Africa’s Legacy in Mexico: The Photographs of Tony Gleaton |
Africa’s Legacy in Mexico: The Photographs of Tony Gleaton
Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles
Laband Art Gallery
2007-09-09 through 2007-11-18
Africa’s Legacy in Mexico features forty-five black and white photographs from a series of portraits of African Mexicans by Tony Gleaton. Taken in the late 1980s and early 1990s, primarily in three villages along the southwestern coast of Mexico, Gleaton’s photographs offer insight into a little-known aspect of Mexican culture. These poignant images focus on the present-day descendants of African slaves who were brought to Mexico by the Spanish colonialists beginning in the 1500s. Though Africans have been part of the cultural fabric of Mexico for five centuries, the official policy of the Mexican government has been to only highlight the country’s mestizo [mixed race] heritage that has resulted from the mixing of indigenous and European peoples. Miriam Jimenez Roman writes that Gleaton’s photographs “force us to rethink many of our preconceptions not only about our southern neighbor but more generally about issues such as race, ethnicity, culture, and national identity.”
View some of the photographs here.
Tags: Afro-Mexicans, Afromexicans, Mexico, photography, Tony Gleaton