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Beyond Invisibility: Afro-Argentines in Their Nation’s Culture and Memory

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Buenos Aires Negra: Arqueología Histórica De Una Ciudad Silenciada. By SchávelzonDaniel (Buenos Aires: Emecé Editores, 2003. Pp. 209. $22.10 paper.)
The Afro-Argentine in Argentine Culture: El Negro Del Acordeón. By CastroDonald S. (Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2001. Pp. iii+185. $109.95 cloth.)
Identidades Secretas: La Negritud Argentina. By SolomianskiAlejandro. (Rosario, Argentina: Beatriz Viterbo Editora, 2003. Pp. 267. $15.00 paper.)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2022

Robert J. Cottrol
Robert J. Cottrol*
Affiliation:
George Washington University
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Abstract

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Type
Review Essays
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 42 , Issue 1 , February 2007 , pp. 139 - 156
Copyright
Copyright © 2007 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

*

The author would like to acknowledge helpful comments made by Jonathan Bush and Pablo J. Davis, who read earlier drafts of this essay.

References

1. Ángel Rosenblat: La población indigena y el mestizaje en America, Vol 1, La población indígena, 1492-1950, (Buenos Aires: Editora Nova, 1954), 21-22, 170; James R. Scobie, Argentina: A City and a Nation, Second Ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), 33. Rosenblat was very aware of the tentative nature of racial categories found in official statistics. He noted that “the lines between Indian, mestizo and white or between black, mulatto and white are very unstable and the census taker has to quickly determine on his own that which would take much time and effort on the part of a professional anthropologist. The criteria also changes from one country to another. Surely half of those who are classified as mestizo in Mexico would pass for pure whites in Brazil and other countries. … In the United States a Negro is one who has a drop of black blood; in Latin America a white is one who has one drop of white blood. More than reality, statistics reflect the ideals of each nation or the aspirations of its inhabitants.” Rosenblat, La población indígena, 19 (my translation).

2. This statement is noted in the documentary film “Afroargentinos” (Diego H. Ceballos et al., directors, 2005), an exploration of contemporary Afro-Argentine life in Buenos Aires. The film shows the quote and also ironically has Menem posing for a picture with Horacio Pita, an Afro-Argentine who works as a congressional orderly, one of the few jobs with high visibility traditionally available to Afro-Argentines. Pita was profiled in the Buenos Aires daily La Nación in April 2004. See “Raíces africanas en el Congreso: Horacio Pita y una tradición de 136 años, La Nación 7 de abril de 2004, p. 8, sec 4.

3. Mamerto Fidel Quinteros, Memorias de un negro del congreso, (Buenos Aires: Talleres Gráficos Argentinos de L. J. Rosso, 1924); Vicente Rossi, Cosas de Negros, (Buenos Aires: Taurus, 2001). Among the paintings in which Berni included what appear to be AfroArgentine and mestizo subjects are Desocupados (1934), Chacareros (1935), Orquesta tipica (1939), La comida (1953), Team de football o campeones del barrio (1954), and Escuelita rural (1956). These may be seen in Fermín Fêvre, Berni (Buenos Aires: Editorial El Atneo, Bifronte, 2001). Other Berni paintings with Afro-Argentine figures include El obrero caído (1953) and La manfestación (1934).

4. Máximo Simpson, “Porteños de color,” Panorama (June 1967), 78-85; Luis Grassino, “Buenos Aires de ebano,” Revista Clarín, (December 5, 1971), 34-39; Era Bell Thompson, “Argentina, Land of the Vanishing Blacks,” Ebony (October, 1973), 74-85.

5. Marta Β. Goldberg, “La población negra y mulata de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, 1810-1840.” Desarrollo Económico, vol. 16 (April-June, 1976), 75-99; Leslie Β. Rout, Jr. The African Experience in Spanish America, 1502 to the Present Day (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976); George Reid Andrews, The Afro-Argentines of Buenos Aires, 1800-1900 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1980).

6. Argentine social anthropologist Alejandro Frigerio is an important example of an Argentine scholar influenced by Afro-Americanist scholarship in Brazil and the United States. See Alejandro Frigerio, Cultura negra en el cono sur: Representaciones en conflicto (Buenos Aires: Ediciones de la Universidad Católica Argentina, 2000). Other works that indicate the increased scholarly interest in the field in the last decade include: M. Cristina de Liboreíro No hay negros argentinos? (Buenos Aires: Editorial Dunken, 1999); El negro en la Argentina: Presencia y negación, Dina V. Picotti, comp., (Buenos Aires: Editores de América Latina, 2001) and Marvin A. Lewis, Afro-Argentine Discourse: Another Dimension of the Black Diaspora (Columbia, Mo.: University of Missouri Press, 1996). The emergence of new voices from Afro-Argentine communities in the last decade has been particularly important in the effort to bring to light both the history of Afro-Argentines and their current circumstances. Three women have been particularly important in their communities’ struggles against invisibility and racial subordination. Lucía Dominga Molina, a descendant of Argentine slaves living in Santa Fe, Argentina, heads La Casa de la Cultura Indo-Afro-Americana in that city. It houses a library on Afro-Argentine history and has participated with the city of Santa Fe in putting on plays devoted to Afro-Argentine history. In 2004 she wrote a short essay discussing stigmatization of current Afro-Argentines “El negro en una sociedad pretendidamente blanca” (available at http://alainet.org/org/active/show_text.php3?key=1006). Maria Magdelena de la Madrid, also a descendant of Argentine slaves, heads a grassroots community organization in Buenos Aires, “Fundación Africa Vive” (http://www.africavive.org.ar/index2.htm). She played a key role in getting the government to dedicate the monument. Miriam Gomes, a descendant of Cape Verdean immigrants, is particularly important as an Afro-Argentine who is a part of her nation’s academic life. A specialist in Lusophonic literature, she has taught at Argentina’s Pontifical University and the University of Buenos Aires and has written broadly on Afro-Argentine history and sociology. See, for example, Miriam V. Gomes, “Apuntes para una historia de las instituciones negras en la Argentina,” in Dina V. Picotti, comp., El negro en la Argentina: Presencia y negación, 401-428. Duhalde’s prologue may be found in Jorje M. Ford, Beneméritos de Mi Estirpe: Esbozos Sociales (Buenos Aires: Catálogos, 2002).

7. Schávelzon at 13, 24; C. E. Orser, Jr., “The Archaeology of the African Diaspora,” Annual Review of Anthropology vol. 27 (1998), 63-82.

8. Andrews, The Afro-Argentines of Buenos Aires, 68-71.

9. Andrews, The Afro-Argentines of Buenos Aires, 42-63, passim.

10. Alejandro de la Fuente, A Nation for All: Race Inequality and Politics in Twentieth Century Cuba (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001) pp 44-53. Petronio Domingues, Uma história nâo contada: Negro, racismo, e branqueamento em Sâo Paulo no pós-aboliçâo (Sâo Paulo: Editora Senac, 2004) 253-256.

11. See Orser’s discussion of this within the context of historical archaeology and its concern with the interpretation of African artifacts. See Orser, “The Archeology of the African Diaspora,” 67-69. It is, I think, fair to see an implicit acceptance of Darwinist presumptions on the part of Melville J. Herskovits, an early advocate of the view that there were significant survivals of African culture in the United States as well as elsewhere in the Americas. Herskovits saw the survival of African cultural patterns in the Americas as important in rebutting beliefs in African cultural and biological inferiority. See Melville J. Herskovits, The Myth of the Negro Past (Boston: Beacon Press, 1958) 1-32, passim.

12. Rosenblat, La población indígena, 167. Rosenblat notes in passing that Argentina followed the practice common in other nations of counting as Indians those who were “uncivilized” or who lived in tribal communities. Those who lived outside of tribal communities and had adopted Euro-Argentine culture were considered “mestizo” regardless of their degree of indigenous ancestry, thus reducing the Indian population of Argentina (168). George Reid Andrews discusses Afro-Argentine social institutions in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Buenos Aires. See Andrews, The Afro-Argentines of Buenos Aires, 178-200, passim.

13. Peter Laslett, “The Wrong Way through the Telescope: A Note on Literary Evidence in Sociology and in Historical Sociology,” The British Journal of Sociology vol. 27, no. 3, Special Issue, History and Sociology (Sep., 1976) 319-342 (see 321-322).

14. An interesting example in the current renewed interest in Afro-Argentine history is a short profile of Ezeiza that can be found in a community newsletter called La Floresta, representing the Porteño neighborhood where Ezeiza spent most of his life. See “Gabino Ezeiza, payador y cantante,” La Floresta, http://www.la-floresta.com.ar/gabino.htm (accessed August 9, 2006).

15. My observations on “Fort Apache” are based on a visit I made to the community in August 2004. Fort Apache was profiled in the Buenos Aires newspaper El Clarín in March 2005: “Fuerte Apache: Barrio privado.” Clarín Edición Domingo 27 March 2005. http://www.clarin.com/diario/2005/03/27/sociedad/s-945862.htm (accessed September 2006).

16. See Marvin A. Lewis, Afro-Argentine Discourse: Another Dimension of the Black Diaspora (Columbia, Mo.: University of Mo. Press, 1996).

17. Afro-Argentine scholar Miriam Gomes estimates a current Afro-Argentine population of between 500,000 to 800,000. See Miriam Victoria Gomes, “Apuntes para una historia de las instituciones negras en la Argentina: La Población negra en la República Argentina” in Picotti, comp., El negro en la Argentina 401. A pilot census reported in April of 2005 indicated an African-descended population of between 4 and 6 percent of the Argentine total. See “Patricio Downes, “Negros en el pais: Censan cuántos hay y cómo viven” Clarín, 2 April 2005. http://www.clarin.com/diario/2005/04/02/sociedad/s-04815.htm (accessed September 2006). These figures should be approached with some caution. They partly reflect the difficult question of how to classify people with mixed or multiple ancestries. The tradition in Argentina as in other parts of Latin America has been to differentiate, at least at times, among people of African ancestry categorizing individuals as negro, mulato, trigueño, etc. according to phenotype and ancestry or putative ancestry. Afro-Latin activists in recent decades have called for viewing the population of African descent as a unified group, preferring the term afrodescendiente as more inclusive. Of course many individuals with some or in some cases considerable African ancestry do not wish inclusion, making problematic the question who should or should not be counted in any enumeration of the Afro-Argentine or other Afro-American populations.

18. Marcos de Estrada, Argentinos de origen africano (Buenos Aires: EUDEBA, 1979).

19. Some of Figari’s paintings depicting nineteenth-century Afro-Uruguayan life can be seen in Julio Maria Sanguinetti and Ramiro Casabellas, Figari (Buenos Aires: Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, N.D.).

20. Frigerio, Cultura negra en el cono sur.

21. Laura Colabella, “Los negros del congreso”: Nombre, filiación y honor en el reclutamiento a la burocracia del poder legislative argentino (master’s thesis, Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales, Universidad Nacional de Misiones, 2004), 30, 41-42, 57-60, 63, 68-70, 88. One interesting parallel between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is that Perón, like Rosas, seems to have cultivated Afro-Argentines as part of his broader popular sectors coalition, and that he still retains a popularity amongst some Afro-Argentines. Colabella notes that pictures of both Rosas and Perón can be found in the offices of the congressional servants, Ibid p. 66. In a conversation I had with Horacio Pita (note 2 above) in August 2004, he indicated that as a child in the late 1940s, he saw Juan and Eva Perón attend dances at the “Shimmy Club,” an Afro-Argentine dance club that was founded in 1922 and lasted into the 1970s.

22. Simpson, “Porteños de color,” 84. Miriam Gomes discusses Cape Verdean organizations in modern Argentina, see Gomes, “Apuntes para una historia de las instituçiones negras en la Argentina,” 417-420. Argentine anthropologist Marta Maffia, a specialist on immigration to Argentina, has written about Cape Verdean communities in Argentina. See Maffia, “Acerca de reuniones y festas de cabovereanos en Argentina” in Picotti, AfroArgentine Discourse, 429-454.