Author: Pashington Obeng
ISBN No: 978-1-920294-08-3
Cost: 40.00
This paper explores how Africans in Mexico stage their subjectivity by using religious practices that are embedded in community formations that make them a critical part of the Latin American society of Mexico that has been shaped by Catholicism, Mexican indigenous worldviews, legacies of colonialism, and African sensibilities. Particularly, the paper presents new scholarly insights on healers, birth attendants and members of secular and religious institution called confraternity (hermendad) who claim and assert their own category of inclusion, and more importantly, establish their autonomy because of how they define their terms of engagement and subjectivity. I use Matory’s analytic tool of the theoretical “dialogue of cultural coevalness” which he also borrowed from Fabian, to comment on the roles of curandera/os, the statue of Christ the King, and other African Mexican practices within Mexico’s pluralistic society. The paper will illumine the multiple subjectivities of which the Africans in Mexico are a critical set of players among diasporic Africans. This paper based on research conducted during the late summers of 2007, 2009 and 2010 in Collantes, Cuijla, El Cireulo and Corralero in Costa Chica, Mexico in the Latin American region, seeks to convey a new perspective on an African Diasporan community that creates its own modes of communicating with the world, asserting their identity to stage their subjectivity, and at the same time, providing new evidence for theorizing the Latin American African Diaspora. I focus on healing rituals, African-Mexicans’ stories and beliefs and the statue of Christ the King (Cristo Rey) to establish how the Africans in Mexico create and advance their interests. I use data on how the Africans perform their roles in Mexico, not just as a people responding to issues in their environment; or as communities retaining African-derived practices, but rather as people who purposefully recall and distill resources in Mexico, subvert aspects of Catholicism and neo-colonial legacies of racist and patriarchal systems to construct who they are becoming as an important constituency of Africans outside the continent. The study provides evidence for understanding how African Diasporan communities that live in a de-territorialized world, are extending and deepening the spaces and experiences of Africa and Africans beyond the bounded geographic location of continental Africa.
ISBN No: 978-1-920294-08-3
Cost: 40.00
This paper explores how Africans in Mexico stage their subjectivity by using religious practices that are embedded in community formations that make them a critical part of the Latin American society of Mexico that has been shaped by Catholicism, Mexican indigenous worldviews, legacies of colonialism, and African sensibilities. Particularly, the paper presents new scholarly insights on healers, birth attendants and members of secular and religious institution called confraternity (hermendad) who claim and assert their own category of inclusion, and more importantly, establish their autonomy because of how they define their terms of engagement and subjectivity. I use Matory’s analytic tool of the theoretical “dialogue of cultural coevalness” which he also borrowed from Fabian, to comment on the roles of curandera/os, the statue of Christ the King, and other African Mexican practices within Mexico’s pluralistic society. The paper will illumine the multiple subjectivities of which the Africans in Mexico are a critical set of players among diasporic Africans. This paper based on research conducted during the late summers of 2007, 2009 and 2010 in Collantes, Cuijla, El Cireulo and Corralero in Costa Chica, Mexico in the Latin American region, seeks to convey a new perspective on an African Diasporan community that creates its own modes of communicating with the world, asserting their identity to stage their subjectivity, and at the same time, providing new evidence for theorizing the Latin American African Diaspora. I focus on healing rituals, African-Mexicans’ stories and beliefs and the statue of Christ the King (Cristo Rey) to establish how the Africans in Mexico create and advance their interests. I use data on how the Africans perform their roles in Mexico, not just as a people responding to issues in their environment; or as communities retaining African-derived practices, but rather as people who purposefully recall and distill resources in Mexico, subvert aspects of Catholicism and neo-colonial legacies of racist and patriarchal systems to construct who they are becoming as an important constituency of Africans outside the continent. The study provides evidence for understanding how African Diasporan communities that live in a de-territorialized world, are extending and deepening the spaces and experiences of Africa and Africans beyond the bounded geographic location of continental Africa.
