(Sergio Peñaloza, unpublished presentation, 2016, Kingston, Jamaica). ${ }^{1}$
Blacks who openly embrace their blackness are not readily embraced into the political system, since Mexican politics has for the most part been concerned with power and maintaining the status quo. African-Mexicans have not benefited from any significant representation in the political landscape. The very few members of their community who have participated in representational politics have not been enthusiastic or loyal spokespersons for their communities or their urgent needs. For instance, in 1999 the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (Institutional Revolutionary Party) garnered the support of many African-Mexicans in Guerrero. However, its leader Cisneros was soon recognized as being more interested in promoting indigenous causes than those of the African Mexican communities. What was even more egregious to blacks was that he made no public acknowledgement of his own black heritage (Ramsay, 2016, p. 15).  
In 2017, it is true to say that Afro-Mexicans continue to be denied a place in the official definitions of Mexican identity and nation. The foundations for this denial  
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[^0]:    1 Original text: ' [...] aunque existen programas gubernamentales para dar respuesta a estas necesidades de vivienda no resuelven el problema por tener vicios burocráticos, políticos y económicos.'  
were laid in the 1925 essay by José Vasconcelos Calderón, which forcefully informed post-revolutionary Mexico's definition of the nation, claiming that as a distinct ethnic group, the black group had been totally diluted and no longer existed. Vasconcelos's position fortified the 1910 decision to cease including African-Mexicans in the national census. Interestingly, this situation persisted until 2015, when a voters' survey, designed to measure claims that blacks existed in Mexico, yielded the following results:
[O]f the 32 states that make up the Mexican republic, 7 states have a population of people of African descent of $1.5 \%$ to $6.5 \%, 19$ states