By: Alejandra Tentle
In the context of the Peace Summit organized by Global Exchange, The Tembembe Center of Afromexican Studies was invited to do a street walk across the Afromexican history of the City of Mexico for a small group, members and representatives of famous movement Black Lives Matter, one of them was Jorden Giger.
We met with them at 11 am. We began our street walk on Constitution Square, better known as “The Zócalo”, where we talked about persons who were brought from África in slavery condition, and in Colonial epoch, they were sold in that place, either they were treated as cheap manpower to build many of buildings, among which the following stand out as The Metropolitan Cathedral. Therefore, it was impossible not to share a bit of indigenous history, because we walk near Major Temple and we talk about how they were treated and brought by the spaniards.
We walked in the center until we arrived at Santo Domingo Square, where we also talked of how African people did their daily and commercial activities. It was a link with Tepito’s history, the famous dangerous neighborhood that also has a deep connection with African culture. The original idea was to walk into this neighborhood, however, time wasn’t enough to explore that place.
Is important to highlight that the organizers of this walk trip didn't want to do the walk in Tepito, because of dangerous fame, they preferred gentrification and whitexicans zones, being in a clasist-racist discourse, because their request was for Afromexican history, if we going at any place of they choose, definitely, we weren’t find the history that we were talked. At the end, Jorden accepted going to Tepito, but the schedule didn’t give us the opportunity to continue. Additionally, we discussed social organization ways among the commerce and guilds in this neighborhood. whitexicans de la zona, cayendo en un discurso clasista-racista, pues su solicitud era un recorrido por la historia afromexicana, si íbamos a cualquiera de los lugares que ellos decían, en definitiva no iban a encontrar la historia que les contamos. Al final, Jorden sí aceptó ir a Tepito pero el tiempo ya no nos permitió continuar, sin embargo, contamos también la manera en la se organizaban socialmente a través del comercio y gremios en esta zona del barrio bravo.
Finally, we ate Mexican meals and shared a friendly time, speaking and understanding a bit of our cultures and getting to know each other in an informal way. All the Black Lives Matter team were attentive to our conversation, were participatory and their questions were too timely, it give us the opportunity of having a enriching meeting of ideas, stories, and of cours, a lot of laughs.
