However, before reviewing our history together, I need to say unequivocally that the U.S. seizure of more than half of Mexico’s territory in 1848 netted Washington more than 80 percent of Mexico’s fertile land and was a criminal act. And that if Mexico today still included California and Texas, she would possess more oil than Saudi Arabia and have sufficient economic infrastructure to employ all of her people.

When Mexican people say that “the border crossed us, we did not cross the border,” they speak the truth, and more Black people – most of whom are not strangers to oppression, exploitation, domination and exclusion – need to appreciate that.

It has been said that for most of the 19th century, Mexican immigrants were more highly regarded by African Americans than any other immigrant group. What may account for this, at least in part, is the enormous if not pivotal role undertaken by Black fighters in the war to secure Mexican independence from Spain and abolish slavery. Unfortunately, many of us repeat the falsehoods of our adversaries and have forgotten our special relationship with Mexican and Indigenous peoples.

It is time that our memories be restored and that the nay Sayers and nativist Negroes among us either put up or shut up. What follows is the little known history of Mexico serving as a refuge for fugitive slaves and a provider of job opportunities for Blacks emigrating from the U.S. to Mexico.

The Native Youth Movement, including the rap group War Club, was with the POCC, including LA POCC member Jazz, Chairman Fred Hampton Jr. and POCC artist Jocelyn backstage at the “We the People” festival in Watts on April 8. The event was a huge success in bringing young Black and Brown people together. Photo: JR Mexico as a haven for fugitive slaves

From the very beginning of his Texas colonization scheme, a determined and deceitful Stephen Austin sought to have Mexican officials acquiesce to the settlement of slave-owning whites into the territory. It was generally acknowledged that the people and government of Mexico abhorred slavery and were determined to prohibit its practice within the Mexican republic.

Beginning in 1822, at least 20,000 Anglos, many with their slave property, settled into Texas. Jared Groce, one of the first of Stephen Austin’s Texas settlers that year, arrived with 90 enslaved Africans.

The Mexican Federal Law of July 13, 1824, clearly favored and promoted the emancipation of slaves. Mexico had even stipulated that it was prepared to compensate North American owners of fugitive slaves. Determined instead to have things their way, Anglos began to press for an extradition treaty which would require Mexico to return fugitive slaves.

From 1825 until the end of the Civil War in 1865, Mexican authorities continuously thwarted attempts by slave-holding Texas settlers to conclude fugitive slave extradition treaties between the two parties. During this period of extremely tense relations between the two governments, Mexico consistently repudiated and forbade the institution of slavery in its territory, while U.S. officials and Texas slave-owners continuously sought ways to circumvent Mexican law. The Mexican authorities thwarted repeated attempts by slave-holding Texas settlers to conclude fugitive slave extradition treaties between the two parties.

In 1826 the Committee of Foreign Relations of the Mexican Chamber of Deputies refused to compromise on the issue of fugitive slaves and defended the right of enslaved Africans to liberate themselves. Mexican government officials cited “the inalienable right which the Author of nature has conceded to him (meaning enslaved persons).” Congress member Erasmo Seguin from Texas commented that the Congress was “resolved to decree the perpetual extinction in the Republic of commerce and traffic in slaves and that their introduction into our territory should not be permitted under any pretext”.

Again in October 1828, the Mexican Senate rejected 14 articles of a newly-proposed treaty and harshly criticized Article 33, stating “it would be most extraordinary that in a treaty between two free republics slavery should be encouraged by obliging ours to deliver up fugitive slaves to their merciless and barbarous masters of North America”.

Reporting on the growing number of Anglo settlers in Texas, Mexican Gen. Teran reported, “Most of them have slaves, and these slaves are beginning to learn the favorable intent of Mexican law to their unfortunate condition and are becoming restless under their yokes …” Gen. Teran went on to describe the cruelty meted out by masters to restless slaves: “They extract their teeth, set on the dogs to tear them in pieces, the most lenient being he who but flogs his slaves until they are flayed.”

On Sept. 15, 1829, AfroMexican President Vicente Guerrero signed a decree banning slavery in the Mexican Republic. Yielding to appeals from panicked settlers and Mexican collaborators who saw Mexico benefiting economically from the Anglo presence, Guerrero exempted Texas from the prohibition on the introduction of slaves into the republic, on Dec. 2. Several months later, the Mexican government severely restricted Anglo immigration and banned the introduction of slaves into the republic.

Undeterred, the Anglos succeeded in negotiating a new treaty with Mexico in 1831, which included Article 34, which called for pursuit and reclamation of fugitive slaves. After considerable wrangling between the Mexican Chamber of Deputies and Senate, Article 34 was removed from the treaty. Also, by 1831 it became apparent through debate within the Mexican Senate that the government’s welcoming of fugitive slaves was not completely altruistic.

Some Mexican officials, fearful of U.S. military intervention, had begun to see it as wise to encourage the development of runaway slave colonies along the Northern border as a way to lessen the threat posed by the U.S. As historian Rosalie Schwartz put it, many Mexican officials “reasoned these fugitives, choosing between liberty under the Mexican government and bondage in the United States, would fight to protect their Mexican freedom more vigorously than any mercenaries.” As the interests of Mexican officials and U.S. abolitionists coincided during the early 1830s, a modest number of former slaves established themselves in Texas and fared well during the period.

In 1836, after the fall of the Alamo and its slave-owning or pro-slavery leaders, such as William Travis, Jim Bowie and Davy Crockett, Mexican forces were defeated and an independent Texas was eventually annexed by the United States. However, before the expulsion of Mexican forces from Texas, Brig. Gen. Jose Urrea evicted scores of illegally-settled plantation owners, liberated slaves and, in many instances, granted them on-the-spot titles to the land they had worked.

Oddly enough, many Black people call for “40 acres and a mule” – a reference to Union Gen. Sherman’s Special Field Order 15 and Gen. Howard’s Circular 13, which made some land available to former slaves. But what one never hears are references to Mexican Gen. Jose Urrea and the land titles that he and his men granted to former Texas slaves following the defeat of the Alamo, a generation before the Civil War.

Even after the loss of Texas, Mexican officials refused to formally acknowledge Texas independence on the grounds that it “would be equivalent to the sanction and recognition of slavery.” After Texas independence, the slave population mushroomed, and the number of runaways across the South Texas-North Mexico border increased. In 1842, Mexico’s Constitutional Congress reasserted the nation’s commitment to fugitive slaves. In 1847, 38,753 slaves and 102,961 whites were listed in the first official Texas census. In 1850, in a new treaty accord with the United States, Mexico again refused to provide for the return of fugitive slaves

The slave institution in Texas was continuously undermined by defiant Tejanos (Mexicans in Texas), who took great risks and invested enormous resources toward facilitating the escape of enslaved Africans. The Texas to Mexico routes to freedom constituted major unacknowledged extensions of the “Underground Railroad.” Tejanos were variously accused of “tampering with slave property,” “consorting with Blacks” and stirring up among the slave population “a spirit of insubordination.”

Plantation owners in Central Texas adopted various resolutions aimed at preventing Mexicans from aiding the slave population. Whites in Guadalupe County prohibited Mexican “peons” from entering the county and anyone from conducting business or interacting with enslaved persons without authorization from the owners.

Bexar County whites suggested that “Mexican strangers entering from San Antonio register at the mayor’s office and give an account of themselves and their business.” Delegates to a convention in Gonzales resolved that “counties should organize vigilance committees to prosecute persons tampering with slaves” and that all citizens and slaveholders were to endeavor to prevent Mexicans from communicating with Blacks.

Whites in Austin decreed that “all transient Mexicans should be warned to leave within 10 days, that all remaining should be forcibly expelled unless their good character and good behavior were substantiated by responsible American citizens” and that “Mexicans should no longer be employed and their presence in the area should be discouraged.” In Matagorda County, all Mexicans were driven out under the bogus claim that they were wandering, indigent sub-humans who “have no fixed domicile but hang around the plantations, taking the likeliest negro girls for wives … they often steal horses, and these girls too, and endeavor to run them to Mexico”.

By the year 1855, the estimates were that as many as 4,000 to 5,000 formerly enslaved Africans had escaped to Mexico. Slaveholders became so alarmed at this trend that they requested and received approximately one fifth of the standing U.S. Army which was deployed along the Texas-Mexico border in a vain effort to stem the flow of runaways.

Defiant Mexicans stood their ground, refused to return runaways, and continued supporting slave uprisings and providing assistance to escaping slaves. In the words of Felix Haywood, a Texas slave, whose experience is recalled in “The Slave Narratives of Texas, “Sometimes someone would come along and try to get us to run up north and be free. We used to laugh at that. There was no reason to run up north. All we had to do was walk, but walk south, and we’d be free as soon as we crossed the Rio Grande”.

What a difference a border made

1857 was a year whose profound irony made it one of the most interesting. 1857 was the year that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Dred Scott, an enslaved African who had sued for his freedom, on the grounds that his owner had forfeited any claim to him after taking him into a free state. Ironically, 1857 was the same year that the Mexican Congress adopted Article 13, declaring that an enslaved person was free the moment he set foot on Mexican soil.

Mexico as a provider of job opportunities for African Americans

During the 1890s, hundreds of Black migrants fed up with slave-like conditions and segregation, left Alabama for Mexico and established 10 large colonies. Shortly thereafter, during the period of the Mexican Revolution, large numbers of Black people migrated from New Orleans to Tampico, Mexico, as the oil industry prospered.

These Africans in Mexico established branches of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association. One of the Black oil workers who came to Tampico stated, “There is no race prejudice; everyone is treated according to his abilities.” During the same period, Black heavyweight champion Jack Johnson asserted that Mexico was “willing not only to give us the privileges of Mexican citizenship, but was also willing to champion our cause.”

Juan Uribe, a major Mexican official, visiting Los Angeles in 1919, was quoted as saying, “My only regret is that it is not physically possible to immediately transport several million African Americans to my beloved Mexico, where the north yields her riches as nowhere else and where people are not disturbed by artificial standards of race or color.”

Similarly, African American immigrant Theodore Troy said, “I am going to a land where freedom and opportunity beckon me as well as every other man, woman and child of dark skin. In this land, there are no Jim Crow laws to fetter me; I am not denied opportunity because of the color of my skin, and wonderful undeveloped resources of a country smiled upon by God beckon my genius on to their development.”

A Black colony which included 50 families developed fruit orchards and engaged in cattle raising. It established itself in Baja, California, in the Santa Clara and Vallecitos Valleys situated between Ensenada and Tecate, approximately 30 miles south of San Diego and lasted into the 1960s.

Not to be overlooked is the enormous success of the Negro Baseball Leagues in Mexico during the 1930s and 1940s. Black ball players together with 400-500 family members seeking relief from racism in the U.S. and segregated institutions were hosted in Mexico by generally respectful competitors and admiring fans. One competitor in particular, Ray Dandridge, played for 18 years in Mexico before Jackie Robinson gained admission into U.S. major league baseball.

Also, from the 1930s to the 1960s, major Mexican muralists, such as Diego Rivera, David Siqueiros and Jose Clemente Orozco invited prominent African American artists such as Hale Woodruff, John Biggers, Elizabeth Catlett and Charles White to the Mexican Art School, where they developed an art style which helped them to connect images more effectively to ethnic and class struggle.

Of course there are many more historical intersections where Mexican and African people cooperated with each other. A few examples were the solidarity between the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)/ Black Panther Party and Brown Berets, SNCC and the Alianza Federal de Pueblos Libres and El Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Atzlan (MEChA) and the Black Student Union (BSU).

Mack Lyons, a Black member of the United Farmworkers Union’s National Executive, negotiated its contract with Coca Cola, which owns Minutemaid and sizeable Florida orange groves. In Los Angeles during the ’90s, Black and Brown students recognizing common history and mutual interests formed the African and Latino Youth Summit (ALYS).

Admittedly, Vicente Fox is no Vicente Guerrero. The Mexico of today is profoundly different from the refuge that once welcomed fugitive slaves or land of opportunity that embraced African American job-seekers; yet its beautiful history of support for African Americans in need of allies cannot be erased.

It might prove useful to see the relationship between Black and Brown people as similar to the bond between a man and woman. It is beautiful most of the time, but there are moments when it is tested and may become strained. When this happens, one or both must give more and work to increase or renew trust.

Pass this material on to others. The Black or Brown reader of this piece should now know that the best of our history together as Black and Brown people speaks to the necessity of collaborating during the worst of times. A wise people are a grateful people and never content themselves with recalling and celebrating their legendary alliance with an important neighbor. Instead, they press forward, fully aware that mutually supportive relationships are still possible and necessary.

Ron Wilkins is a former member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and is presently a professor in the Department of Africana Studies at California State University, Dominguez Hills. Special acknowledgement is extended to historians Rosalie Schwartz, Gerald Horne, Rodolfo Acuna and Omar Farouk, whose earlier investigative efforts in the field of African-Mexican collaboration contributed to making this work possible.

President Barack Obama and some congressional Democrats are pushing for any immigration-reform plan to include a provision to allow gay Americans to sponsor their immigrant partners for legal residency in the United States. That is a right currently enjoyed only by married heterosexual couples.

But Republican leaders on immigration reform say it’s already going to be an uphill battle to persuade their GOP colleagues to support a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million illegal immigrants living in the United States. Including a provision for gay partners would make reform legislation an even tougher sell.

“I’m telling you now, if you load this (immigration-reform legislation) up with social issues and things that are controversial, it will endanger the issue,” said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., expressed similar concerns during an interview with the online site BuzzFeed.

“I think if that issue (gay rights) becomes a central issue in the debate, it’s going to become harder to get it done because there will be strong feelings on both sides,” Rubio said.

Senate vs. Obama proposals
McCain and Rubio are part of a group of eight senators — four Republicans and four Democrats — who recently unveiled a bipartisan blueprint for comprehensive immigration reform.

Their efforts have sparked optimism among immigration-rights advocates that legislation might finally be passed to deal with the divisive issue.

The senators’ bipartisan blueprint does not include any provision for gay citizens to sponsor their immigrant partners for legal status.

However, a plan announced by Obama late last month does include the language, which supporters estimate would affect 30,000 to 40,000 gay Americans and their partners.

This week, a group of 16 House members — 14 Democrats and two moderate Republicans from the Northeast — introduced the “Uniting American Families Act” to allow gay Americans to sponsor their “permanent partners” to become legal U.S. residents — and eventually citizens.

“Permanent partners” are described as two adults who intend to make a lifelong commitment to one another.

“Today, thousands of committed same-sex couples are needlessly suffering because of unequal treatment under our immigration laws, and this is an outrage,” said Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., who led the effort to introduce the same-sex partners’ bill in the House. “Any serious legislative proposal for comprehensive immigration reform absolutely must include gay and lesbian couples and their families.”

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he intends to introduce identical legislation in that chamber soon with more than 25 Democratic co-sponsors and the support of Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine.

“More than two dozen countries recognize same-sex couples for immigration purposes,” Collins said. “This important civil-rights legislation would help prevent committed, loving families from being forced to choose between leaving their family or leaving their country.”

Principles vs. politics
Frank Sharry, a longtime immigrant-rights advocate and executive director of America’s Voice, a national organization committed to comprehensive immigration reform, acknowledged that the same-sex partner issue will spark controversy, but he said he does not believe it will derail reform.

“I’m sure it will be the subject of a huge amendment fight when an immigration-reform bill comes to the Senate floor,” said Sharry, who supports the same-sex partner provision. “But I think it will ultimately survive. I don’t think it will be a deal-breaker.”

Sharry said Republicans are eager to court Latinos, who are the fastest-growing ethnic group in America.

Latino voters overwhelmingly supported Obama and Democratic congressional candidates in last fall’s election, in part because of Republican opposition to any immigration reform that would offer illegal immigrants a chance to earn their way to legal status and citizenship.

“Republicans are trying to save themselves from certain electoral doom by reaching out to Latino voters,” Sharry said. “That’s a much bigger concern for them than a same-sex partner provision. It may bring some howls of protest, but I’m optimistic it won’t bring down the reform process.”

Darnell: I think that it is fair to say that you and I are what some might call “church boys.” I know that some Christian folks tend to place “God” and “gay” in the same sentence when they are referencing “sin” and “hell,” but faith and spirituality are important to a lot of LGBTQ folks. The fact that the two of us are connected to faith traditions shouldn’t be a surprise, then. I thought about this while we were preparing for the Mississippi LGBTQI2-S 2012 INFusion Conference a few weeks ago. We both had our perceptions of how conference attendees — folks who live within the Bible Belt — would respond to conversations on LGBTQ issues. I thought that it would be a challenge, and they proved me wrong. Interestingly, before we left our hotel room, we were listening to gospel music, and I was struck by the fact that we non-church-going, “progressive,” gay black men, who have often critiqued Christians who espouse violent theologies, were still moved by gospel music and the communal worship that we experienced in churches. That fact alone tells me that people of faith don’t all think and behave the same. Do you agree? Where are you now in terms of your own faith journey?

Wade: Yes, being in Mississippi made me realize how much I missed the church, especially given that I’m such a fan of the Mississippi Mass Choir. And though I do not participate in organized religion, my relationship with God is personal. I am neither proud nor ashamed of that fact, but it is where I am in my journey right now. Religion, or the church, was something that was a huge part of my adolescent experience. Part of me believes I “did my time.” I went to church three to five times per week until I left for college, yet I felt as if I’d be judged for living in my truth by people who really hadn’t or wouldn’t take the time to get to know all of me. So I decided to stop attending. I wanted to protect my family from having to answer questions about my sexuality behind my back, and I didn’t feel that my sexual orientation was anyone’s business, to be frank. I wanted to go to church to enjoy and enhance my relationship with God and not think about whether anyone was whispering about the “gay ex-football player.” Thankfully, I’ve gotten to a place where I understand that my relationship with God is just that: my relationship. How has your relationship with God and religion changed over time?

Darnell: So much has changed for me, too. I am a lot healthier, spiritually and psychologically, because of it. I was a Bible-touting, scripture-quoting minister-in-training. I preached and sang in choirs and would minister to folks at bus stops, in prisons, etc. Yes, I was that guy. And for all the love (and disdain) that I preached, for all the prayers that I lifted up for myself and others, for all the moments that I would seek spiritual counsel and “deliverance” from a sexual and affective connection to other men, I was deeply depressed, suicidal and self-hating. I was a mess, quite honestly. And my relationships with others and my God reflected the mess that I was. Then, one day, I looked in the mirror and truly saw myself. I saw a person who was worthy of living. I asked myself, “If I can love me, and if my mom can love me as I truly am, why, then, is it impossible for this all-loving God to love me?” That same day I decided that I would rather go to “hell” for living in my truth than make it to “heaven” on the wings of a lie. That was a big moment for me. I was raised in a fundamentalist tradition, and I really believed that hell would be my lot. I don’t believe in hell anymore, but at the time my whole theological system was uprooted and destroyed. It was the best thing that could have ever happened to me at that moment.

Wade: What I find most interesting and sad is that the church is supposed to be a place where people can go to receive comfort and be part of a community in times of need, yet you and I both decided that the church wasn’t a place for comfort or community when we needed it the most. I often think back to my childhood days. I remember like it was yesterday those moments when folks in my church would say that “God is love” and that “love is God’s greatest gift.” However, I discovered that love was not a “gift” that some received from some members of my church. I heard people gossiping about perceived gay members of my church. In retrospect, I wish that I had stayed and remembered that the only person I should have been worried about was the one who truly loves me unconditionally, and that is God. But I’m in a better place now and understand that “don’t ask, don’t tell” policies exist within many religious settings. Clearly, the military doesn’t own a patent on that idea. How do you perceive your relationship with God now, even though you and I both do not attend church regularly?

Darnell: I want to be clear and note that there isn’t a monolithic “church,” or “black church,” for that matter. There are many churches, and some ground their beliefs in homophobic and even sexist theologies, and some resist “-isms” altogether. I have attended churches where folks gave confirming and loud “amens” when derogatory words like “sissy” were used, and others where congregants publicly celebrated queer folks. I should also mention that there are some progressive queer folks who might consider themselves post-religious or post-Christian who think of spiritual or religious folks as somehow less rational or senseless because they are members of faith communities. That thinking is just as problematic as homophobic theologies. So whether some churches dismiss folks because they are queer and some queers dismiss folk because they are religious, both are wrong. As for me, I have done away with a “god” that some others created for me, and I refuse to give thought to theologies that kill rather than heal my spirit.

Wade: Preach! I’m with you, but there’s a part of me that misses going to church, and as soon as football season ends (Mom, don’t kill me!), I’m going to search for a church home that welcomes me — all of me. As I get older I desire to have an intimate relationship with God, and I want to be a member of a church. There were many times that I would sit and listen to a song or a wonderful sermon and the Spirit was palpable. I miss that. Being in Mississippi and having conversations with mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers who are church-going folks really excited my spirit and in some ways renewed my faith in the human spirit and the idea that things are changing outside and inside many churches. I want to be a part of that change. I want to have conversations with pastors and congregants about sexuality, not just homosexuality, and help create spaces where other people who feel like me can have a space to engage in conversations about how the church can be there for them and not alienate them.

Darnell: Indeed, Wade. Many LGBTQ people desire spiritual communities, but many of us end up dispossessed because of others’ refusal to accept us “as we are” within our communities. Thankfully, there are faith leaders (like Bishop Yvette Flunder, founder of the City of Refuge Church in San Francisco and Presiding Bishop of The Fellowship; Rev. Cedric Harmon, who is an ordained pastor affiliated with the National Baptist and Missionary Baptist Churches and co-director of Many Voices; Rev. Dr. Dennis W. Wiley and his wife, Rev. Dr. Christine Y. Wiley, who are co-pastors of the Covenant Baptist United Church of Christ in Washington, D.C.; and writer/speaker/theologian Rev. Irene Monroe, among many, many others across the country and world) who are facilitating the creation of affirming worship communities. As my friend Rev. Janyce Jackson, co-pastor of the LGBTQ-affirming Liberation in Truth Unity Fellowship Church in Newark, noted when asked where the black church is in the larger LGBTQ struggle, “we are the black church!” And she was right.

Follow Darnell L. Moore on Twitter: www.twitter.com/moore_darnell

Exit polls have a lot to say about the role LGBT issues played in the election, and on how President Obama’s support for marriage equality might have resonated with the electorate.

Lesbian, gay and bisexual voters sided heavily with Obama, for example, helping to propel him to a commanding win. Exit polls conducted for The New York Times and other media outlets indicated that 5% of voters were gay, lesbian or bisexual. (Voters weren’t asked whether they are transgender.) Of those, 76% voted for Obama. While that number is high, it’s also a six-percentage-point increase over the 2008 election for the president.

Where marriage equality was on the ballot, exit polls offer insight into whether it helped or hurt the president. The Associated Press reports that exit polls in Maryland, where voters approved legalizing same-sex marriage, show those who sided with equality broke strongly for Obama, while those opposed joined Romney. It was Obama and marriage equality that prevailed.

The AP reports that the president’s standing among black voters was strong in the Maryland exit poll, with nine in 10 on his side, and they seemed to vote for Obama even when disagreeing with him on marriage equality. The Maryland exit poll found black voters evenly divided on that question.

Looking nationally, Latino voters actually were found in exit polls reported by ABC News to be more supportive of marriage equality than the general population.

As expected, younger voters in Maryland lined up behind marriage equality, with the AP finding seven in 10 under the age of 29 in favor. But even among middle-aged voters from 30 to 44, about 60% backed marriage equality. It wasn’t until the over-45 crowd that opposition began to creep in. Almost exactly the same age breakdown was found in exit polls in Maine.

The issue’s resonance with women was clear in exit polling. Nearly two thirds of women with children supported same-sex marriage in Maryland. Women in Maine favored it. And in Washington, where voters also approved a measure to legalize same-sex marriage, a majority of married women supported it.

The issue resonated strongly with the president’s base. Exit polling reported by the AP in Washington found that eight in 10 Democrats and a majority of independents supported the marriage law. The same support from the base was found in Maine’s exit poll.

It wasn’t a winning issue in Washington among married men or among Republicans or among those who go to church every week. Still, the coalition of supporters was enough to not only elect Obama, but also to pass marriage equality in Washington, Maine, and Maryland.