For the first time in history, Mexico has included Afro-Mexicans as “black” in the country’s census.  Afro-Mexicans, descendants of the intercontinental slave trade, have often been left in the shadows of Mexican society due to racism. Any group that didn’t fit the country’s narrative.

“After independence, this population became largely invisible because it didn’t fit into the Mexico’s new national identity, built on the idea of mestizaje, or the mixing between Spaniards and indigenous people,” says Citlali Quecha, a researcher at National Autonomous University of Mexico who has studied the country’s black community.

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