Phibi why she fled, provides a crucial historical record of a Black woman’s experience escaping slavery.?

“It’s a beautiful record of a Black woman’s experience when in many ways a lot of these records are often hard to find,” Hammack said.

Hammock said the freedom found in Mexico was fragile, and slave hunters would still attempt to track down and return people to their former enslavers.?

“People that were reaching both Canada and Mexico were often hunted,” Hammack said. “They were pursued, and so their fight to be free was constant.”

Hammack said Mathilde lived free in Mexico for years with her daughter before her former enslaver tried to kidnap and return her to the U.S. Her experience was documented through the testimony she gave to local authorities after her former enslaver was put in jail for 10 months.

“When I say that I call historical actors like Mathilde freedom fighters, she literally had to fight,” Hammack said.

Hector, who was able to secure her freedom for herself and her children, licensed a ferry to carry people from central Texas down to the Gulf of Mexico and opened her ranch to people seeking freedom from slavery.

“In freedom, she made it her business to help people to freedom,” Hammack said.

Hammack said she was able to write the first biography on Hector in graduate school and meet with her descendants who were unaware of the contributions she had made to the abolition of others. On Feb. 17, she said she attended the opening of an exhibit on Hector at the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History in Austin, Texas.

Researching and telling these stories are about more than retelling past histories and can be relevant and help the world today, Hammack said. It challenges the erasure of Black experiences and Black life, as well as the racialization of Black communities in the United States, Mexico and Canada, Hammack said.

“These stories and the work that I do help all of us to challenge anti-Blackness,” Hammack said.