Epilogue - Afterlives (1955–Present)

Summary

The Epilogue shows how the defamatory stories that began to emerge in the 1930s crystallized after Raúl’s death into an individualized “black legend” about “el negro Raúl.” I demonstrate the patterned and repetitive nature of these stories, which plagiarized each other and echoed master narratives of race rather than reflecting Raúl’s lived experience. The Epilogue brings the story of Raúl’s Black legend up to the present, where the largely unchanged contours of his tale suggest the tensions and incomplete transformations of Argentina’s newfound multiculturalism, and the ongoing seductiveness of “black legend” stories even within the emergent Black movement. Finally, I discuss the challenges (archival and conceptual) of researching Raúl’s story in a country that denies its African heritage, and I reflect on how the interest it sparked among my fellow Argentines suggests that Black Legend may, after all, help shift the narratives on Blackness in Argentina and beyond.