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Latin American Publications!
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Venezuela’s Acting President Delcy Rodríguez Leads Meeting of Great Patriotic Pole
(orinocotribune.com)
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Every day, President Claudia Sheinbaum gives a morning presidential press conference and Mexico Solidarity Media posts English language summaries, translated by Mexico Solidarity’s Pedro Gellert Frank. Previous press conference summaries are available here.
National Security: The strategy is working and delivering historic results
President Claudia Sheinbaum reported that between September 2024 and December 2025, intentional homicides decreased by 40% nationwide, equivalent to 34 fewer homicides per day—the lowest level since 2016.
Violence on the decline: Territorial reduction and high-impact crimes
Although in 2025 seven states accounted for 50.5% of intentional homicides, there have been historic reductions in the states with the highest levels of violence: Guanajuato (-62%), Guerrero (-65%), State of Mexico (-54%), Baja California (-42%), Nuevo León (-72%), and Tabasco (-75%).
The daily average number of high-impact crimes decreased by 47% compared to 2018, with significant drops in femicides, extortions, kidnappings, violent robberies, and firearm-related crimes.
Addressing root causes: Security with social justice
The Strategy to Attend to Root Causes of Crime has intervened in 61 municipalities across 12 states since November 2024, with door-to-door outreach, peace fairs, community assemblies, recovery of public spaces, and peace committees. Of particular importance was the participation of Tijuana, Chiapas, Ciudad Juárez, Colima, and the State of Mexico.
Within this framework, the “Yes to Disarmament, Yes to Peace” gun exchange program secured more than 7,900 weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition, reducing risks and strengthening community security.
Well-being: Well-being Markets and Peace Days
The Well-being Market benefited 244,000 families in Guerrero, Oaxaca, and Michoacán. The Peace Days have involved 7,005 actions nationwide, with more than 2.1 million participants, nearly one million of them young people.
Extortion on the decline: 75% of calls did not materialize in incidents
From October 2024 to December 2025, key arrests were made, with 40,735 suspects detained, 21,357 weapons secured, 318 tons of drugs seized, and 1,887 labs dismantled. At the same time, the National Anti-Extortion Strategy strengthened prevention through the 089 hotline, achieving the arrest of 721 suspects in 24 states.
Interoceanic Train: Investigation, security, and compensations
The Mexican Government reiterated that the accident investigation follows international protocols, with guaranteed chain of custody. It urged the Federal Attorney General’s Office (FGR) to expedite comprehensive compensation for the victims, in accordance with the Victims’ Law.
Energy and sovereignty: Pemex and CFE strengthened
Pemex improved its rating in 2025 and produced 80% of the fuels consumed in the country, with support from the Treasury for debt management and payments to suppliers.
Sovereignty and cooperation: Decisions based on principles
President Sheinbaum reiterated that Mexico maintains international cooperation on security without subordination, always based on the principles of sovereignty, legality, and defense of the country’s territorial integrity. In that context, she clarified that the rescheduling of the Senate session on military exercises with the US responds solely to its legislative agenda and is not related to the events in Venezuela.
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People’s Mañanera January 8
January 8, 2026January 8, 2026
President Sheinbaum’s daily press conference, with comments on national security strategy, well-being markets, national anti-extortion strategy & energy sovereignty.
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Mexico & Venezuela: The Other Ties
January 8, 2026January 8, 2026
Gestures of genuine solidarity also involve getting to know a little more about those about whom we speak and opine ad nauseam.
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Mexican Food Dependency Deepens: Domestic Grains & Oilseeds Only Cover 44% of Consumption
January 8, 2026
National agriculture is overwhelmed by heavily subsidized US imports & squeezed by food monopolies, while beneficial state programs only extend to the poorest of producers.
The post People’s Mañanera January 8 appeared first on Mexico Solidarity Media.
From Mexico Solidarity Media via This RSS Feed.
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This article by Jaime Ortega originally appeared in the January 8, 2026 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper.
The bond between nations is not limited to formal exchanges between institutions. Rather, it takes on cultural, literary, political, and even culinary forms. The relationship between Mexico and Venezuela is no exception, and its history beyond the borders of individual states is only now beginning to be explored.
Not long ago, in his book Ningún revolucionario es extranjero (No Revolutionary Is a Foreigner), the researcher Sebastián Rivera Mira evoked the figure of Salvador de la Plaza, a Venezuelan militant who passed through Mexico on several occasions and who, at one time, founded, along with others, the Venezuelan Revolutionary Party, of anti-imperialist and Marxist inspiration, which designed and coordinated actions of opposition to the dictatorship of Juan Vicente Gómez.
The presence of other activists associated with the PRV was felt in efforts such as the Anti-Imperialist League of the Americas, whose publication adopted the Venezuelan name El Libertador, but also in the Hands Off Nicaragua initiative at the beginning of Sandino’s struggle.
Special mention should be made of the participation of Carlos Augusto León, a Venezuelan poet who actively participated in the Society of Friends of the USSR, which in the mid-1930s advocated for the Mexican Revolution to re-establish relations with the USSR and promoted various campaigns of solidarity, both symbolic and material, in the face of the global conflict. Augusto León’s poetic work was published, among others, by the Morelos publishing house of the SAURSS under the title Los pasos vivientes (The Living Steps). Also during those years, he was an active member of the Mexican section of the International Red Aid, notably participating in rallies honoring Julio Antonio Mella. Years later, with a dedication to the people of Guatemala and with quotes from Mao as an epigraph, his Verso ante el mural de La gloriosa victoria was published in La Voz de México (organ of the Communist Party of Mexico), and in 1957, Mexico would be the place of publication of his Yo canto a Lenin.
Along similar lines, another little-known exile with a brief stay was Miguel Otero Silva, an important leftist writer whose Canción de Otero Silva a García Lorca was published in El Machete (the legendary newspaper of Mexican communism). His prolific and relatively forgotten work (at least outside of Venezuela) includes a lecture entitled “Mexico and the Mexican Revolution: A Venezuelan Writer in the Soviet Union (1966),” a speech dedicated to Mariano Picón Salas (a friend of Alfonso Reyes and Venezuelan ambassador to Mexico), in which he outlines the course and importance of the Mexican Revolution, its popular leaders, and its main reforms, highlighting Cárdenas’s policies regarding oil.
Another figure about whom little is known regarding his time in Mexico is the important historian Germán Carrera Damas. An intellectual with a prolific body of work, he came from an educated family with significant ties to Venezuelan communism. His membership card for the Mexican Communist Party (PCM), dating from his time as a student at the National School of Economics, is preserved at the Center for Studies of the Workers & Socialist Movement (CEMOS). His master’s thesis in history was titled “Contribution to the Study of Interventionist Thought in 19th-Century Mexico.” Mexico was also the site of publication of his “The Renewal of Historical Studies: The Case of Venezuela.” After his stay in Mexico, Carrera Damas is considered to have sparked a true revolution in the discipline in his country.
Germán Carrera Damas’ early participation in the Communist movement has been replaced with something… else.
While the Cuban Revolution absorbed much of the ties that revolutionary or Marxist militants had previously maintained with Mexico, progressive figures found in our country a space to develop or disseminate their ideas. Thus, in the 1970s and 1980s, under the auspices of Alonso Aguilar Monteverde and the publishing house Nuestro Tiempo, several Venezuelan intellectuals visited Mexico (especially the Development Theory Seminar at the Institute of Economic Research) or had their work published there. This academic group actively participated in symposia on the theory of imperialism and underdevelopment. Figures such as Faustino Maza Zavala, Héctor Malave Mata, Armando Córdova, and José Agustín Silva Michelena were particularly productive. Books such as Venezuela, Growth Without Development and Venezuela, Domination and Dissent were published by Nuestro Tiempo in Mexico City. In the prologue to some of these books, Alonso Aguilar stated: “The study of the Venezuelan process reveals an understandable preoccupation with oil.”
Furthermore, Silva Michelena’s brother, the philosopher and poet Ludovico Silva, achieved publishing success when his books Theory and Practice of Ideology and especially Marx’s Literary Style were published by Mexican publishing houses. Silva is perhaps today the Latin American Marxist most frequently cited by the closed and provincial intellectual circles of the “global north.”
These glimpses barely hint at some of the paths of persistent, though often fragmented, connections. The life of communities shows that gestures of genuine solidarity also involve getting to know a little more about those about whom we speak and opine ad nauseam.
Jaime Ortega is the Director of Memoria, the Magazine of Militant Criticism, a researcher at UAM, and the author of La raíz nacional-popular: las izquierdas más allá de la transición.
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People’s Mañanera January 8
January 8, 2026January 8, 2026
President Sheinbaum’s daily press conference, with comments on national security strategy, well-being markets, national anti-extortion strategy & energy sovereignty.
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Mexico & Venezuela: The Other Ties
January 8, 2026January 8, 2026
Gestures of genuine solidarity also involve getting to know a little more about those about whom we speak and opine ad nauseam.
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Mexican Food Dependency Deepens: Domestic Grains & Oilseeds Only Cover 44% of Consumption
January 8, 2026
National agriculture is overwhelmed by heavily subsidized US imports & squeezed by food monopolies, while beneficial state programs only extend to the poorest of producers.
The post Mexico & Venezuela: The Other Ties appeared first on Mexico Solidarity Media.
From Mexico Solidarity Media via This RSS Feed.
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By Oliver Vargas – Jan 7, 2026
After years of economic sanctions, diplomatic isolation and open attempts at regime change, the United States has crossed a new line in its confrontation with Venezuela: the abduction of the country’s head of state. When combined with increasingly explicit statements from Washington about the need to “manage” Venezuela’s political future and its oil industry, this escalation exposes the underlying logic of U.S. policy: gloves-off resource imperialism.
For more than a decade, the U.S. approach toward the country has relied on economic strangulation and funding for internal destabilization attempts. Oil exports were blocked, access to international finance was restricted, and state assets abroad were frozen. Hundreds of millions of dollars were funneled to the right-wing opposition. All these measures used the rhetorical pretext of “democracy promotion” to cover Washington’s true interests.
However, this naked imperialism under Trump should not be seen as a new phase of U.S. foreign policy, but as a logical conclusion of Washington’s long-standing policy of resource imperialism. What has changed today is not intent, but openness. Trump has openly stated the U.S.’s true intentions and disregard for international law.
20 years of U.S. intervention in VenezuelaTo understand why Venezuela and its oil reserves have faced such a ferocious onslaught, it is necessary to revisit the legacy of former President of Venezuela Hugo Chavez and the transformation he initiated in the energy sector after taking office in 1999.
At the center of Chavez’s project was the recovery of state control over Venezuela’s oil industry. Energy revenues were redirected toward domestic development rather than external extraction. This heralded a golden era for the country: Between 1999 and 2012, Venezuela’s GDP more than doubled in nominal terms, while GDP per capita increased by over 50 percent during the high-growth years of the 2000s. From 2004 to 2008 alone, the economy expanded at an average annual rate of around 8 percent – one of the fastest growth rates in the region at the time.
This growth underpinned major social advances. Overall poverty declined from 42 percent in 1999 to about 26 percent by 2011, while extreme poverty fell from over 20 percent to below 7 percent. Inequality also declined sharply, with Venezuela registering one of the lowest Gini coefficients (a widely used measure of inequality, typically income or wealth distribution ) in Latin America by the end of the decade.
These were not merely domestic achievements. They challenged a dominant narrative that state-led development and resource nationalization were incompatible with growth. Venezuela demonstrated that reclaiming control over strategic resources could finance poverty reduction, expand public services and strengthen national sovereignty.
A crude oil tanker sails along the shore of Lake Maracaibo, in Zulia state, Venezuela, January 6, 2026. Photo: CFP.
Energy diplomacy and the threat of a good exampleWhat most alarmed Washington was not only Venezuela’s internal policies, but their regional and international implications. Chavez actively used energy diplomacy to build alliances and reduce dependency on U.S.-controlled markets.
Through Petrocaribe, launched in 2005, Venezuela supplied oil to Caribbean and Central American countries on preferential terms, allowing deferred payments and long-term financing at low interest rates. For many small island economies, Petrocaribe provided critical energy security and fiscal breathing room. In return, it fostered political cooperation and regional solidarity, weakening U.S. leverage in what Washington had long considered its strategic backyard.
From pressure to escalationThe response was systematic. As Venezuela deepened state control over its energy sector and pursued an independent foreign policy, sanctions expanded year after year. Financial isolation, trade restrictions and secondary sanctions were imposed with the explicit goal of forcing regime change.
These measures failed to trigger social unrest deep enough to topple the government, nor did they produce the internal fractures – particularly within the armed forces – that Washington had anticipated. Instead, they inflicted massive economic damage on the population while the Venezuelan state endured. Rather than reassessing the strategy, Washington intensified it. Today, we see the final escalation of this years-long process only after every other measure had failed.
Gloves-off imperialismWhat is unfolding in Venezuela is not a break with past policy, but the natural escalation of a strategy pursued over many years. Sanctions, financial isolation and political pressure were always intended to weaken the Venezuelan state and force concessions. Military action now represents the next step. The key difference is that under Trump, Washington has abandoned the moralizing language of democracy promotion.
This bluntness brings clarity. By discarding appeals to international norms, Washington has made its intentions explicit: access to resources, backed by coercive power and colonial expansion. For those on the receiving end, this removes ambiguity. Sovereignty is no longer contested rhetorically, but physically.
The current confrontation is therefore not simply about governance. It is about whether a state that once used its natural resources to reduce poverty and build regional alliances will be permitted to retain sovereign control over its development path. If military pressure succeeds, it will reinforce a dangerous precedent: That prolonged unilateral sanctions, followed by violent force, can yield results.
However, if Venezuela withstands this pressure, the implications will extend well beyond its borders. It would demonstrate that sanctions and military threats do not automatically translate into compliance and that sovereignty, while under strain, is not yet obsolete.
Escalation and continuityThe consequences extend beyond Venezuela, but also precede the current moment. Sanctions and war have been disrupting oil markets for years – first through restrictions on Venezuelan exports, then through sanctions on Russia and Iran before that. The U.S. launched invasions in Iraq and Libya to seize oil, just as it hopes to do now in Venezuela.
The attack on Caracas, therefore, is absolutely an expression of resource imperialism, but it has also been Washington’s long-standing state policy. What defines the current moment is the honesty and transparency regarding their intentions. The virtue-signaling facade has gone, and the international community must prepare accordingly.
(If you want to contribute and have specific expertise, please contact us at opinions@cgtn.com. Follow@thouse_opinions on X, formerly Twitter, to discover the latest commentaries in the CGTN Opinion Section.)
(CGTN)
From Orinoco Tribune – News and opinion pieces about Venezuela and beyond via This RSS Feed.
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Mexican Food Dependency Deepens: Domestic Grains & Oilseeds Only Cover 44% of Consumption
(mexicosolidarity.com)
This article by María del Pilar Martínez originally appeared in the December 29, 2025 edition of El Economista.
As of the end of November 2025, the Mexican grain and oilseed market continues to undermine food self-sufficiency by producing only 44.1% of what it consumes; thus, Mexico consolidates itself as the second largest importer of grains and oilseeds worldwide, in addition to being the main global buyer of white and yellow corn .
This is according to the analysis by the Agricultural Markets Consulting Group (GCMA), which adds that although the total harvested area grew by 11.1%, national production only increased by 2.0%, “reflecting a drop in productivity mainly associated with climatic factors.”
This situation is exacerbated by a 3% increase in import volume and a nearly 78% drop in exports, reducing the self-sufficiency index from the previously recorded 46.8%. “In terms of profitability, Mexican producers face additional pressure because domestic production rose 3.6% while imported grain fell 0.5%,” the document states.
Product performance reveals deep crises, as in the case of corn, where production fell 3.9% annualized despite an increase in the harvested area, increasing external dependence with imports that reach 24.5 million tons.
Wheat production has suffered a historic 34% collapse due to drought, leaving self-sufficiency at just 23%. Meanwhile, sorghum self-sufficiency has fallen to 81.5% due to a surge in external purchases driven by low international prices.
In contrast, beans stand out as a positive outlier with an 18.8% increase in production, allowing self-sufficiency to recover to 86%. Rice , although its production improved, maintains a critical self-sufficiency of only 20.3%, affected by an 18% drop in national prices that is impacting the sector’s profitability.
The Agricultural Markets Consulting Group (GCMA) warns that the agricultural sector remains the Achilles’ heel of food security due to public policies that focus on small producers, who represent 84% of the units but generate only 26% of the volume. This strategy excludes 16% of producers who supply 74% of the market and who currently face high costs, lack of financing, and absence of insurance. “Without a comprehensive policy that increases the productivity of all sectors, Mexico will continue to deepen its external dependence.”
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Mexican Food Dependency Deepens: Domestic Grains & Oilseeds Only Cover 44% of Consumption
January 8, 2026
National agriculture is overwhelmed by heavily subsidized US imports & squeezed by food monopolies, while beneficial state programs only extend to the poorest of producers.
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Monte de Piedad Strike: 3 Months In Without Resolution
January 8, 2026
This article by Jessica Xantomila originally appeared in the January 7, 2026 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper. The National Union of Workers of Nacional Monte de Piedad and the company met again yesterday at the Federal Conciliation Center, but without progress in ending the strike that broke out on October…
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Mexico’s Afro-Descendant Communities Fight Racism & Inequality
January 8, 2026January 8, 2026
Discrimination is compounded by a structural vulnerability exposing Afro-Descendants to systematic violence perpetrated by various powerful groups associated with capital.
The post Mexican Food Dependency Deepens: Domestic Grains & Oilseeds Only Cover 44% of Consumption appeared first on Mexico Solidarity Media.
From Mexico Solidarity Media via This RSS Feed.
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This article by Jessica Xantomila originally appeared in the January 7, 2026 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper.
The National Union of Workers of Nacional Monte de Piedad and the company met again yesterday at the Federal Conciliation Center, but without progress in ending the strike that broke out on October 1st.
Arturo Zayún González, general secretary of the union organization, stated that “we have not reached any conclusion,” so a new meeting was agreed for next Thursday.
“We filed a lawsuit for violations of the contract and they (the company) want to negotiate other things that are not a factor… such as the consolidation of positions and new multifunctional and multiskilled positions,” he explained in a brief interview.
He indicated that the meeting was attended by administrative directors of Nacional Monte de Piedad and federal officials.
More than three months after the strike affecting 300 pawnshop branches, Zayún reminded users “that they have the alternative of filing a complaint with Profeco (Federal Consumer Protection Agency) so that their pawn contract is respected and their items are secured.”
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Monte de Piedad Strike: 3 Months In Without Resolution
January 8, 2026
This article by Jessica Xantomila originally appeared in the January 7, 2026 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper. The National Union of Workers of Nacional Monte de Piedad and the company met again yesterday at the Federal Conciliation Center, but without progress in ending the strike that broke out on October…
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Mexico’s Afro-Descendant Communities Fight Racism & Inequality
January 8, 2026January 8, 2026
Discrimination is compounded by a structural vulnerability exposing Afro-Descendants to systematic violence perpetrated by various powerful groups associated with capital.
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Let’s Talk About Migration: 2025, A Year Under Siege
January 7, 2026January 7, 2026
Trump’s danger lies not only in the harm he inflicts on migrants in the US, but also in the possibility that his xenophobic model will be replicated in other countries.
The post Monte de Piedad Strike: 3 Months In Without Resolution appeared first on Mexico Solidarity Media.
From Mexico Solidarity Media via This RSS Feed.
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This article by Darylh Rodriguez originally appeared in the January 4, 2026 edition of Revista Contralínea.
The inequalities faced by Afro-Mexican peoples – in economic, political, educational, cultural and health matters – have deep roots in slavery, invisibility and social exclusion; which, to this day, have marked their development.
Added to this is the logic of so-called “multicultural neoliberalism,” which increased the gaps of inequality by capitalizing on their culture as a commodity and reducing their recognition to a merely symbolic level, without guaranteeing effective rights in education, health, political representation or access to justice, says J Jesús María Serno, PhD in Latin American studies from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and specialist in ethnicities, culture and nation in Latin America.
Poet Aleida Violeta Vázquez
“Yes. There is something that we Afro-Mexican people face collectively, and that is invisibility. It is the invisibility of our contributions to the construction of this country,” warns poet Aleida Violeta Vázquez, activist and member of the Colectiva de Mujeres Afromexicanas en Movimiento (MUAFRO).
In an interview with this publication, the writer points out that the invisibility faced by Afro-Mexican people for generations is the primary trigger for their inequality, stigmatization, and racism. She explains that this invisibility has not only denied the existence of their bodies but has also erased the contribution of their worldviews to the construction of the Mexican state.
“There is a stigma that relegates us to places where we Black women are ‘sexually available all the time’; where ‘we endure more during childbirth than a white, mixed-race, or even Indigenous person’; where ‘Black women and men endure more work.’ All these stereotypes impact our ability to exercise our rights. […] This leads to us being subjected to constant verbal, physical, emotional, mental, and psychological violence in the streets. There is also a violent, very violent, bombardment of our bodies, because these stereotypes also stem from this invisibility, which is linked to an idea of foreignness that places us in disadvantaged positions, where we are easily violated and murdered,” says Aleida Violeta Vázquez.
Among the main problems identified by Afro-Mexican communities are discrimination based on their appearance, lack of employment, a scarcity of social programs, and little respect for their traditions, customs, and practices, according to the National Survey on Discrimination (ENADIS), conducted in 2022 by the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI). The results of this survey show that, despite some legislative and institutional progress, Afro-Mexican people still face prejudice from society.
Data from the National Council to Prevent Discrimination (CONAPRED) indicates that almost a quarter of the Mexican population said they were not willing to rent an apartment with an Afro-descendant person, while one in four people would like little or not at all for someone from the Afro community to hold public office such as the Presidency of the Republic.
“The fight against racism has always been a political and ideological stance for the Black movement, because I think those of us who have experienced it the most are Afro-Mexicans, Black people, or people of African descent. And it has a lot to do with our skin color. That’s why our skin is always being challenged, always subjected to many stereotypes because this country is a racist country,” explains legislator Rosa María Castro Salinas, Secretary of the Commission on Indigenous and Afro-Mexican Peoples in the Chamber of Deputies, in an interview with Contralínea.
The racism experienced by Afro-Mexicans is not limited to social interactions; it permeates institutions and is reproduced in public spaces. The harm caused by racism goes far beyond that. According to the National Survey on Discrimination (ENADIS), conducted in 2022, more than half of Afro-Mexicans reported feeling discriminated against when visiting government offices, courts, or tribunals. The same perception was repeated when applying for jobs, seeking medical care, or entering schools and businesses.
According to writer Aleida Violeta Vázquez, the violence, inequality, and racism suffered by the Afro-Mexican community have historically been “territorialized”; that is, the territories where the Black or Afro-Mexican people live have always been among the poorest and most marginalized areas of the country.
“The Costa Chica region of Guerrero or Oaxaca are territories that are disconnected from the centrality of a city; that is, there is no road infrastructure, no electricity infrastructure, no access to communication because there is a very serious digital divide in these territories of ours,” the activist points out.
Costa Chica, Guerrero Photo: Kau Sirenio
With this, the poet indicates that structural inequalities impact every aspect of the daily lives of Afro-descendant people, even attempting to strip them of their humanity. “We see how this racism, but also how these structural inequalities, permeate everything. They affect our entire existence, our entire way of life, our daily lives in our territories.”
This reality is reflected in official indicators. According to statistics from the now-defunct National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy (CONEVAL), the areas with the highest concentration of poverty coincide with the territories where the country’s most vulnerable groups converge (children, adolescents, indigenous and Afro-Mexican peoples, agricultural day laborers, and rural communities).
Indigenous and Afro-Mexican peoples, the Poorest
In Mexico, Indigenous and Afro-Mexican communities are the poorest population groups. According to INEGI, in 2024, 29.6 percent of the Mexican population—equivalent to 38.5 million people—lived in multidimensional poverty. However, inequality was even more pronounced among Indigenous and Afro-Mexican communities.
According to the now-defunct autonomous agency, 32.2 percent of the Afro-Mexican population and 66.3 percent of the Indigenous population reported living in poverty. These figures demonstrate that both communities continue to suffer the devastating effects of a system marked by marginalization and racial, economic, and territorial exclusion.
In particular, the Afro-Mexican population, estimated at more than 3.1 million people, still faces structural disadvantages in the territories where they live, marked by poverty and exclusion.
Added to the inequalities faced by Afro-Mexicans is the logic of multicultural neoliberalism, which capitalizes on their culture as a commodity, reducing their recognition to a merely symbolic level, without guaranteeing effective rights.
This structural order, explains ethnic specialist J. Jesús María Serna, originates in a process called “Afro-Indianness”, a concept used to understand the historical relationship between Afro-descendant and indigenous peoples, which resulted in cultural, social and symbolic exchanges, and which placed them in shared conditions of marginalization.
According to the doctor in Latin American studies, this link produced a particular type of mestizaje –different from that commonly recognized in official discourse– that has been ignored by colonizing history, and whose consequences are visible today in territorial inequality, precarity and the scarcity of policies.
In 2024, Chiapas, Guerrero, and Oaxaca—two of the five states with the highest concentration of Afro-descendant populations—reached the highest percentages of multidimensional poverty levels, at 66, 58.1, and 51.6 percent, respectively. Similarly, these states registered the highest percentages of their population living in extreme poverty, at 27.1, 21.3, and 16.3 percent, according to data from INEGI (the Mexican National Institute of Statistics and Geography).
Photo: MUAFRO
For the Colectiva de Mujeres Afromexicanas en Movimiento (MUAFRO), studying the regions with the largest Afro-Mexican populations not only allows for the geolocation of these communities but also helps to understand the territorialization of inequality. The organization points out that, historically, these areas have been the scene of structural racism, discrimination, and institutional invisibility, processes that have left a deep mark manifested in gaps in access to rights, infrastructure, and public services.
To demonstrate how inequality is territorialized, the collective conducted an analysis using data from the INEGI (National Institute of Statistics and Geography) in 2021 – which included variables related to access to basic rights, such as drinking water, as well as drainage and energy services – and found that access to piped water strongly reflects the structural gap faced by Afro-Mexican communities.
This is because, while at the national level 77.6 percent of homes have piped water, in municipalities where 40 percent of the population is Afro-Mexican, the number of households with access to this service drops to 24.1 percent.
The situation is even more critical in municipalities with over 70 percent Afro-descendant population, where only 13.2 percent of homes have access to this basic service. These figures demonstrate that inequality is reflected in infrastructure, quality of life, and the persistent institutional neglect by neoliberal governments.
The situation becomes even more significant when considering the geographical distribution of the Afro-descendant population. More than half, or 53.2 percent, are concentrated in six states: the State of Mexico with 19.2 percent; Guerrero, 11 percent; Nuevo León, 6.6 percent; Chiapas, 5.8 percent; Jalisco, 5.7 percent; and Oaxaca, with 4.9 percent. These states, for the most part, exhibit significant gaps in access to basic rights and services. This is according to the latest update from INEGI, presented on August 28, 2024.
Faced with this situation, Afro-Mexican communities are demanding historical justice. “What does the Black community need? Everything. We need everything,” says activist Rosa María Hernández Fitta, president of the Afro-Veracruz Council and advisor to the National Institute of Indigenous Peoples (INPI), in an interview with Contralínea.
The national advisor points out that the lack of public policies has perpetuated the precariousness of basic services, such as education, infrastructure, and access to cultural programs, and has also left them in economic hardship that has yet to be remedied. Therefore, she suggests developing programs tailored to each region inhabited by Black communities.
“When people ask us what the Black community needs, I say: everything, because we haven’t had absolutely anything. We need everything. We need access to programs to preserve our culture, services, education. For example, we need the history of our communities to be told in textbooks, so we are no longer made invisible. The Ministry of Education itself could tell the story of our forced migration, the migration of our ancestors, so the truth is told,” says Rosa María Hernández Fitta.
Photo: MUAFRO
Black and Indigenous Communities, Victims of the Most Violence
The reality of Afro-descendant communities lies in their diasporic formation; that is, they do not share a homogeneous identity, but rather an experience resulting from the displacement, dispossession, and redefinition of their members. This trajectory could explain the multiple forms of violence they face in the country.
This, coupled with the historical invisibility suffered by Afro-Mexican people, has facilitated the systematic violation of their rights and freedoms. This situation has increased their vulnerability, perpetuated their exclusion, and fueled discriminatory practices that hinder their access to opportunities, basic services, and justice, warns the National Human Rights Commission.
Today, the Afro-Mexican community continues to be the target of racist expressions where imported stereotypes and prejudices intertwine. This discrimination is compounded by a structural vulnerability that exposes them to systematic violence perpetrated by various powerful groups associated with capital, ranging from transnational corporations with extractive projects to organized crime networks.
Dr. J. Jesús María Serno, a specialist in Latin American studies, tells this weekly magazine that in the regions where Afro-descendant peoples settled, there persist “especially complex and delicate” scenarios, marked by dispossession and territorial disputes by political and de facto powers.
Photo: Carlos Alberto Carbajal
“The areas where Afro-descendants live have been very complex in their way of life. Historically, there has been a situation of violence, which is not abstract violence, but violence against these peoples that comes from different power groups; obviously, these are diverse and range from large transnational corporations, capital in general, and businesspeople who have a lot of very predatory policies that go against the very life of the communities,” the expert explains.
Studies by international organizations – such as the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) – indicate that territorialized violence is one of the factors that triggers phenomena such as forced internal displacement, a process that is the result of high-impact victimizing events, such as armed conflicts, generalized violence, the presence of organized crime, territorial disputes or even projects that involve dispossession; which forces entire communities to abandon their places of origin.
And although internal displacement is not a new phenomenon in Mexico, its configuration has changed in recent decades; that is, from political and religious conflicts and land dispossession it has shifted to an increasing association with high-impact violence, linked to drug trafficking and organized crime, researchers María Cristina Díaz Pérez and Raúl Romo Viramontes point out in their book La violencia como causa de desplazamiento interno forzado: Aproximaciones a su análisis en México.
“Internal displacement caused by violence does not occur in the abstract, but rather from concrete events such as extortion, kidnapping, ‘protection’ payments, identity theft, assaults, the disappearance of family members, links created with criminality –voluntarily or involuntarily–, among many other situations,” the document by Díaz and Romo points out.
Both researchers indicate that forced internal displacement also manifests itself as a result of competition for the exploitation of natural resources, disasters, emergencies of anthropogenic origin such as industrial pollution, or situations arising from criminal organizations fighting for specific sites.
For Naty Poob Picky Jiménez Vázquez, the congresswoman who chairs the Commission on Indigenous and Afro-Mexican Peoples, the 1994 armed uprising of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) in Chiapas marked a turning point in the history of modern internal displacement in Mexico. “The counterinsurgency deployed, characterized by encirclement operations and a massive military presence in communities, acted as a powerful secondary trigger, forcing thousands of people to flee to escape state and paramilitary violence. Thus, the phenomenon became more complex, shifting from being a direct result of the conflict to also being a consequence of the security strategies implemented, establishing a worrying precedent of multiple victimization,” she states in her proposed General Law for the Prevention, Care, and Comprehensive Reparation of Persons in Situations of Internal Forced Displacement.
Photo: Xavi Silva
In 2024 alone, at least 28,900 people were forced to flee their homes in 72 internal displacement events recorded in 13 states across the country. Chiapas, Sinaloa, Michoacán, Chihuahua, Guerrero, Sonora, and Oaxaca accounted for the majority of these cases, according to the report Travesías forzadas: Desplazamiento interno en México presented on June 26 by the Human Rights Program (PDH) of the Ibero-American University in collaboration with UNHCR.
In this context, researcher J. Jesús María Serno explains that, for decades, political powers have joined the ranks of oppressive groups that have violated the rights of populations living in these rural areas, largely due to the natural resources they possess. One example of this is mining, which generates severe socio-environmental impacts such as water, soil, and air pollution; public health problems; loss of biodiversity; and, at the social level, internal conflicts, land and resource dispossession, as well as widespread poverty and violence.
“The story of the most vulnerable is a tremendous one, and it has been experienced by the indigenous population, but also by Afro-Mexican and Afro-coastal communities. These are very delicate problems, but they exist […] And there are a whole series of situations that are still unresolved and will not be resolved because they are very complex, very difficult to address or tackle,” the researcher tells Contralínea.
Photo: Denisse Hernández
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