ABSTRACT
During the Spanish colonization of Mexico, African slaves were brought in galleons to the ports of Veracruz on the east coast and Acapulco on the west; over subsequent centuries their descendants have formed distinctive syncretic communities with indigenous and mestizo populations, most notably in these coastal areas. Exploring the ways in which Mexico's black history has been appropriated and inserted into a modern cultural dialectic, this chapter looks at depictions of these regions and their inhabitants in three contrasting photographic collections by Lola Álvarez Bravo, Mariana Yampolsky and Maya Goded, considering the artistic and ethnographic implications of representations of race and the recognition (or lack thereof) of Mexico's African racial component in narratives of national identity.
