The (Il)legibility of the Black Experience in Mexico: Citizenship, Antiblackness, and Ecological Authority

Grecia Perez
Anthropology
UC Riverside

My dissertation centers the Black experience in the Costa Chica region of Oaxaca, Mexico, by looking at environmental impacts that Afro-descendants are experiencing due to climate change, agricultural development, resource-to-development, and green capitalism. By focusing on the economic opportunities and limitations in a geography where Indigenous, Mestizo, and Black Mexicans live and work, my findings reveal how Black people experience a higher level of environmental inequality that impacts their health and work. Black Mexicans’ world views, grounded in life experiences, are left out of current alternative projects—this, in turn, renders Black suffering illegible. Specifically, I explore the possibility for Black Mexicans to be part of and centered within social movements that resist development and defend territory in relation to their Indigenous and Mestizo (mixed heritage) neighbors. Through various ethnographic field methods, I map the communities connected by waterways and water use and how the social relations tethered to local economies exemplify ongoing legacies of colonization and logics of anti-blackness.