#BlackColonizers | Blackdom | #TheAfrōFrontier
“...these are idiosyncratic expressions, and the idiosyncrasies of an emerging middle-class might seem unimportant if they exist only in specific moments and spaces apart from the more dominant bourgeois realities of repression, firmness of identity, the exploitation of others, and competition.”
Apache Land fell victim to colonization and disease. By 1900, a Southern Confederate-styled movement gained traction in the Mexico-U.S. Borderlands. American Reconstruction shaped a racialization process that materialized in the form of militarization of frontier spaces, and medicalization of Indigenous peoples. Opportunity for Black Colonization was born out of voluntary and involuntary participation in the mayhem. Colonization operates on a continuum.
Black Military personnel often seized the time in moments of chaos and found opportunity to lead liberation/colonization movements. Across time and space, colonizers compensated people of African descent like Juan Garrido, who gained land from the Mexican government in the 1520s. Juan was a tool of colonization and military service was his opportunity.
Chaos and mayhem at the turn of the 19th Century presented Black Loyalists with options. In some cases, Military service, on behalf of the British, helped, people under the conditions of Blackness, (Black people) gain land sovereignty to the detriment of Indigenous Africans. Freemasonry, an adjacent set of institutions, had no immunity to opportunistic Black sovereignty seekers. After aiding Revolutionary War efforts, Prince Hall employed freedom to charter a new Freemasonry conducive to the illumination of Black people.
By 1900, colonization left Mexico's northern frontier a contested space. Resilience of the Indigenismo{/a/x) stalled New Mexico’s statehood process from 1848 to 1912. Semiotically led by Buffalo Soldiers, Blackdomites and Prince Hall Freemasons achieved sovereignty in less than 20 years. The vision for Blackdom included plans to produce self-governing people.
Blackdom differed little from the Manifest Destiny movements projected by “Anglo-Saxons.” Increased militarization of the Borderlands ushered in the establishment of the New Mexico Military Institute and helped fortify a relative supremacy of Whiteness in the regional consciousness.
On September 3, 1891, the Goss Military Academy was founded through the efforts of Captain James C. Lea and Colonel Robert Goss. With an initial enrollment of 28 students, including female students, the school was the first in New Mexico to adopt military features. The Academy was later made a territorial school and renamed New Mexico Military Institute in February 1893. {reference]
Robert Goss was a colonel in the Confederate Army. Semiotically, Black people also found opportunity in military service of the Confederacy.
In 1903, Blackdomites colonized the notion of separate-but-equal. Separation of “Black” from “White” was a racialization strategy. In New Mexico, people with all rights and privileges associated with Whiteness had few real mechanisms to fully establish White supremacy in Chaves County. Jim Crow Laws were illegal in the New Mexico Territory. Blackdomites employed their freedom, volunteered to separate, and struck oil. Blackdomites exploited the distance between White Supremacy and free Black bodies in #TheAfrōFrontier they developed.
by Dr. Timothy E. Nelson ©