I’m packin’ on, I’m gettin’ ready to go. My mother is gone, and she was ready to go…
The songs that the ancestors sang at significant moments, such as I’m packin’ on at a funeral, they are one of the most valuable treasures in the culture of the Mascogos in northern Mexico.
Only with their voices, without any instrument, accompanied only by clapping, they united to remember their origins in the slave plantations of the southern United States.
“They cried and fainted, not because they were carrying a dead person to bury them, but because of what was behind them, because of those they had to leave behind. They knew where their dead would rest, but those they left behind did not know where they were,” Laura Herrera, a descendant of the Mascogos and activist for the preservation of their culture, explains to BBC Mundo.
In contrast to what happens today, men and women from the United States traveled to the southwest of their country and crossed the border with Mexico to find freedom in a small territory in the state of Coahuila.
There they founded El Nacimiento de los Negros, a town that today has about 60 families and where Juneteenth is celebrated every year, the holiday that commemorates the end of slavery in the United States every June 19.
The small place, which has struggled for decades to progress, was only registered in 2019 as one of the black communities in Mexico, a country that for almost its entire existence omitted Afro-Mexican cultural registration and recognition.
Today, as a more mestizo population than in its origins, it also faces what Herrera sees as a slow forgetting of its Mascogo culture, such as the songs.
“Many do not know their black heritage,” he laments.
“We are black not because of our skin tone, but because of our roots, our traditions, our customs, our tradition, our legacy.”
Fleeing to freedom
Slavery in British colonies such as Alabama, South Carolina and Georgia led many blacks to flee to Spanish Florida, where they could be free alongside local tribes, such as the Seminoles.
But when the peninsula passed into the hands of the British (1763) and then to the US after its independence (1766), slavery came back to haunt them.
Blacks and Seminoles, who had mixed over time, were forced to migrate to western reservations.
“They went to Oklahoma, but it didn’t go well,” explains anthropologist Karla Rivera, who has studied the culture of the Mascogos. “There they found the Kikapu tribe, who are originally from the great lakes.”
Led by tribal chiefs such as John Horse and Wild Cat, black Seminoles – as they became known – and Kikapu knew that there was another land where they would not live under the threat of slavery.
The answer was a few hundred kilometers to the south.
“They crossed all of Texas to what they called the ‘river of freedom,’” which marks the border of that Texas state – recently annexed by the US – with Mexico.
“It is paradoxical that today it is the opposite,” says Rivera in reference to how migration today finds the Rio Grande as a border with the United States.
Those who ventured to cross Texas, another slave state, had to make a dangerous journey on foot, secretly, to avoid being captured by slavers.
They migrated little by little through the “underground train,” as they called a route that took them to safety.
By the 1850s, about 700 black Seminoles and Kikapu had arrived.
“The name Mascogo, according to one theory, comes from crossing from Texas to Coahuila. They asked them ‘What do you speak?’, because it was Creole English that they did not understand. And they said ‘Muscogee’ which was how the language was known. In Mexico they were then called mascogos.”
The births
Mascogos and Kikapúes gained freedom in Mexico and reached an agreement with the Mexican government to obtain land in exchange for repelling cattle raids and robberies by the Comanche and Lipan Indians on the border.
They settled in a territory near the town of Múzquiz, near the Sabinas River, but each to their own: the Kikapúes were in El Nacimiento, while the Mascogos in El Nacimiento de los Negros.
But while the Kikapúes had prosperity, it was more difficult for the Mascogos to escape from precariousness.
Some returned to the U.S. when the Seminoles gained recognition as a tribe. Others went to fight in that country’s Civil War. And others died of smallpox between the 1850s and 1860s.
A few dozen who stayed tried to get by by raising livestock and planting corn, squash, vegetables, sugar cane and other crops.
“My grandmother said that my great-grandmother had been offered to return to the United States for the economic benefits, but she said no, that the money was poisoned. Possibly the word they wanted to use was cursed. But she said poisoned,” says Herrera.
“Because they had to flee and, like anyone, you wouldn’t want to return to your family where they mistreated you. I believe that they did the right thing, not returning to where they were mistreated, separated and so many barbaric things.”
Mom Gechu
The great aunt that Herrera remembers with great affection is Gertrudis Vásquez Valdez, one of the 20th century matriarchs of this community.
Mama Guechu, as she was affectionately called, was born in 1921 and was one of the links between those Mascogos who arrived in Coahuila and the new generations who learned from their traditions. She died in 2005.
But thanks to matriarchs like her, in El Nacimiento de los Negros, tetapún (a sweet potato bread), soske (a corn-based drink), or the fried breador fried bread.
Tetapún and soske in particular continue to be prepared in Oklahoma and Florida, as well as in Braketsville, Texas, where a good part of the Moscogos who decided to return to the United States are located.
On festivities such as Juneteenth, Christmas or New Year’s, those ancestral songs that have been preserved are heard: The mornin’ start right, Don’t go, you stay here by my side, Stay in the field, for a while, I’m packin’ on either My last time.
Mama Guechu, Herrera remembers, was a strong, tenacious woman, with a happy spirit despite the deprivation that existed in the population.
“She always walked around in rubber houndstooth flip-flops, and if they broke she would tie a safety net (hook) to the bottom. He always limped because sometimes he would pass by the thorns and they would sting his skin and he would continue walking,” says Herrera.
“We went to sell empanadas and tamales to the kikapúes, who sometimes did not pay with money but with dried venison, onions or something,” explains the granddaughter.
The neighbors of the Kikapú people had much faster prosperity, partly due to their livestock and agricultural activities, but also due to the resources sent by their members in the United States.
Herrera explains that Black Birth has also improved, but only in recent years.
“It has prospered a lot. Before we did not have electricity, there were no vehicles, we had to look for home remedies because we did not leave the town, we cooked in a wood stove, we slept on the ground, which was the coolest thing there was, or we harvested wild things.”
The economic and cultural integration throughout this time with the rest of the state of Coahuila has not been free of situations of racism.
The first generations changed their identities, which is why today the surname Vásquez exists instead of Factor, for example.
Women also straightened their hair to look more Mexican.
Herrera explains that she and her children have also heard comments of discrimination for having black or darker skin than others in the region.
But she has seen it from another point of view.
“It’s not an offense. Being black is a very beautiful thing. Even on the contrary, they have tried to make me look down on me for not being so black,” she explains. “In the same family you can have coffee with milk, dark coffee or pure milk.”
On the other hand, the change of names and surnames has also made it difficult for some in their attempts to return to the United States, since the authorities of that country ask them for proof of relationship with Americans that they have not been able to obtain.
pet memory
The passage of time and integration, however, has also meant that the culture and customs of the Mascogos have experienced a gradual fading.
The original language of the Mascogos and Seminoles has remained in the past.
In the town, some remember the songs in English, but Spanish is what predominates, mainly since public schools were opened in the community in the second half of the 20th century.
The dishes of the ancestors have also been largely replaced by those consumed in northern Mexico.
Herrera opened a restaurant whose menu still preserves some Mascogos recipes.
“We try to conserve, preserve and do everything possible to teach children, family and others,” he explains.
But he also perceives a lack of interest on the part of some to follow their traditions, beyond big celebrations like Juneteenth.
The knowledge of herbalism, with which many diseases were treated, is just being written on paper between Herrera and the anthropologist Karla Rivera.
As in other towns in which knowledge was never written down, but rather transmitted orally, it becomes necessary for new generations to be interested not only in learning, but in asking about their past.
Herrera herself says that she regrets, “it hurts me,” she says, “not to have asked more questions” to Mama Gechu and other matriarchs of the community.
Rivera, for his part, has worked to rescue the ancient songs that give identity to the mascogos.
With researchers like Jordi Barrera, they obtained recordings and looked for community members to unravel Creole English to adapt the songs to current English and also translate them into Spanish.
“We started trying to understand the songs with some recordings from years ago,” Rivera explains with emotion.
When she was a child, Herrera remembers that they could sing them, but without really knowing what they meant. “And now it’s changed, you know what they say,” she explains.
Preserving them in this way was very necessary so that new generations can know them.
This may be a “last time” to learn more about the origins, as one of the songs that arouses the most feeling in The Birth of the Blacks says.
This may be my last time, it may be my last time, I don’t know.
Keep reading:
* On Juneteenth, Biden calls on African Americans to vote in l the presidential elections
* Two people die and several are injured after shooting during Juneteenth celebration in Texas
* Why Juneteenth is important, the ‘new federal holiday’ for the emancipation of slaves
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