Meet Vicente Guerrero, Mexico’s first president. Yes, he was Black. Vicente Guerrero was born in the small village of Tixla in the state of Guerrero. His parents were Pedro Guerrero, an Afrikan- Mexican, and Guadalupe Saldana, who had ancestral ties to the Narragansett people of present-day Rhode Island. Working with his father as a mule driver, he traveled all over the country, where different ideas of revolution inspired him.
Guerrero served in a three-person “Junta” that governed the then independent Mexico from 1823- 1824, until the election that brought into power the first president of Mexico, Guadalupe Victoria. As head of the “People’s Party,” Guerrero called for public schools, land title reforms, and other programs of a progressive nature.
Guerrero was elected for a second term as president of Mexico in 1829. As president, Guerrero went on to champion the cause of the racially oppressed and the economically oppressed. Guerrero formally abolished slavery on September 16, 1829. Shortly after that, he was betrayed by a group of reactionaries who drove him out of his house, captured, and ultimately executed him.
