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[Pakira]

BLACKS IN ARGENTINA: DISAPPEARING ACTS

By HISHAM AIDI



First published: April 2, 2002

When songstress Josephine Baker visited Argentina in the 1950s she asked the biracial minister of public health Ramon Carillo, "Where are the Negroes?" to which Carillo responded laughing, "There are only two — you and I."

Scholars have long pondered the "disappearance" of people of African descent from Argentina, long considered South America's "whitest" nation.
A 1973 article in Ebony asked, "what happened to Argentina's involuntary immigrants, those African slaves and their mulatto descendants who once outnumbered whites five to one, and who were for 250 years 'an important element' in the total population, which is now 97 percent white?"

One history book calls the country's lack of self-identifying black people "one of the most intriguing riddles in Argentine history," while another notes that "the disappearance of the Negro from the Argentine scene has puzzled demographers far more than the vanishing Indian." Was the Afro-Argentine community annihilated by disease and war, or absorbed into the larger white community?

Of course, whiteness itself is relative. Many Argentines who proudly consider themselves white come to America and are shocked to find that in American racial discourse they are considered "Latino," "Hispanic" or vaguely "Spanish," and not white. Says Paula Brufman, an Argentine law student and researcher, "Argentines like to think of themselves as a white nation populated by Europeans. I was surprised when in the US, people — especially Latinos — told me I was not white but Spanish."

Today in Argentina, there is a growing interest in the country's African past and Afro community, "la comunidad Afro," as it's called. The past decade has seen black clubhouses, religious institutions and dance clubs crop up in the capital, Buenos Aires. A group called Africa Vive (Africa Lives), made up of Afro-Argentines, has spearheaded the campaign to raise awareness of the country's Afro-culture and history. At the Durban UN Conference on Racism, Africa Vive presented a widely circulated study about the socio-economic situation of Afro-Argentines. The report documented the high unemployment and difficulties with naturalization that many blacks in Argentina encounter.

"Minorities in Argentina — indigenous, Afro, etcetera — suffer from a problem of invisibility and poor organization," says Mercedes Boschi of the Buenos Aires City's Human Rights Commission, who worked with Africa Vive on the aforementioned report, as part of the municipal government's "Right to Identity" initiative.

So, how many people in Argentina today can claim African ancestry? The numbers are themselves difficult to calculate, says Alejandro Frigerio, an anthropologist at the Universidad Catolica de Buenos Aires. "People of mixed ancestry are often not considered black in Argentina, historically, because having black ancestry was not considered proper. Today the term 'negro' is used loosely on anyone with slightly darker skin, but they can be descendants of indigenous Indians, Middle Eastern immigrants. People in Africa Vive say there are a million 'afrodescendientes' in Argentina. Although many people are not aware that they may have had a black great-grandmother or -father, I think that this is an overestimation. I would estimate that there are 2 or 3 thousand Afro-Argentines, descendants of slaves, 'negros criollos,' 8 to 10 thousand in the Cape Verdean community, most born in Argentina, and I'd add another 1,200 Brazilian, Uruguayan, Cuban and African communities."

Created in 1996, Africa Vive has reached out to Afro-Argentine leaders with the aim of creating an organization that can battle poverty in Afro-Latino communities. It has single-handedly brought media and the mainstream's attention to the plight and legacy of Afro-Argentines.

"Different groups have emerged, including Grupo Cultural Afro and SOS Racismo, but Africa Vive is probably the most important group that has rekindled interest in things African in Argentina," says Frigerio. "It is the main group composed of Afro-Argentines, descendants of the original Afro-Argentine population. Africa Vive has successfully drawn the media's attention — they organized a conference against discrimination at the University of Buenos Aires in 1999, and were written up in an eight-page article in the daily Clarin. The article was significant because for the first time in almost thirty years, the term 'Afro-Argentine community' was used, instead of 'black' community."

Frigerio continues: "Last September, these black groups, led by Africa Vive, convinced a national deputy to organize a ceremony in memory of black soldiers who died fighting for Argentina's independence. The event took place in one of the traditional halls of the National Congress and was attended by the commander-in-chief of the army and the head of state. The national deputy spoke in honor of the fallen black soldiers and then awarded honorary degrees to the heads of several black organizations. It was quite remarkable that such an event could take place in Argentina."

War heroism, in fact, is one reason Argentina lags so far behind in recognizing its people of African descent. Even after the official abolition of slavery, many blacks were still slaves and were granted manumission only by fighting in Argentina's wars, serving disproportionately in the war of independence against Spanish rule and border wars against Paraguay from 1865 to 1870. Blacks were also granted their freedom if they joined the army, but they were deliberately placed on the front line and used as cannon fodder. Historian Ysabelle Rennie notes that the government deliberately placed as many blacks as possible in "dangerous military service" and were sent into batte, "where they got killed off fighting Indians (another race Argentines were interested in exterminating.)"

Argentine sociologist Gino Germani chalks up the "disappearance" to racist immigration policies, saying that the nation's "primary and explicit objective" was to "modify substantially the composition of the population," to "Europeanize the Argentine population, produce a regeneration of races." Marvin A. Lewis, author of Afro-Argentine Discourse: Another Dimension of the Black Diaspora, concurs, saying that "there was an official, concerted effort to eliminate the blacks from Argentine society."

Many have argued that people of African descent simply "disappeared" by mingling into the waves of thousand of European immigrants. Argentine historian Mariano Bosch wrote in 1941 that Italian men had "perhaps an atavistic preference for black women: body odor led them to matrimony and the blacks accepted them as whites," or rather, "almost whites, because the Italian has much African in him, and his color is a dull pale."

"There is a silence about the participation of Afro-Argentines in the history and building of Argentina, a silence about the enslavement and poverty," adds Paula Brufman. "The denial and disdain for the Afro community shows the racism of an elite that sees Africans as undeveloped and uncivilized....The poverty in the Afro community was terrible. Although slavery was abolished in 1813, the death rate of freed blacks was always higher than that of white people and of slaves. Why is that? Because in Buenos Aires, slaves were very expensive, so the masters took real good care of them. Once a black got his freedom, his living standards collapsed even further."

The past few years, however, have seen a growing interest among young Argentines of all backgrounds in Afro-Argentine culture — in tango, the dance and music with such strong West African roots, and other dances such the milonga, the zamba and the malambo. For this, many thank immigrants from other parts of South America.

"Afro-Uruguayan and Afro-Brazilian migrants to Buenos Aires have been instrumental in expanding black culture — teaching Afro-Uruguayan candombe, Afro-Brazilian capoeira, orisha and secular dances to white Argentines," says Frigerio, who has written of various Afro-Argentine cultural movements, including dancing saloons owned by blacks, carnival societies and black newspapers. One such dancing saloon, "The Shimmy Club," was founded in 1922 and lasted until 1974.

Frigerio believes the newfound interest in Afro-Argentine culture is not only the result of immigration but also of a new state policy. In the 1970s and '80s, Argentina was ruled by a succession of military juntas who suppressed and almost eradicated black culture. "The military dictatorships from 1966 onwards prohibited or severely constrained the gathering of people in the street or in closed spaces — a practice which certainly negatively influenced carnivals, which almost disappeared; tango dancing, which died out until it was revitalized in the 1990s; and also black dance clubs such as The Shimmy Club. All genres of popular culture severely suffered during the dictatorships and many almost disappeared, but began resurfacing in the 1990s."

Still, he cautions against too much optimism regarding race in Argentina. "The new laws and institutes help celebrate ethnic diversity and help groups like Africa Vive emerge and operate," Frigerio says, "but they have not undermined the dominant national narrative of racial homogeneity and whiteness." While the racial situation is much better today than it was half a century ago — when a review of Josephine Baker's performance wrote of her "monkey rhythm" — Frigerio says that "today blacks are more exoticized than stigmatized.... What scholar Livio Sansone said of Brazil, we can say of Argentina: there are hard and soft areas of racism, or areas in which it may be advantageous or disadvantageous to be black. In Buenos Aires, being black is advantageous in finding a girl/boyfriend, but less so for finding a job, unless the person is a musician or dance professor."

http://www.cwo.com/~lucumi/argentina.html
_________________
"tout nèg a nèg

ki nèg nwè ki nèg klè
ki nèg klè ki nèg nwè
tout nèg a nèg

nèg klè pè nèg nwè
nèg nwè pa lè wè nèg klè
nèg nwè ké wéy klè
senti i sa roune nèg klè
mè nèg klè ké wéy klè a toujou nèg

sa ki fèt pou nèg vin' blang?
blang té gen chivé pli long?
pou senblé yé nou trapé chivé plat kon fil mang!!!
mandé to fanm...!
mè pou kisa blang lé vin' nwè?
ha... savé ki avan vin' blan yé té ja nèg!

a nou mèm ké nou mèm dépi nânni nânnan...
chinwa soti, kouli soti, indyen soti, blang soti
mèm koté nèg soti

avan yé sotil koté y fika
AFRIKA!!!"

[Pakira]

LOS NEGROS EN EL EJÉRCITO: DECLINACIÓN DEMOGRÁFICA Y DISOLUCIÓN. By Francisco C. Morrone. (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1996. Pp. 132, Paper, $15.00. ISBN: 9-50250-096-2.)
By ROBERTO PACHECO, Florida International University.
COPYRIGHT: Atlantic Millennium, Department of History Graduate Student Association, Florida International University, 1997.


Ask the typical Argentine about what he or she knows of Argentina's black population or that country's African heritage and one is likely to receive one of two responses. The first and perhaps most common response, at least according to George Reid Andrews, is the categorical denial on the part of most Argentines of the existence, past or present, of Afro-Argentines. This opinion is especially common among residents of Buenos Aires; ironically, it was the port of Buenos Aires which served as an entry point for African slaves destined for the mines and estates of the Viceroyalties of first Peru and then of the Río de la Plata and eventually the Argentine confederation from the sixteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries. Moreover, Africans were especially visible in and around the city of Buenos Aires, whether as domestic servants, day laborers, urban slaves, militia members, or as gauchos (cowboys), field slaves, and peons in the countryside. Despite this history, porteños (natives of the city) insist on telling themselves and their visitors that "There are no Negros in Buenos Aires" (see George Reid Andrews, The Afro-Argentines of Buenos Aires, 1800-1900 [Madison, 1980], 3).

The second response, while acknowledging the historical presence of Argentines of color, often denies an African component in Argentina's culture. Concomitant with this opinion are questions about the fate of Afro-Argentines. What happened to them? How did they disappear from the population and the national consciousness?

Despite the opinions illustrated above regarding the presence (or lack thereof) of Afro-Argentines, a considerable bibliography nonetheless exists on the experiences of blacks in the Río de la Plata. This rich (if largely unexplored) bibliography has a new addition, albeit on an old theme: the riddle of the disappearance of Afro-Argentines. Essentially, Francisco Morrone's study attempts to not only explain the disappearance of blacks in Argentina, but also provide a history of black participation in the military. Based on published primary documents and standard secondary sources, this work revisits themes treated elsewhere in the Afro-Argentine historiography. For example, Morrone begins with an analysis of the slave trade and slavery in the Río de la Plata. These themes have been previously well-covered by, among others, Elena F. Scheuss de Studer, Diego L. Molinari, and more recently Marta B. Goldberg and Carlos A. Mayo. Morrone's purpose is to establish that both in the colonial and post-colonial periods blacks in Argentina were present in numbers much higher than generally reported (en un número mucho más elevado al que se le asigna [11]).

Despite the demographic significance of black Argentines even into the nineteenth century (they represented about 30% of Buenos Aires's population in 1810 ), Morrone suggests that they were reduced to almost invisibility as a result of miscegenation, disease, and warfare (13-1. It is well-known that throughout the Americas blacks intermarried and "passed" for white. Moreover, nineteenth-century nation-builders favored the whitening of their populations . Thus, positivist politicians and social theorists supported massive European immigration as means to not only add laborers to nascent industrializing economies but also to whiten ("improve") the Creole populations of Latin America republics. Unfortunately, Morrone does not address these issues at all; instead, he dwells on the colonial practice of buying legal "whiteness" (gracias al sacar) and miscegenation during slavery (15-17). There are many fine studies in the Afro-Argentine literature on miscegenation, especially those of Marta Goldberg, Emiliano Endrek, and Lowell Gudmunson; however, Morrone borrows very little from this research to enhance his work (although Endrek and Goldberg appear in the book's bibliography).



According to Morrone, disease was a second major factor in the disappearance of Afro-Argentines. This point has been previously articulated by, among others, Ricardo Rodríguez Molas and Nicolás Besio Moreno. More recently, José M. Massini Ezcurra and Miguel A. Rosal have also researched slave health, sickness, and mortality. Again, much of this scholarship is not evident in this work. Morrone correctly observes that the lack of medical care severely reduced the numbers of blacks in Argentina. Blacks were especially decimated by frequent plagues throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, especially yellow fever (1871). Ironically, the health and well-being of Afro-Argentines worsened after emancipation, a phenomenon common throughout the Americas (1.

The most devastating factor accounting for the disappearance of blacks in the Río de la Plata, however, was the endemic warfare of the nineteenth century.Beginning with the English and French invasions of Buenos Aires in the century's first decade and continuing through the wars of independence, the civil wars, and culminating with the war against Paraguay (1865-1870), Afro-Argentines volunteered for and were conscripted into the military. Domingo F. Sarmiento (favorably) commented on the way war diminished Argentina's black population (see Conflicto y armonía de las razas en América, 2 vols. [Buenos Aires, 1900]). Morrone also documents the role of blacks in the military: in the defense of Buenos Aires, as members of the militia (e.g., Compañía de pardos y morenos), during the wars of independence (e.g., San Martín's Ejército de los Andes) and at the siege of Montevideo, as combatants on both sides of the federalist-unitarist civil war, and finally as shock troops in the campaigns against the Indians and in the Paraguayan War (19-76). Moreover, any discussion of blacks in the Argentine military would be incomplete without references to the unitarist Colonel Lorenzo Barcala (65-67) and the semi-mythical "Falucho" (58-59). Much of the data provided by Morrone (e.g., about 40% of San Martín's army that crossed the Andes was Afro-Argentine [56]) has been published elsewhere (see, e.g., Andrews). Curiously, Morrone at no time refers to Nuria Sales de Bohigas's important study of slave recruits in South America (see Sobre esclavos, reclutas y mercaderes de quintos[Barcelona, 1974]). Morrone provides statistics on slave recruits, black troops, and casualty rates. He notes that Afro-Argentines were disproportionately killed or wounded in battle (31), perhaps suggesting that they were used as cannon fodder (carne de cañón). This point has been questioned by Andrews.


Morrone's treatment of blacks and Rosas is cursory. He lists Afro-Argentine troops loyal to Rosas: Defensores de Buenos Aires, Libertos de Buenos Aires, Batallón restaurador de las leyes, Cuarto batallón, Batallón de libertos veteranos (6. Surprisingly, the author does not include a discussion of Rosas's death-squad, La Mazorca. Composed of poor whites and people of color from the slums of Buenos Aires, this group terrorized Rosas's unitarist foes. This study does depict Rosas's attempts to win the support of blacks. It is true that Rosas and his family were regulars at Afro-Argentinecandombes (dances). While Morrone shows how Rosas used his wife, Doña Encarnación, as a liaison between himself and Buenos Aires's blacks, he fails to point out that it was his daughter, Doña Manuelita, who in fact was the favorite of Afro-Argentines. Here, Morrone misses the opportunity to use several illuminating collections of popular verses (cancioneros ) from the period which highlight Rosas's connection to Afro-Argentines (see, e.g., José L. Lanuza, ed., Cancionero del tiempo de Rosas, 2nd ed. [Buenos Aires, 1945]).

This study synthesizes a great deal of information about blacks in Argentina. Morrone correctly emphasizes the triple effects of miscegenation, disease, and war as factors in the decline of Afro-Argentines. Unfortunately, he often does not relate one to the other. For instance, when discussing miscegenation he only briefly relates it to the absence of black males killed in war (97). Afro-Argentine battle casualties indeed encouraged miscegenation between black women and immigrant males, since black male-to-female ratios were skewed. Nineteenth and early-twentieth-century European (read white) immigration to Argentina is not even discussed in this study.

Perhaps one of the most important points raised by Morrone deals with the confused racial terminology of nineteenth-century Argentina. Like Andrews, Morrone introduces the wordtrigueño and assumes that it is synonymous with black (103-104). However, even he admits that the term is vague and imprecise (103). Trigueño could apply to mulattoes or dark-skinned Europeans. Morrone writes that "many black men or castas could have 'hidden' among the trigueños listed in the enlistment rosters" (104). Since his data shows both mulatto and trigueño recruits, this raises the question of who was considered trigueño and who was considered mulatto? Who decided the racial classifications? Could one be both trigueño and mulatto simultaneously? How did the trigueños consider themselves, white or black? In short, is trigueño, like mulatto, a problematic racial category? Certainly, Bernardino Rivadavia, a liberal member of the porteño elite, did not regard himself to be or associated with Afro-Argentines (despite his appearance and "Dr. Chocolate" epithet).

Although Francisco Morrone draws from Reid Andrews many ideas and data, he nonetheless misses the point of the former's overarching thesis: namely, that the main cause for the disappearance of Afro-Argentines had to do more with cultural prejudices and the reclassification of many blacks as trigueños than did miscegenation, disease, or war. However, both share certain essentialist or anti-assimilationist biases. Both scholars believe that blacks in Argentina were totally marginalized. Afro-Argentines were not citizens; Argentina was a racist, color-conscious nation that excluded blacks. Furthermore, the nation's intellectual founders consciously "whitewashed" Argentina's history (what Paul Gilroy has called "strategic silences"). Recently, Marvin A. Lewis has authored a book entitled Afro-Argentine Discourse: Another Dimension of the Black Diaspora (Columbia, 1996) which argues along similar lines. However, as the Afro-Argentine patriotic poetry cited by Lewis illustrates, the discourse of race and nation is complex; blacks expressed a pride of place and country in their writings. Afro-Argentines maintained their own institutions and periodicals, even as they were being assimilated. Their discourse often addressed themes of interest to Argentines generally.

Another essentialist bias shared by Morrone and Andrews is their insistence on using trigueño to mean mulatto. The "mulatto escape hatch" certainly allowed many Afro-Argentines to "pass" for white. There is, however, an inherent contradiction in this argument. How is it possible for large numbers of Afro-Argentines to socially ascend in a racist, hegemonic society? At what point did an Afro-Argentine cease to be considered (or, for that matter, considered him or herself to be) black and became trigueño or even white? Andrews has characterized black ancestry in nineteenth-century Argentina as a "heavy cross to bear." Thus, only a rare person of color would have failed to take advantage of "passing." However, as a perceptive early reviewer of Andrews's study--Malcolm Deas of St. Anthony's College, Oxford--has noted, "only a rare heavy cross can quite so easily be shrugged off" (see Journal of Latin American Studies13, 2[1981]: 419]). If "passing" was as common in nineteenth-century Argentina as Andrews suggests, then one has to question his characterization of the dynamic of race relations in that society.

In reality, Morrone is correct when he documents the demographic decline of Afro-Argentines by the end of the nineteenth century. The interplay of long-term miscegenation, disease, and war (rather than "passing") accounts for the disappearance (i.e., assimilation and acculturation) of Afro-Argentines.

http://www.fiu.edu/~hisgsa/BR-Roberto.htm
_________________
"tout nèg a nèg

ki nèg nwè ki nèg klè
ki nèg klè ki nèg nwè
tout nèg a nèg

nèg klè pè nèg nwè
nèg nwè pa lè wè nèg klè
nèg nwè ké wéy klè
senti i sa roune nèg klè
mè nèg klè ké wéy klè a toujou nèg

sa ki fèt pou nèg vin' blang?
blang té gen chivé pli long?
pou senblé yé nou trapé chivé plat kon fil mang!!!
mandé to fanm...!
mè pou kisa blang lé vin' nwè?
ha... savé ki avan vin' blan yé té ja nèg!

a nou mèm ké nou mèm dépi nânni nânnan...
chinwa soti, kouli soti, indyen soti, blang soti
mèm koté nèg soti

avan yé sotil koté y fika
AFRIKA!!!"