The Whitewashing Of Afroargentines' History

Years back when backpacking alone through South America, I recall wondering "where are all the black people" when I was in Argentina. With my knowledge of the transatlantic slave trade, I was quite surprised to cross borders from Brazil (the country that has the largest population of black people after Nigeria) to Bolivia, then Argentina, and feeling confused as I was the only black person around almost for my entire trip through Argentina.

Some part of me wanted to conveniently believe that somehow there were no slaves in Argentina, but the truth was more sinister. With Argentina's appearance at the World Cup and the clear difference in complexion between players in their team and those in other South American teams, many people are again asking, "What happened to Argentina's black population?"

In the late 18th century, a third of Argentina’s population were slaves or of African origin. In the city of Buenos Aires, often epitheted as the “Paris of the South”, Afrodescendants accounted for half the population in the early 19th century ... Conventional wisdom holds that the Afroargentine population vanished, decimated as cannon fodder in the Paraguayan War, and devastated by subsequent epidemics of yellow fever and cholera. But this shibboleth disregards the existence of a significant Afroargentine community today. Further, it glosses over the way in which the country and its consciousness were systematically and purposely “whitened” by its intellectual and governing class.

In this fascinating read, the reader gets to understand a bit more about an effective whitewashing campaign that has all but eliminated the country's collective memory of its black people, even while incorporating key elements of their culture in theirs (tango, music and dance, culinary feats, etc.). Despite all this, there is still a small, though mostly invisible, Afroargentinian population that makes it difficult for Argentina to deny their existence.