Their ancestors fled U.S. slavery for Mexico. Now they're looking north again.

[dalton99a]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/their-ancestors-fled-us-slavery-for-mexico-now-theyre-looking-north-again/2019/03/15/6c64a14c-45cf-11e9-94ab-d2dda3c0df52_story.html

Their ancestors fled U.S. slavery for Mexico. Now they’re looking north again.
By Kevin Sieff
March 15


Juana Vazquez, a Mascogo, is leaving her home in Mexico to work on a ranch in Texas. Mascogos are the descendants of slaves who fled to northern Mexico. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)

Their ancestors were African Americans who escaped from the United States to Mexico in the 19th century, fleeing the slave trade for a desert village at the base of the Sierra Madre mountains. They were called the Mascogos, roughly 60 black families who spoke and prayed in English as they hid from the white men who wanted to put them back in shackles.

That was six generations ago. Since then, their English vocabulary has dissipated, replaced by the Spanish of northern Mexico. Droughts destroyed their farms. Drug cartels have inched closer to their village, whose name translates literally as “Birth of the Blacks.”

Now members of this community of 300 are heading back to the United States. It’s another vector in a history of migration, sometimes voluntary, sometimes forced, from slave ships across the Atlantic to the cross-border scramble for 21st-century jobs.

At a time of unprecedented debate over immigration, and the current surge in border crossings, the history of the Mascogos reflects the long view on human migration, the way a community can be pushed and pulled across borders over centuries, eventually returning to the place from which they fled.

[Kali]

1. I have been traveling Northern Mexico for more than 20 years and I did not know about these people

thanks for posting! Mexico is so much more diverse than we know.

[SleeplessinSoCal]

2. I saw a man fitting this description walking today. He looked like he stepped out of a painting.

Dark skin with native American features. May not be this group, but I wondered who he was.

[appalachiablue]

3. Very interesting, didn't know about these folks.

K & R