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From Colonial Performers to Actors of ‘American Liberty’: Black Artists in Bourbon and Revolutionary Río de la Plata

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2018

Alex Borucki
Alex Borucki*
Affiliation:
University of California, Irvine Irvine, Californiaaborucki@uci.edu
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Extract

From the late eighteenth century through most of the nineteenth, Buenos Aires and Montevideo were hosts to a joint theatrical circuit characterized by the regular comings and goings of impresarios, artisans, musicians, and actors between the two cities. The military conflicts that shaped this period actually encouraged these connections, as they stimulated both exile and repatriation between one locale and the other. Africans, and particularly their Rioplatense descendants, were an integral part of popular entertainment circuits in Buenos Aires and Montevideo. Some of the first Argentinean historians of theater and music, among them Vicente Gesualdo and Teodoro Klein, were aware of this connection and included in their initial scholarship links that connect the history of free and enslaved Afro-descendants to the early theater of Río de la Plata.

Type
Articles
Information
The Americas , Volume 75 , Issue 2 , April 2018 , pp. 261 - 289
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2018 

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References

1. Gesualdo, Vicente, Historia de la música en la Argentina (Buenos Aires: Editorial Beta, 1961)Google Scholar; Klein, Teodoro, El actor en el Río de la Plata: de la colonia a la independencia (Buenos Aires: Editorial de la Asociación Argentina de Actores, 1984)Google Scholar. See the multivolume collection led by Pellettieri, Osvaldo, Historia del teatro argentino en Buenos Aires: el periodo de constitución (1700–1884) (Buenos Aires: Galerna, 2005)Google Scholar.

2. For a full examination of African-based celebrations in Buenos Aires and Montevideo, see Borucki, Alex, From Shipmates to Soldiers: Emerging Black Identities in the Río de la Plata (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2015)Google Scholar, chapts. 3 and 5. For an overview of Africans and their descendants in nineteenth-century European-style dance, see Chasteen, John C., National Rhythms, African Roots: The Deep History of Latin American Popular Dance (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2004)Google Scholar. For twentieth-century Afro-Uruguayan candombe, see Andrews, George Reid, Blackness in the White Nation: A History of Afro-Uruguay (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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5. Viqueira, Juan Pedro, Propriety and Permissiveness in Bourbon Mexico (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1999).Google Scholar

6. On Bourbon rituals of power in this region, see Garavaglia, Juan C., Poder, conflicto y relaciones sociales: El Río de la Plata, XVIII–XIX (Buenos Aires: Homo Sapiens, 1999), 123–156Google Scholar. On ritual in court society, see the classic work by Elias, Norbert, The Court Society (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2006)Google Scholar.

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9. Klein, Teodoro, El actor en el Río de la Plata II. De Casacuberta a los Podestá (Buenos Aires, Editorial de la Asociación Argentina de Actores, 1994), 50.Google Scholar

10. In 1867, the press publicized an incident featuring “two inseparable morenas who threw oranges from the balcony of Theater San Felipe at those who were peacefully gathered at the exit. . . . An already squeezed orange landed on the police chief's hat. Another one . . . hit Commissioner Maciel in the eye.” Historian José P. Barrán considers it evidence of egalitarianism that in mid nineteenth-century Montevideo, while they defied social deference, these black women were not arrested. Barrán, José P., Historia de la sensibilidad en el Uruguay, Vol. 1 (Montevideo: Ediciones de la Banda Oriental, 1989), 104.Google Scholar

11. El Universal (Montevideo), no. 2225, February 22, 1837, 3.

12. On theater as both setting and echo chamber for conflicts and political tension in nineteenth-century Spanish America, see Conway, Christopher, Nineteenth-Century Spanish America: A Cultural History (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2015)Google Scholar, chapts. 3 and 5.

13. Borucki, From Shipmates to Soldiers, chapt. 4.

14. Johnson, Lyman, Workshop for Revolution: Plebeian Buenos Aires and the Atlantic World, 1776–1810 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Prado, Fabrício, Edge of Empire: Atlantic Networks and Revolution in Bourbon Río de la Plata (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15. Borucki, From Shipmates to Soldiers, chapt. 1.

16. Socolow, Susan, The Bureaucrats of Buenos Aires, 1769–1810. Amor al Real Servicio (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), 27–28Google Scholar.

17. On the Enlightenment in late colonial Río de la Plata, see Chiaramonte, José C., La Ilustración en el Río de la Plata (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 2007)Google Scholar.

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19. The free pardo Ignacio de San Martín figured as maestro in this orchestra in 1777. The free pardo Teodoro Hipólito Guzmán, born in Buenos Aires in the 1850s, became one of the main violinists of the cathedral sometime between 1790 and 1810. See Gesualdo, Historia de la música en la Argentina, Vol. 1, 103–106.

20. “The military origin of some of the professional actors of the time is not strange; it is a response to the experience gained in theatrical performances held in the barracks with casts composed of officers and soldiers for the amusement of the troops, sometimes even performing at public functions and royal festivals.” Klein, El actor en el Río de la Plata: de la colonia a la independencia, 36.

21. Klein, El actor en el Río de la Plata: de la colonia a la independencia, 31.

22. Illari, Bernardo, “The Slave's Progress: Music as profession in Criollo Buenos Aires,” in Music and Urban Society in Colonial Latin America, Baker, Geoffrey and Knighton, Tess, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 186–207Google Scholar, especially 190–197. The quoted material is from page 196.

23. Josef Loreto Arguelles Negro Musico, Exp. 17, 1786, AGN-A, IX, 32-4-2.

24. Gesualdo, Historia de la música en la Argentina, Vol. 1, 106.

25. Illari, “The Slave's Progress,” 202; Joaquiń Olaéz Gacitúa, the main circus impresario in Buenos Aires, was hired by Diego Martínez de Castro to train his son and his slaves in the art of volatines (acrobatics and dances). Martínez intended to form an itinerant troupe with family and slaves in 1792. Pellettieri, Historia del teatro argentino en Buenos Aires: el periodo de constitución (1700–1884), 134–135; From early on, circuses and acrobatic troupes utilized slave labor. The first documented circus in this region was that of Antonio Verdún, who arrived from Upper Peru and performed for a time in Santa Fe (1757). There he bought a ladino slave and hired two free black men, all musicians, and traveled with them to Buenos Aires the following year. See Klein, El actor en el Río de la Plata: de la colonia a la independencia, 74–75.

26. Klein, El actor en el Río de la Plata: de la colonia a la independencia, 51–60.

27. Catalina Castilla to Governor of Montevideo, March 3, 1808, AGN-A, IX, 3-1-5. In her letter, Castilla asked the governor of Montevideo to intervene to keep her son from joining the theater for the sake of the family's honor, as she had two daughters “set for marriage” who would be negatively affected. She suggested that the governor order her son to enroll in the infantry. Instead, the governor responded that if the parents did not provide a job for their son, he was free to join the theater.

28. On late nineteenth-century payadores, see Bockelman, “Between the Gaucho and the Tango,” 583.

29. For a full inventory of the pulpería, see AGN-A, 1774, exp. 2, IX, 32-1-5.

30. Causa criminal de oficio contra Josef Leandro Piedrabuena, 1784, AGN-A, IX, 39-9-2.

31. Causa criminal seguida de oficio sobre averiguar . . . , 1784, Archivo General de la Nación, Uruguay [hereafter AGN-U], Archivos Judiciales, Civil 1, caja 65, exp. 55. Two slaves worked in a pulpería in 1806 Montevideo. AGN-U, 1807, Archivos Judiciales, Civil 1, caja 161, exp. 16.

32. Sumaria información echa al esclarecimiento de la muerte del Granadero, 1800, AGN-U, Archivos Judiciales, Civil 1, Caja, 141, Exp. 64.

33. Klein, El actor en el Río de la Plata: de la colonia a la independencia, 47.

34. Prado, Edge of Empire, chapt. 6.

35. Recurso introducido a ella por el Procurador Juan de la Rosa, AGN-U, 1807, Archivos Judiciales, Civil 1, caja 161, exp. 21. See also Klein, El actor en el Río de la Plata: de la colonia a la independencia, 38–39.

36. Ysidora Viera to Governor of Montevideo, May 30, 1796, AGN-A, IX, 2-8-7.

37. On slaves who sued their masters for freedom, such as the organist of a convent in Mendoza and a music instructor in Buenos Aires, see Mallo, Silvia, “La libertad en el discurso del estado, de amos y esclavos, 1780–1830,” Revista de Historia de América 112 (1991): 121–146Google Scholar.

38. Klein, El actor en el Río de la Plata: de la colonia a la independencia, 51–60; Illari, “The Slave's Progress,” 197.

39. Ayestarán, Lauro, La música en el Uruguay, Vol. 1 (Montevideo: SODRE, 1953), 175Google Scholar.

40. Ayestarán, La música en el Uruguay, 157.

41. Ayestarán, La música en el Uruguay, 179.

42. Blackface stage performances as they were presented in the United States did not emerge in the Río de la Plata until the 1860s, when they became popular, surely as the result of tours made by troupes of US actors such as Christy's Minstrels. At least one black US actor lived in Buenos Aires from the late 1820s on. Andrews dates the earliest evidence of blackface performance in Buenos Aires to 1865, and in Montevideo in 1868, during Carnival. See Gesualdo, Historia de la música en Argentina, Vol. 3, 850–851. Research on the connections between the earliest expressions of blackface in the River Plate and touring North American performers is needed. On European immigrants and blackface in late nineteenth-century Carnival, see Andrews, Blackness in the White Nation, 55–84; and on Cuba, see Lane, Jill, Blackface Cuba, 1840–1895 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005)Google Scholar.

43. Klein, El actor en el Río de la Plata: de la colonia a la independencia, 42.

44. Klein, El actor en el Río de la Plata: de la colonia a la independencia, 27.

45. Sommers, Doris, Foundational Fictions: The National Romances of Latin America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991)Google Scholar; Pellettieri, Historia del teatro argentino en Buenos Aires, 122; Ayestarán, La música en el Uruguay, 180.

46. Pellettieri, Historia del teatro argentino en Buenos Aires, 198. See also Earle, Rebecca, The Return of the Native: Indians and Myth-making in Spanish America, 1810–1930 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Kraay, Hendrik, Days of National Festivity in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1823–1889 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47. Viñas, David, Literatura argentina y política: de los jacobinos porteños a la bohemia anarquista (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1995), 87–92Google Scholar. On Lavardén as author of colonial patriotic poems and political-economic essays praising trade, see Chiaramonte, La Ilustración en el Río de la Plata, 70–75.

48. It is impossible to know if any of the actors were of African ancestry. El Nacional (Montevideo), no. 870, October 30, 1841, 4.

49. El Nacional, no. 875, November 6, 1841, 2.

50. Socolow, Susan, “Acceptable Patterns: Marriage Choice in Colonial Argentina, 1778–1810,” in Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America, Lavrin, Asunción, ed. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), 209–250Google Scholar.

51. Sanders, James, The Vanguard of the Atlantic World: Creating Identity, Nation, and Democracy in Nineteenth-Century Latin America (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014)Google Scholar.

52. Borucki, Alex, Abolicionismo y tráfico de esclavos en Montevideo tras la fundación republicana (Montevideo: Biblioteca Nacional, 2009), 129–190Google Scholar.

53. On the wall of the Casa de Comedias, from colonial times to independence, was the inscription “Singing and laughing rectifies mores.” Ayestarán, La música en el Uruguay, 156. The government of Buenos Aires brought the theater under governmental control in 1813, putting the police in charge of the Coliseo. See Klein, El actor en el Río de la Plata: de la colonia a la independencia, 96.

54. Guzmán, Florencia, “Bandas de música de libertos en el ejército de San Martín. Una exploración sobre la participación de los esclavizados y sus descendientes durante las Guerras de Independencia,” Anuario de la Escuela de Historia Virtual (Córdoba, Argentina) 7 (2015): 18–36Google Scholar.

55. Bragoni, Beatriz, “Esclavos, libertos y soldados: la cultura política plebeya en Cuyo durante la revolución,” in ¿ Y el pueblo dónde está? Contribuciones para una historia popular de la revolución de independencia en el Río de la Plata, Fradkin, Raúl O., ed. (Buenos Aires: Prometeo, 2008), 107–150.Google Scholar

56. The black pianist Remigio Navarro directed the orchestra of the theater of Buenos Aires during most of the 1830s. See Castagnino, Raul, El teatro en Buenos Aires durante la época de Rosas (Buenos Aires: Comisión Nacional de Cultura, 1944), 49Google Scholar, for a short biography of Viera see pages 103-106; see also Klein, El actor en el Río de la Plata de la colonia a la independencia, 54.

57. Klein, El actor en el Río de la Plata: de la colonia a la independencia, 100–104.

58. Sansone, Eneida, El teatro en el Uruguay en el siglo XIX. Historia de una pasión avasallante, Vol. 1 (Montevideo: Surcos, 1995), 235Google Scholar.

59. These salaries represent average wages. Leading figures like Trinidad Guevara and Petronila Serrano earned 50 and 70 pesos respectively, while each musician was paid ten and a half pesos.

60. The presence of people of African ancestry on the stage was also reflected in the stalls during the era of Buenos Aires governor Juan Manuel de Rosas (1829–1852), when theater increasingly engaged the subaltern population. Castagnino, El teatro en Buenos Aires, 54.

61. Klein, El actor en el Río de la Plata: de la colonia a la independencia, 134.

62. This “invisibility” of race in the sources makes it difficult for today's scholars to identify actors as being of mixed or full African and Indian ancestry, as public records increasingly disregarded race as a category.

63. “The rise of ‘an ugly, shorty, fat mulatto’ leading man (as Morante's contemporaries described him) was not solely a consequence of the scarcity of actors. It illustrated the deep reform that was produced in those years in the European order, with a parallel evolution in artistic taste, in the context of the social changes that were symbolic of the French Revolution. The development of Morante-the-actor would be connected to the proceedings of the May Revolution and would modify the frame of reference of the profession on par with public perception and participation.” Klein, El actor en el Río de la Plata: de la colonia a la independencia, 135.

64. de Torres, María I., “Discursos fundacionales: nación y ciudadanía,” in Uruguay: imaginarios culturales, Achugar, Hugo and Moraña, Mabel, eds., Vol. 1 (Montevideo: Trilce, 2000), 128.Google Scholar

65. Rama, Ángel, Los gauchipolíticos rioplatenses: literatura y sociedad (Buenos Aires: Calicanto, 1976), 56–59Google Scholar.

66. De Torres, “Discursos fundacionales,” 133.

67. See the introduction to Paulina Alberto and Elena, Eduardo, eds., Rethinking Race in Modern Argentina (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015)Google Scholar. Descriptions of race became more euphemistic as well. For instance, a project to open the first school for actors in Buenos Aires in 1823 stated that applicants, both men and women, should have a “figura noble y voz armoniosa,” (a noble figure and a harmonious voice), which echoes the term “buena presencia,” or good presence, as a euphemism for whiteness. See Pellettieri, Historia del teatro argentino en Buenos Aires: el periodo de constitución, 224.

68. The press requested that these meetings be limited to weekends and holy days. Yañez, Andrés, Esclavitud y vida cotidiana en el Buenos Aires posrevolucionario: una mirada a través del periódico La Gazeta Mercantil (La Plata, Argentina: AAAPBA, 2015), 47Google Scholar.

69. León Cuevas and Pedro Chaín to Montevideo police, May 19, 1837, AGN-U, AGA, Ministerio de Gobierno, caja 898. On dance academies in mid nineteenth-century Latin America, see Chasteen, National Rhythms, 118–119.

70. The census of 1836 provides information about the people who lived in the dance academy, which was also a house. Juan Chaín, born in Montevideo and at the time of the census a 29-year-old shoemaker, was listed first. Second was Manuel Sartori, a 50-year-old African shoemaker. A young North American and a Londoner also lived there, along with two men from Buenos Aires (ages 30 and 14), and a woman and her recently born child. The census taker recorded that one of the above was a freedman, but failed to note who he or she was. A Lieutenant Alcalde stated that Chaín supported his father, who lived with him, but the only person living in the house of an age to be Chaín's father was the African Manuel Sartori. As Sartori was not the freedman listed by the census, these facts imply that Chaín was also of African descent. Census of 1836, AGN-U, AGA, libros 146–149.

71. Valdés, Ildefonso Pereda, El negro en el Uruguay: pasado y presente (Montevideo: Apartado de la Revista del Instituto Histórico y Geográfico del Uruguay, 1965), 253–254Google Scholar.

72. Pereira, Antonio, Recuerdos de mi tiempo (Montevideo: El Siglo Ilustrado, 1891), 111Google Scholar.

73. Horner, Gustavus, Medical Topography of Brazil and Uruguay, with Incidental Remarks (Philadelphia: Lindsay & Blackiston, 1845), 165Google Scholar. Pereira also noted that an affluent young white man had fallen in love with one of Martínez's daughters, to the horror of the young man's parents. His family obliged him to travel abroad to cool down. Pereira, Recuerdos de mi tiempo, 111.

74. Black painters may be added to this list. See Ghidoli, María de Lourdes, “En pelo y al lápiz: la trayectoria de dos pintores afrodescendientes en la Buenos Aires del siglo XIX,” in Afrolatinoamérica: estudos comparados, Gelado, Viviana and Secreto, María V., eds., (Rio de Janeiro: Mauad, 2016), 69–94.Google Scholar

75. After the abolition of slavery in Montevideo on December 12, 1842, the army proceeded to incorporate all able-bodied formerly enslaved men. The editorial page of El Nacional reported, “All men of color with the exception of a few artists and proprietors of the Republic, who are well known and have been enlisted into the civic units of the garrison and who should be respected considering their talents and wealth, serve together in newly created units.” The newspaper warned that the black artists who served in the same civic units, or militias as all other members of the free population, should not be enrolled in black battalions of recently emancipated slaves. El Nacional, no. 1203, December 16, 1842, 2.

76. Police report, June 30, 1837, AGN-U, AGA, Ministerio de Gobierno, caja 899.

77. Police report, May 27, 1835, AGN-U, AGA, Ministerio de Gobierno, caja 868; José Ortiz to Police Chief, January 23, 1842, AGN-U, AGA, Ministerio de Gobierno, caja 935.

78. This scrutiny was in the context of a crackdown on African-based associations by the police. They targeted the free black male population to get to the associations, whose leaders were mostly free. Borucki, From Shipmates to Soldiers, 168-173; Judge of 3rd Section to Police Chief, April 13, 1835, AGN-U, AGA, Ministerio de Gobierno, caja 866; Police report, October 3, 1835, caja 876; Police report, June 12, 1837, caja 898.

79. West and West Central Africans had their own indigenous stringed instruments during the era of the slave trade, as well as Europeans had their own indigenous membraphone instruments. What matters here are the different genres and rhythms connected to dance, as explained by Chasteen in National Rhythms, African Roots.

80. Pedrotti, “La música religiosa en Córdoba del Tucumán,” 184.

81. Klein, El actor en el Río de la Plata II: de Casacuberta a los Podestá, 52.

82. El Universal, no. 2225, February 22, 1837, 3.

83. Ayestarán, La música en el Uruguay, 171.

84. On September 19, 1836, President Oribe achieved victory—though the encounter was not conclusive—over Fructuoso Rivera's troops in the Battle of Carpintería. In the following months, the theater presented plays performed by the repertory company Compañía Nacional and by another, the Compañía Española. In the five months between September 27, 1836, and February 27, 1837, the Compañía Nacional presented 12 functions, and the Compañía Española performed nine. The two companies performed together for 11 charity functions, and another troupe, the Compañía Europea, presented two more. El Universal, no. 2109, October 4, 1836, 3; no. 2160, December 3, 1836, 3; no. 2171, December 17, 1836, 3; no. 2190, January 10, 1837, 3; no. 2222, February 18, 1837, 3; no. 2223, February 20, 1837, 3.

85. El Universal, no. 2225, February 22, 1837, 3.

86. Zinny, Antonio, Historia de la prensa periódica de la República Oriental del Uruguay 1807–1852 (Buenos Aires: Casavalle, 1883), 97.Google Scholar

87. El Defensor de las Leyes (Montevideo), no. 138, February 25, 1837, 3.

88. Unfortunately, these articles, like the majority of the correspondence that appeared in the press, were published pseudonymously, leaving the names of these individuals unknown.

89. El Defensor de las Leyes, Montevideo, No. 138, February 25, 1837, 3.

90. Borucki, Abolicionismo y tráfico, 129–189. On a similar “debt of gratitude,” see Ferrer, Ada, Insurgent Cuba: Race, Nation and Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999)Google Scholar.

91. Casacuberta was accused in 1829 of having had an ambiguous position during the Brazilian occupation. Klein, El actor en el Río de la Plata II. De Casacuberta a los Podestá, 66–67; El Defensor de las Leyes, no. 138, February 25, 1837, 3.

92. El Defensor de las Leyes, no. 140, February 28, 1837, 3.

93. Police chief to Secretaría de Gobernación, February 27, 1837, AGN-U, AGA, Ministerio de Gobierno, caja 894; Book of arrested white and free black men, February 25, 1837, AGN-U, AGA, libro 949.

94. Vacari to Secretary of Government, June 13, 1838, AGN-U, Jefatura de Policía Montevideo, caja 17.

95. We may wonder how Uncle's Tom Cabin was represented in the second half of the nineteenth century in Buenos Aires and Montevideo. This novel was partially published as a serial in Montevideo as early as April 1853. La Constitución (Montevideo), no. 223, April 7, 1853, 2. As late as 1897, Uncle's Tom Cabin was still being represented there by amateur Gallego-immigrant actors in blackface. La Cabaña del Tío Tom, o La Esclavitud de los Negros, June 27, 1897, Archivo del Centro Gallego de Montevideo, Libro de Actividades Culturales, 1894–1897. The emergence of Black newspapers in both Buenos Aires and Montevideo make it seem likely that black playwrights' concerns arose with renewed vigor in the second half of the nineteenth century. For how blacks and blackness have been portrayed, generally with racist overtones, in twentieth-century Argentine theater, see de Lima, Perla Zayas, “La construcción del otro: el negro en el teatro nacional,” in Teatro, Memoria y Ficción, Pellettieri, Osvaldo, ed. (Buenos Aires: Galerna, 2005), 181–194Google Scholar. For ongoing research, see Lea Geler, “Sangre Negra em Buenos Aires. Representações raciais, de classe e de gênero no surgimento do Peronismo (1945),” in Afrolatinoamérica: estudos comparados, Gelado and Secreto, eds., 95–118.