A project commissioned by Africamericanos
Unlike the Afrodescendants of Guerrero and Veracruz, who were brought to Mexico as slave labor by Spanish colonists, the Mascogos arrived in Coahuila after escaping from slavery in the United States.
Also known as black Seminoles and led by John Horse, the Mascogos came to Mexico in the mid-nineteenth century, displaced by land seizures and fleeing slavery and racial discrimination. The government welcomed them, on the condition that they form patrols to defend the northern border from incursions by nomadic groups. In exchange, they received land, cattle, and Mexican citizenship. In late 1851, they settled at El Nacimiento de los Negros, adjacent to ancestral Kickapoo territory, in the municipality of Múzquiz, Coahuila, in northern Mexico.
Today about seventy families live in this community, running farms where they grow beans, corn, and wheat and raise cows and goats. In spite of mestizaje, some Mascogos still have the physical features of their ancestors. They are known for being excellent horsemen, and it is customary for them to learn to ride at a very young age, though they never give their horses names.
Each year the Mascogos celebrate Juneteenth (a contraction of the words ‘June’ and ‘nineteenth’) to commemorate the abolition of slavery in the state of Texas. On this day, everyone in the community wears traditional clothing to celebrate his or her roots, dancing and eating ancestral dishes.
Luján Agusti
―Portraits taken during the celebration of Juneteenth in El Nacimiento de los Negros, Coahuila, 2018.
In her work, Luján Agusti explores issues surrounding the construction of identity in relation to the territories and places we inhabit. She uses photography as her principal language, while also employing other disciplines to analyze her environment. In 2017 she received a fellowship from the International Women's Media Foundation and an Emerging Artist Scholarship from the Lucie Foundation. Her work has been published in National Geographic, The Washington Post, Lens (blog), and The British Journal of Photography. In 2018 she was selected for the 6x6 Global Talent Program of World Press Photo. She is the author of Un montón de ropa (A Bunch of Clothes), a privately published photobook that appeared in 2016. She belongs to the Agencia ZUR in Argentina and is a member of the collective Prime, a global initiative made up of documentary photographers, filmmakers, and visual artists.
I work with X-ray film to generate commentary that might transcend the mere technical aspects of the procedure. With the creation of situations and sets, an inner narrative is constructed that allows me to consider human feelings freed of their context ―the potentials and defects of the existential condition―, permitting me to deal with these subjects ironically, without resorting to artifice.
My photographic practice has been influenced by a definite interest in artistry that transcends photography’s use as a record or document of reality. Formal manipulation and craft techniques allude to a game of representations in which I examine my models through actual X-ray plates, dealing with clinical discourse as a form of art.
Yomer Montejo
A graduate of an arts and crafts school in Cuba, Yomer Montejo responded to a demand for public health workers and studied a medical specialization in 2007. He chose imageology, finding in it a material and formal support for his artistic experimentation. His first works were X-ray negatives projected onto light boxes. Starting from specific situations and settings, the artist constructs an internal narrative in order to reflect on the feelings, virtues, and defects of being. In 2010 Montejo received honorable mentions at the Salón de Arte Digital and at the 6th edition of the Salón Panorama 42. He was a finalist at the Salón de Arte Erótico 2008 in Havana. He is a member of the Asociación Hermanos Saíz, an independent organization that promotes artistic, literary, and cultural projects.
