In 2015, the Mexican government finally recognized its 1.38 million citizens of African descent in a national survey signifying a tremendous victory for the Afro-Mexican community who had up to that moment largely gone unnoticed on the margins of Mexican society. The history of the Afro-Mexican people is not taught in school and in the villages of Chacahua and El Azufre in Mexico, Afro-Mexican culture is close to nonexistent. The limited exposure to the outside world comes via television when families gather after dinner to watch the night time soap operas with mexican casts that look more like Californians than anyone from the region. People of color are simply not represented in the mexican media landscape so the notion of dark skinned mexicans has no place in the present white washed pop-culture manifestations of what an authentic mainstream mexican society is thought to look like. In a country that idealizes the anything with a 'western aesthetic', Afro-Mexican's are often considered too black to be considered ‘real’ Mexicans.