Local Color: Reckoning with Blackness in the Port City of VeracruzA free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. The Caribbean port city of Veracruz is many things. It is where the Spanish first settled and last left the colony that would go on to become Mexico. It is a destination boasting the “happiest Carnival in the world,” nightly live music, and public dancing. It is also where Blackness is an integral and celebrated part of local culture and history, but not of the individual self. In Local Color, anthropologist Karma F. Frierson follows Veracruzanos as they reckon with the Afro-Caribbean roots of their distinctive history, traditions, and culture. As residents learn to be more jarocho, or more local to Veracruz, Frierson examines how people both internalize and externalize the centrality of Blackness in their regional identity. Frierson provocatively asks readers to consider a manifestation of Mexican Blackness unconcerned with self-identification as Black in favor of the active pursuit and cultivation of a collective and regionalized Blackness. |
Contents
Veracruz and Its Jarocho | 30 |
Tenacious Roots | 47 |
Mother and Child | 72 |
Day and Night | 94 |
A Hand to Hold | 117 |
The Jarocho and the AfroMexican | 137 |
Notes | 153 |
Bibliography | 171 |
Other editions - View all
Local Color: Reckoning with Blackness in the Port City of Veracruz Karma F. Frierson Limited preview - 2025 |
Local Color: Reckoning with Blackness in the Port City of Veracruz Karma F. Frierson No preview available - 2025 |
Common terms and phrases
academic African descent Afro Afro-Caribbean Afro-Caribbean Festival Afro-Cuban Afro-descendant Afro-Mexican Afrocaribeño anthropologist archive argues association audience ballet folklórico Black ancestry Black blood Black identity Blackness in Mexico Caribbean Carnival census century chapter choreography Chuchumbé city of Veracruz city’s colonial CONACULTA contemporary Cosmic Race Cuban dance dancers danzón danzoneros Despite Ethnicity ethnographic everyday fandango focuses García genre Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrán happiness Huaca identify Indigenous IVEC jaranero jarocho identity jarocho publics Latin America learned lived locals mestizaje mestizo Mexican Blackness Mono Blanco multiculturalism musicians narrative negro ness Nico one’s Pablo past Peregrino performance person Pigmentocracies playing Plazuela political popular culture population port city practice present pringa public spaces question racial regional revitalization rhythm Rinaudo scene scholars social son jarocho son music song sotavento Stuart Hall tarima term third root discourse tion Toña la Negra tourists tradition University Press Veracruzanos workshop Xalapa zócalo