Mexico’s First Liberated City Commemorates Its Founding
Subject
Mexico; City of Yanga; Enslaved Africans; Gaspar Yanga
Description
The City of Yanga was founded after a group of enslaved Africans, led by Gaspar Yanga, rebelled against colonial rule.
Mexico has spent the year 2021 celebrating its bicentennial: it has been 200 years since the nation won its War of Independence from Spain. About two hundred years before Mexico’s independence, in 1609, the city known today as Yanga, located in the state of Veracruz, won an important battle against the Spanish crown, paving their way to freedom and becoming the first self-liberated and independent town in the Americas.
Yanga is commemorating its history with receipts: it now has digitized and certified copies of the city’s founding documents––paperwork originally received from the Spanish monarchy in 1618, now on display on the ground floor of Yanga’s city hall. To celebrate, Apolinar Crivelli Díaz, the current mayor of Yanga, recently held a ceremony with Leticia López Landero––the mayor of the neighboring city of Córdoba––where they showed off copies of Yanga’s founding papers. These copies of Yanga’s founding documents had been held for years in the archives department in Córdoba, a city initially established as a military base specifically because it was close enough to Yanga to monitor the Black population there.
Creator
Source
https://daily.jstor.org/mexicos-yanga-commenorates-founding/
Publisher
daily.jstor.org
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