Abstract
This paper summarizes some of the major themes of a larger study that used Afro-Mexicans of the Costa Chica as a case study to understand archival education in Mexico. This study seeks to provide insight on how absences of Mexicans of African descent from the official record and recordkeeping came into being in Mexico; to examine the role that education of archival professionals might play in addressing or contributing to these absences; and to produce recommendations for remedying this under-documentation—at least in part—through changes to what is currently taught in formal archival education at the university level.
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Notes
Other sizable black concentrations included the present-day Mexican states of Jalisco, Colima, and Zacatecas.
The study referred to here is the author’s dissertation, White K (2008) The Dynamics of Race and Remembering in a ‘Colorblind’ Society: A Case Study of Racial Paradigms and Archival Education in Mexico. PhD University of California, Los Angeles. This thesis builds on an ongoing research initiative led by Professors Anne Gilliland (University of California, Los Angeles), Sue McKemmish, (Monash University, Australia), and Zhang Bin (Renmin University, China). The Project surveyed repositories across nations in the Pacific Rim as well as various cultural and ethnic communities such as Indigenous and immigrant populations to examine their needs and circumstances.
The typical curriculum can be summarized in seven areas: 1) documentary heritage; 2) technical organization; 3) user-services; 4) archival administration; 5) Mexican history and historic institutions; 6) research methods; and 7) automation.
Despite the availability and use of records such as birth certificates, financial records, baptisms, and so forth, community members informed me that those types of documentation reveal little if anything about their African heritage. I suggest that the reason for this is because historically mestizaje has precluded including any data element in official records that pertain to distinctive racial or ethnic categories outside the Indigenous–Spanish construct.
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White, K.L. Meztizaje and remembering in Afro-Mexican communities of the Costa Chica: implications for archival education in Mexico. Arch Sci 9, 43 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-009-9102-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-009-9102-5