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Film Review: La Negrada
Directed by Jorge Pérez Solano, performances by Magdalena Soriano, Juana Mariche Domínguez, and Felipe Neri Acevedo Corcuera, Tirisia Cine, 2018. 104 mins.
In preparation for the 2020 Census, the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Instituto Nacional de Estadística, Geografía e Informática, or INEGI) conducted the Intercensal Survey (2015), and for the first time ever, included an afrodescendiente (Afro-descendant) category, a watershed moment for afromexicanos (Afro-Mexicans).1 Prior to 2015, Afro-Mexicans lacked constitutional recognition. The Mexican government quite literally did not count them in census data. Afro-Mexicans's invisibility dates back to the 1917 Constitution, which erased African heritage from a nascent Mexican identity.2 A postrevolutionary Mexican government furthered the erasure of Afro-Mexicans by unifying the country's heterogeneous population under the umbrella of mestizaje, a term that celebrates the racial mixing of indigenous and European ancestries.3 In 2013, after nearly fifteen years of campaigning, two organizations, Huella Negra (Black Footprints) and México Negro (Black Mexico), successfully challenged Mexico's antiBlack, mestizo national identity.4 Such efforts proved historic when AfroMexicans were afforded the ability to self-identity in a census survey, thus officially acknowledging their existence.
Even with the Mexican government finally recognizing them, AfroMexicans remained largely invisible. Nowhere is their existence more marginalized than in Mexican cinema, where stereotypical representations frame Afro-Mexicans and, by extension, Blackness, as foreign to the Mexican popular imaginary. Producer and director Jorge Pérez Solano sought to correct the cinematic neglect of Afro-Mexicans. His movie La Negrada (2018) marked the Mexican film industry's first-ever feature-length movie comprised of an all-Black Latinx cast. The studio-driven fiction film offers a fascinating portrayal of an Afro-Mexican coastal community living in Costa Chica, an area in the Mexican state of Oaxaca. The story chronicles the romantic entanglement of Magdalena (Magdalena Soriano) and Juana (Juana Mariche Domínguez), two estranged friends who share the same lover, Neri (Felipe Neri Acevedo Corcuera).5 Tears in the marital dynamic appear after Juana's hospital stay reveals a terminal diagnosis. Magdalena hopes for a future of just Neri and herself, but he is unwilling to forgo his polygamist view on relationships. Ultimately, Juana's...