Mexico Welcomed Fugitive Slaves &
African-American Job Seekers
New Perspectives on the Immigration Debate
Ron Wilkins
Patrice Lumumba Coalition
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RW
is a former member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
(SNCC) and is presently a professor in the Department of Africana
Studies at California State University, Dominguez Hills
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There
are of course, many angles from which to view the escalating
immigration debate. Mexican immigrants, who constitute the largest
share of the undocumented, have a unique history with the African
population inside the United States. As the Black community weighs-in
on this very contentious issue, it becomes necessary for us
(both black and brown) to review the history that we share.
However,
before reviewing our history together, I need to say unequivocally that
the U.S. seizure of more than half of Mexico’s territory in 1848 netted
Washington more than 80% of Mexico’s fertile land and was a criminal
act. And that if Mexico today, still included California and Texas, she
would possess more oil than Saudi Arabia and have sufficient economic
infrastructure to employ all of her people. When Mexican people say
that “the border crossed us, we did not cross the border”, they speak
the truth, and more black people (most of whom are not strangers to
oppression, exploitation, domination and exclusion) need to appreciate
that.
It has been said that for most of the 19th century,
Mexican immigrants were more highly regarded by African Americans, than
any other immigrant group. What may account for this, at least in part,
is the enormous if not pivotal role undertaken by black fighters in the
war to secure Mexican independence from Spain and abolish slavery.
Unfortunately, many of us repeat the falsehoods of our adversaries and
have forgotten our special relationship with Mexican and Indigenous
peoples.
It is time that our memories be restored and that the
naysayers and nativist negroes among us either put up or shut up. What
follows is the little known history of Mexico serving as a refuge for
fugitive slaves and a provider of job opportunities for blacks
emigrating from the U.S. to Mexico.
Mexico as a Haven for Fugitive Slaves
From
the very beginning of his Texas colonization scheme, a determined and
deceitful Stephen Austin sought to have Mexican officials acquiesce to
the settlement of slave-owning whites into the territory. It was
generally acknowledged that the people and government of Mexico
abhorred slavery and were determined to prohibit its practice within
the Mexican republic. Beginning in 1822, at least 20,000 Anglos, many
with their slave property, settled into Texas. Jared Groce, one of the
first of Stephen Austin’s Texas settlers that year, arrived with 90
enslaved Africans. The Mexican Federal Law of July 13, 1824 clearly
favored and promoted the emancipation of slaves. Mexico had even
stipulated that it was prepared to compensate North American owners of
fugitive slaves. Determined instead to have things their way, Anglos
began to press for an extradition treaty which would require Mexico to
return fugitive slaves.
From 1825 until the end of the Civil
War in 1865, Mexican authorities continuously thwarted attempts by
slave-holding Texas settlers, to conclude fugitive slave extradition
treaties between the two parties. During this period of extremely tense
relations between the two governments, Mexico consistently repudiated
and forbade the institution of slavery in its territory, while U.S.
officials and Texas slave-owners continuously sought ways to circumvent
Mexican law. The Mexican authorities thwarted repeated attempts by
slave-holding Texas settlers, to conclude fugitive slave extradition
treaties between the two parties.
In 1826 the Committee of
Foreign Relations of the Mexican Chamber of Deputies refused to
compromise on the issue of fugitive slaves and defended the right of
enslaved Africans to liberate themselves. Mexican government officials
cited “the inalienable right which the Author of nature has conceded to
him (meaning enslaved persons)”. Congress member Erasmo Seguin from
Texas commented that the Congress was “resolved to decree the perpetual
extinction in the Republic of commerce and traffic in slaves, and that
their introduction into our territory should not be permitted under any
pretext”.
Again, in October 1828 the Mexican Senate rejected
14 articles of a newly-proposed treaty and harshly criticized article
33, stating “it would be most extraordinary that in a treaty between
two free republics slavery should be encouraged by obliging ours to
deliver up fugitive slaves to their merciless and barbarous masters of
North America”.
Reporting on the growing number of Anglo
settlers in Texas, Mexican General Teran reported “most of them have
slaves, and these slaves are beginning to learn the favorable intent of
Mexican law to their unfortunate condition and are becoming restless
under their yokes …” General Teran went on to describe the cruelty
meted out by masters to restless slaves; “they extract their teeth, set
on the dogs to tear them in pieces, the most lenient being he who but
flogs his slaves until they are flayed”.
On September 15, 1829
AfroMexican President Vicente Guerrero signed a decree banning slavery
in the Mexican Republic. Yielding to appeals from panicked settlers and
Mexican collaborators who saw Mexico benefiting economically from the
Anglo presence, Guerrero exempted Texas from the prohibition on the
introduction of slaves into the republic, on December 2nd. Several
months later, the Mexican government severely restricted Anglo
immigration and banned the introduction of slaves into the republic.
Undeterred,
the Anglos succeeded in negotiating a new treaty with Mexico in 1831,
which included article 34, which called for pursuit and reclamation of
fugitive slaves. After considerable wrangling between the Mexican
Chamber of Deputies and Senate, article 34 was removed from the treaty.
Also, by 1831 it became apparent through debate within the Mexican
Senate that the government’s welcoming of fugitive slaves was not
completely altruistic. Some Mexican officials, fearful of U.S. military
intervention, had began to see it as wise to encourage the development
of runaway slave colonies along the Northern border as a way to lessen
the threat posed by the U.S. As historian Rosalie Schwartz put it, many
Mexican officials “reasoned, these fugitives, choosing between liberty
under the Mexican government and bondage in the United States, would
fight to protect their Mexican freedom more vigorously than any
mercenaries”. As the interests of Mexican officials and U.S.
abolitionists coincided during the early 1830’s, a modest number of
former slaves established themselves in Texas and fared well during the
period.
In 1836, after the fall of the Alamo and its
slave-owning or pro-slavery leaders, such as William Travis, Jim Bowie
and Davy Crockett, Mexican forces were defeated and an independent
Texas was eventually annexed by the United States. However, before the
expulsion of Mexican forces from Texas, Brigadier General Jose Urrea
evicted scores of illegally-settled plantation owners, liberated
slaves, and in many instances, granted them on-the-spot titles to the
land they had worked. Oddly enough, many black people call for “forty
acres and a mule” -- a reference to Union General Sherman’s Special
Field Order 15 and General Howard’s Circular 13, which made some land
available to former slaves. But what one never hears are references to
Mexican General Jose Urrea and the land titles that he and his men
granted to former Texas slaves, following the defeat of the Alamo, a
generation before the “Civil War”.
Even after the loss of
Texas, Mexican officials refused to formally acknowledge Texas
independence on the grounds that it “would be equivalent to the
sanction and recognition of slavery”. After Texas independence the
slave population mushroomed and the number of runaways across the
South-Texas–North-Mexico border, increased. In 1842 Mexico’s
Constitutional Congress reasserted the nation’s commitment to fugitive
slaves. In 1847, 38,753 slaves and 102,961 whites were listed in the
first official Texas census. In 1850, in a new treaty accord with the
United States, Mexico again refused to provide for the return of
fugitive slaves.
The slave institution in Texas was
continuously undermined by defiant Tejanos (Mexicans in Texas) who took
great risks and invested enormous resources toward facilitating the
escape of enslaved Africans. The Texas to Mexico routes to freedom
constituted major unacknowledged extensions of the “Underground
Railroad”. Tejanos were variously accused of “tampering with slave
property”, “consorting with blacks” and stirring up among the slave
population “a spirit of insubordination”.
Plantation owners in
Central Texas adopted various resolutions aimed at preventing Mexicans
from aiding the slave population. Whites in Guadalupe County prohibited
Mexican “peons” from entering the county and anyone from conducting
business or interacting with enslaved persons without authorization
from the owners. Bexar County whites suggested that ”Mexican strangers
entering from San Antonio register at the mayor’s office and give an
account of themselves and their business”. Delegates to a convention in
Gonzales resolved that ”counties should organize vigilance committees
to prosecute persons tampering with slaves” and that all citizens and
slaveholders were to endeavor to prevent Mexicans from communicating
with blacks. Whites in Austin decreed that “all transient Mexicans
should be warned to leave within ten days, that all remaining should be
forcibly expelled unless their good character and good behavior were
substantiated by responsible American citizens” and that “Mexicans
should no longer be employed and their presence in the area should be
discouraged”. In Matagorda County, all Mexicans were driven out under
the bogus claim that they were wandering, indigent sub-humans who “have
no fixed domicile, but hang around the plantations, taking the
likeliest negro girls for wives … they often steal horses, and these
girls too, and endeavor to run them to Mexico”.
By the year
1855, the estimates were that as many as 4000 to 5000 formerly enslaved
Africans had escaped to Mexico. Slaveholders became so alarmed at this
trend, that they requested and received, approximately 1/5th of the
standing U.S army which was deployed along the Texas-Mexico border in a
vain effort to stem the flow of runaways. Defiant Mexicans stood their
ground, refused to return runaways, continued supporting slave
uprisings and providing assistance to escaping slaves. In the words of
Felix Haywood, a Texas slave, whose experience is recalled in “The
Slave Narratives of Texas, “Sometimes someone would come along and try
to get us to run up north and be free. We used to laugh at that. There
was no reason to run up north. All we had to do was walk, but walk
south and we’d be free as soon as we crossed the Rio Grande”.
What a Difference a Border Made
1857,
was a year whose profound irony made it one of the most interesting.
1857 was the year that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Dred Scott,
an enslaved African who had sued for his freedom, on the grounds that
his owner had forfeited any claim to him, after taking him into a free
state.
Ironically 1857 was the same year that the Mexican
Congress adopted Article 13 declaring that an enslaved person was free
the moment he set foot on Mexican soil.
Mexico as a Provider of Job Opportunities for African Americans
During
the 1890’s, hundreds of black migrants fed-up with slave-like
conditions and segregation, left Alabama for Mexico and established ten
large colonies. Shortly thereafter, during the period of the Mexican
Revolution, large numbers of black people migrated from New Orleans to
Tampico, Mexico as the oil industry prospered. These Africans in Mexico
established branches of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement
Association. One of the black oil workers who came to Tampico stated,
“there is no race prejudice, everyone is treated according to his
abilities”. During the same period, black heavyweight champion Jack
Johnson asserted that Mexico was “willing not only to give us the
privileges of Mexican citizenship, but was also willing to champion our
cause”.
Juan Uribe, a major Mexican official, visiting Los
Angeles in 1919, was quoted as saying, “ My only regret is that it is
not physically possible to immediately transport several million
African Americans to my beloved Mexico, where the north yields her
riches as nowhere else and where people are not disturbed by artificial
standards of race or color”. Similarly, African American immigrant
Theodore Troy said, “ I am going to a land where freedom and
opportunity beckon me as well as every other man, woman and child of
dark skin. In this land there are no Jim Crow laws to fetter me; I am
not denied opportunity because of the color of my skin and wonderful
undeveloped resources of a country smiled upon by God beckon my genius
on to their development”. A black colony which included fifty families,
developed fruit orchards and engaged in cattle raising. It established
itself in Baja, California, in the Santa Clara and Vallecitos Valleys
situated between Ensenada and Tecate, approximately thirty miles south
of San Diego and lasted into the 1960’s.
Not to be overlooked
is the enormous success of the Negro Baseball Leagues in Mexico during
the 1930’s and 1940’s. Black ball players together with 4-500 family
members seeking relief from racism in the U.S. and segregated
institutions, were hosted in Mexico by generally respectful competitors
and admiring fans. One competitor in particular, Ray Dandridge played
for 18 years in Mexico, before Jackie Robinson gained admission into
U.S. major league baseball. Also, from the 1930’s to the 1960’s, major
Mexican muralists, such as Diego Rivera, David Siqueiros and Jose
Clemente Orozco invited prominent African American artists such as Hale
Woodruff, John Biggers, Elizabeth Catlett and Charles White to the
Mexican Art School where they developed an art style which helped them
to connect images, more effectively, to ethnic and class struggle.
Of
course there are many more historical intersections where Mexican and
African people cooperated with each other. A few examples were the
solidarity between the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
(SNCC)/Black Panther Party and Brown Berets; SNCC and the Alianza
Federal de Pueblos Libres and El Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de
Atzlan (MEChA) and the Black Student Union (BSU). Mack Lyons, a black
member of the United Farmworkers Union’s National Executive, negotiated
its contract with Coca Cola, which owns Minutemaid and sizeable Florida
orange groves. In Los Angeles, during the 90’s, black and brown
students recognizing common history and mutual interests, formed
African and Latino Youth Summit (ALYS).
Admittedly, Vicente
Fox is no Vicente Guerrero. The Mexico of today is profoundly different
from the refuge that once welcomed fugitive slaves, or land of
opportunity that embraced African American job-seekers; yet, its
beautiful history of support, for African Americans, in need of allies,
cannot be erased. It might prove useful to see the relationship between
black and brown people as similar to the bond between a man and woman.
It is beautiful most of the time, but there are moments when it is
tested and may become strained. When this happens one or both must give
more and work to increase or renew trust.
Pass this material
on to others. The black or brown reader of this piece should now know,
that the best of our history together, as black and brown people,
speaks to the necessity of collaborating during the worst of times. A
wise people are a grateful people, and never content themselves with
recalling and celebrating their legendary alliance with an important
neighbor. Instead, they press forward, fully aware that
mutually-supportive relationships are still possible and necessary.
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Special
acknowledgement is extended to historians Rosalie Schwartz, Gerald
Horne, Rodolfo Acuna and Omar Farouk, whose earlier investigative
efforts in the field of African-Mexican collaboration, contributed to
making this work possible.
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