Many Afrodescendants were part of the insurgent movement, particularly in the south of Mexico and especially in the regions of what is today the State of Guerrero. Some of them had been militiamen and knew about war strategies, others, like Vicente Guerrero, were mule drivers and had traveled across paths difficult to access. They knew the people and the communities along the roads of the Mixtec region and the adjoining lands in the coasts of Guerrero and Oaxaca. Vicente Guerrero was born in Tixtla, in the mountains of the state now named after him. He belonged to a family of Afrodescendant mule drivers and gunsmiths. He was the most popular leader of the insurgent movement after the dead of Morelos. He kept the fight going through guerrilla warfare during the hardest years of the struggle between 1815 and 1821. Later, Guerrero finally signed an agreement with Iturbide to consummate the independence. He was the second president of Mexico in 1829 and during his presidency once again the abolition of slavery was decreed. He had to quit the position because of inner political pressures and years later he was captured and executed in Cuilapan, Oaxaca.

The Mascogos are an Afromexican group whose ancestors arrived to national territory in mid-19^th century. Their communities are located in El Nacimiento and in Múzquiz, Coahuila. At the end of the 17^th century and in early 18^th century, many slaves working in the rice and cotton plantations in the Anglo American territories of South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama, took refuge in Florida which was back then part of the Spanish Empire and was promising them their freedom. There they lived along runaway Indigenous people named Seminoles and that is why the Mascogos are considered to have originated from the exchange and cohabitation of these two groups. Seminole leaders started a relationship with the Mexican government who had consummated its independence and had abolished slavery. Together with the Kickapoos, Seminoles and Mascogos arrived to Mexico in 1850; they received lands and shelter in exchange to setting up defensive positions along the border. Mascogos are famous in their regions because of their ability as riders which they display in a parade celebrating how they earned their territory.

Starting the 19^th century and in spite of the ideas concerning human rights in several parts of the world, racism as an ideology started to gain significant ground. Mestizaje or the cultural and biological exchange between different social groups became in Mexico the strategy to achieve national unity. When this ideology, created after 19^thcentury Mexican liberalism, was made public, the historical evidence of the participation and contributions of Africans and Afrodescendants, their place in the demographics and their role in the establishment of the country were omitted. An example of this can be found at the end of the 18^thentury, when Francisco Javier Clavijero first wrote on the history of Mexico. He chose only to magnify the importance of the Spanish and Indigenous populations in the creation of the Mexican identity and the Nation-State. Parallel to such practices, racism with particular characteristics for the region, developed in the territory. On the one hand, the historical and contemporary participation of Afrodescendants in Mexico was denied and silenced, on the other, the indigenous past was praised, undervaluing their current problems and contributions.

Throughout the 19^th and for most of the 20^th century, the idea that there were superior and inferior “races” was promoted. Racism refers to attitudes, opinions, beliefs, prejudices or stereotypes that turn into social practices and behaviors (discrimination, persecution, segregation) or institutionally exclusive actions. All this is based on incorrect ideas that there are superior and inferior social groups. Said categories are “natural” and they are expressed through skin color, facial features or hair type and in cultural practices like eating habits, religious beliefs, clothing, dancing, music and family relationships.

Through multiple recent studies done by geneticists, biologists, anthropologists, sociologists and other scholars on the subject, the concept of different races has been fully refuted; human beings constitute only one species. Physical features, skin and eye color, type of hair, among other characteristics, represent barely 0.01% of gene variation between individuals or population groups. Besides, said variations are not related with any particular attribute or capability like intelligence, performance in certain areas of knowledge or the development of specific cultural values. To summarize, human beings are practically the same as a species but we are diverse in social, cultural and artistic expressions.