In October 2019 I was working on a story about migrant tent communities in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, along the Texas border. Most of the camps’ residents were escaping cartel violence and seeking asylum in the United States, but they were being forced to wait in Mexico under a Trump-era policy called “metering.” Almost all the asylum seekers came from three states: Zacatecas, Michoacán, and Guerrero. A small group of them stood out: Afro-Mexicans from Guerrero.
People of sub-Saharan African descent have lived in what is today Mexico since the early days of Spanish colonization. Prior to the start of the Mexican War of Independence in 1810, it’s estimated that two hundred thousand enslaved Africans were brought to the country. Others arrived of their own volition, escaping slavery in the U.S.
