The municipality, for instance, tried time and again to upend or regulate Carnaval, the annual festival "of the flesh'; that precedes lent and that had deep African roots. The city's Chief of police, on another occasion, stated that "None has the right to discredit the setting in which they live by reviving African customs" (124).
The Black middle class were complicit in this War on Blackness since they were seeking to escape their slave past and become accepted into White society,. They only way they could do so, they felt, was by assimilation. In this way, they joined forces by mocking and attempting to eradicate all African-sourced customs. The Afro-Uruguay newspaper, la Conservacion, for instance, railed against African religion and celled for abolishment of all African-based customs. Many of these rich Black middle class became the powerful politicians and political leaders of the Mexico of that age shaping the politics and views of the country.
Echoing the spirit of the time, one poet remarked that:
They take no notice of whiteness, those who are white and fine,
Whilst he whose blood is impure,
Seeking whiteness, goes out of his...
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