Slavery was abolished in Mexico in 1829, long before abolition in the United States during the Civil War. Since then, race has often been overlooked as a basis of social differentiation in Mexico and it has not been measured with questions in the modern Mexican census. But concerns about disadvantage associated with African ancestry have persisted and questions about race are finally being tested for inclusion in a national survey in 2015 and possible in the 2020 Mexican census.
As I conclude in chapter 4 (p. 113), “the conception and operationalization, then, varies with place.” As in the U.S., we can see that it also changes over time.
Researching in a Social World 