The Mexican government has for the first time ever recognized “Afro-Mexican” as a category in their census.

The national survey released on Dec. 8, counted 1.38 million people of African heritage. The new figure accounts for 1.2 percent of Mexico’s entire population. Seven percent of the Afro-Mexicans acknowledged in the census reside in the state of Guerrero alone.

According to the census, the group is in general less educated and poorer than the average Mexican citizen.

The inclusion of “Afro-Mexicans” in the census is an attempt to rectify years of overlooking Mexico’s black communities. The Huffington Post reports that the move to include the neglected group was pushed by the black activist organization Mexico Negro.

Mexico shares with the U.S. a history of slavery, which has resulted in a segment of the population claiming African ancestry. According to CNN, around 200,000 Africans were brought to Mexico during the slave trade. Slavery in Mexico was abolished in 1810 by Jose María Morelos y Pavón, a leader of the Mexican War of Independence who happened to be half Spanish and half African.

Although they are now recognized by the census, Afro-Mexicans are not recognized by the Mexican constitution. In 1910 the Mexican government did away with racial classification to promote the idea of one national "cosmic race."

Mara Sanchez Renero, a photographer who has documented black communities in Mexico, says that a sense of Afro-identity is starting to emerge. "Today the black community is in a much more solid state concerning their self-recognition and has begun to fight and generate movements for their rights as Afro-descendants," she said, "But this self-recognition has not been there for so long.”

Afro-Mexicans were officially recognized by the Mexican government in 1992 as part of the nation's 500th anniversary of the arrival of the Spanish to the Americas.