AFRO-descendant communities along Mexico’s Pacific coast called on Wednesday for action from President Claudia Sheinbaum’s administration, saying they have been disproportionately hit by hurricanes over the past three years.

The call comes a week after the Category 3 Hurricane Erick hit the Costa Chica coastal mountains south of Acapulco. It knocked out power for nearly 300,000 people, triggered landslides and flooding and killed a one-year-old boy, who drowned in a swollen river.

In rural swathes of the coastal states of Oaxaca and Guerrero, rights organisations reported that Afro-descendant communities — comprising more than 80 per cent of the population — were devastated by the hurricane and have received little aid from Mexico’s government. 

“This devastation is a direct consequence not only of climate change but also of the structural, institutional and systemic racism that has kept the Afro-Mexican people marginalised from development,” wrote MUAFRO, an Afro-Mexican women’s collective.