The Erasure Of the Afro Element of Mestizaje in Modern Mexico: The Coding Of Visibly Black Mestizos According to a White Aesthetic in and Through The Discourse on Nation During The Cultural Phase of the Mexican Revolution, 1920-1968

The Erasure of the Essential Afro Element of Mestizaje in Modern Mexico: The Coding of Visibly Black Mestizos According to a White Aesthetic In and Through the Discourse on Nation During the Cultural Phase of the Mexican Revolution, 1920-1968 examines how the Afro elements of Mexican mestizaje were erased from the ideal image of the Mexican mestizo and how the Afro ethnic contributions were plagiarized in modern Mexico. It explores part of the discourse on nation in the narrative produced by authors who subscribed to the belief that only white was beautiful, between 1920 and 1968, during a period herein identified as the cultural phase of the Mexican Revolution. It looks at the coding and distortion of the image of visibly black Mexicans in and through literature and film, and unveils how the Afro element disappeared from some of the most popular images, tastes in music, dance, song, food, and speech forms viewed as cultural texts that, by way of official intervention, were made badges of Mexican national identity. The analysis adopts as critical foundation two essays: Black Phobia and the White Aesthetic in Spanish American Literature, by Richard L. Jackson; and Mass Visual Productions, by James Snead. In Black Phobia Jackson explains that, to define superior and inferior as well as the concept of beauty according to how white a person is perceived to be, is a tradition dramatized in Hispanic Literature from Lope de Rueda s Eufemia to the present. For Snead, the coding of blacks in film, as in the wider society, involves a history of images and signs associating black skin color with servile behavior and marginal status.