2 - Poner el cuerpo

Summary

Chapter 2 gives a history of Black resistance from the 1980s until the emergence of the social movement’s umbrella organization, the Comisión 8 N, in 2013. Scholars have documented that late nineteenth-century Afro-Argentine resistance occurred through a strong Black press and mutual aid societies. The literature lacks an empirical analysis of contemporary issues, which I take up in this chapter. I trace the current movement to civil society organizations founded primarily by Black women in the mid 1980s after the country’s return to democracy. I unpack an oft-repeated phrase of my interlocutors, “poner el cuerpo,” – to put one’s whole being into an effort, but also a radical act of taking up space – to contextualize the social movement’s emergence. Moreover, I argue that the radical act of taking up space in visible locations marked as “White spaces” is central to the politics of visibility that led to some of the movement’s successes. While the human rights movement and the Kirchner administrations provided a political opportunity for cultural and ethnoracial activism, Black activists’ continued resistance, despite setbacks, led to the traction and birth of the movement.