The Cultural Jewel of Mexico: The Editor's Introductory Note

The origin of this special issue of the journal is a chance encounter, which relates to a larger African Diaspora project I set for Callaloo soon after I moved to Texas during the autumn of 2000. While I was traveling in Xalapa, Mexico, in May 2001, Jorge Brash came to my hotel, Meson del Alferez, and requested that I meet in the lobby with him and José Homero, another poet from Veracruz. I had never visited in Xalapa before, so I was a bit startled when the two poets told me that they had heard I was "in town" and might be interested in talking with writers and other artists from the region. Because I knew no one in Xalapa, I was unsure how they had come to learn of my arrival. I soon discovered that what they really wanted to learn was whether I had an interest in publishing contemporary Mexican poets. They found out I was, for I had come to Mexico not only to meet and talk with citizens in Afromestizo pueblos, but to meet intellectuals, writers and other artists in the State of Veracruz who where doing work pertaining to people of African descent.

As our readers may know, Veracruz is both a state and the name of a city within the state. As a state, it forms a long and slender strip (south of the State of Tamaulipas and north of Oaxaca, Chiapas and Tabasco) down the central and most eastern front of the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, northwest of the Yucatan Peninsula. The capitol of Veracruz is Xalapa, a 4,000-foot high city of about 370,000 people in the foothills of Macuiltepetl, an inactive volcano. The gulf coast City of Veracruz, one of the most important ports in Mexico, is, however, the most populous in the state. Undoubtedly the most historic entry point into the country, this port city where Hernan Cortez began his conquest in 1519 has over 400,000 inhabitants. Veracruz is—in terms of music, dance, cuisine, and other cultural imperatives—more like the Caribbean and Brazil than the rest of Mexico. One might even be inclined to say that over the centuries almost all the world has met there. After all, it long served as the Spanish entry point into the country and later became the geographic site to which many enslaved Africans were introduced to Mexico. This multicultural, multiethnic, and multiracial city, like the rest of the State of Veracruz, is the cultural jewel of Mexico.

What Jorge Brash and José Homero did not know on that May afternoon is that the central purpose of my visit to Mexico was to research the life, history and culture of the Afromestizo people of the State of Veracruz for future issues of Callaloo. So when the two poets offered me some of their poems for publication in Callaloo, they did more than they, or I, knew at the time. They occasioned this special number of the journal, which is not an attempt to represent the range of poetry or other literary genres currently produced in the State of Veracruz. This number of Callaloo is merely a sampling of the contemporary poetry, prose fiction and visual art of the Mexican state. However, beginning with the 2004 winter issue focusing on the Afromestizo community Coyolillo, we will devote, for the next three or more years, one bilingual issue each year to people of African descent in Mexico whose ancestors were also victims of Trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Because Jorge Brash seemed to have been the spokesman for a larger delegation at the hotel that day, I asked him not only to send me their poems but also to collect and send poems by other poets from Veracruz for publication consideration in a special section of a future issue of Callaloo.

After I received a number of poems, I talked about this project with Luis Arturo Ramos, a Mexican fiction...