Posted on 08/23/2019 5:05:24 PM PDT by syriacus
Tens of millions of black Africans were forcibly removed from their homelands from the 16th century to the 19th century to toil on the plantations and farms of the New World. This so-called “Middle Passage” accounted for one of the greatest forced migrations of people in human history, as well as one of the greatest tragedies the world has ever witnessed.
Millions of these helpless Africans washed ashore in Brazil -- indeed, in the present-day, roughly one-half of the Brazilian population trace their lineage directly to Africa. African culture has imbued Brazil permanently and profoundly, in terms of music, dance, food and in many other tangible ways.
But what about Brazil's neighbor, Argentina? Hundreds of thousands of Africans were brought there as well – yet, the black presence in Argentina has virtually vanished from the country’s records and consciousness.
According to historical accounts, Africans first arrived in Argentina in the late 16th century in the region now called the Rio de la Plata, which includes Buenos Aires, primarily to work in agriculture and as domestic servants. By the late 18th century and early 19th century, black Africans were numerous in parts of Argentina, accounting for up to half the population in some provinces, including Santiago del Estero, Catamarca, Salta and Córdoba.
In Buenos Aires, neighborhoods like Monserrat and San Telmo housed many black slaves, some of whom were engaged in craft-making for their masters. Indeed, blacks accounted for an estimated one-third of the city’s population, according to surveys taken in the early 1800s.
Slavery was officially abolished in 1813, but the practice remained in place until about 1853. Ironically, at about this time, the black population of Argentina began to plunge.
Historians generally attribute two major factors to this sudden “mass disappearance” of black Africans from the country – the deadly war against Paraguay from 1865-1870 (in which thousands of blacks fought on the frontlines for the Argentine military) as well as various other wars; and the onset of yellow fever in Buenos Aires in 1871.
The heavy casualties suffered by black Argentines in military combat created a huge gender gap among the African population – a circumstance that appears to have led black women to mate with whites, further diluting the black population. Many other black Argentines fled to neighboring Brazil and Uruguay, which were viewed as somewhat more hospitable to them.
Others claim something more nefarious at work.
It has been alleged that the president of Argentina from 1868 to 1874, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, sought to wipe out blacks from the country in a policy of covert genocide through extremely repressive policies (including possibly the forced recruitment of Africans into the army and by forcing blacks to remain in neighborhoods where disease would decimate them in the absence of adequate health care).
Tellingly, Sarmiento wrote in his diary in 1848: “In the United States… 4 million are black, and within 20 years will be 8 [million]…. What is [to be] done with such blacks, hated by the white race? Slavery is a parasite that the vegetation of English colonization has left attached to leafy tree of freedom.”
By 1895, there were reportedly so few blacks left in Argentina that the government did not even bother registering African-descended people in the national census.
The CIA World Factbook currently notes that Argentina is 97 percent white (primarily comprising people descended from Spanish and Italian immigrants), thereby making it the “whitest” nation in Latin America.
But blacks did not really vanish from Argentina – despite attempts by the government to eliminate them (partially by encouraging large-scale immigration in the late 19th and 20th century from Europe and the Near East). Rather, they remain a hidden and forgotten part of Argentine society.
Hisham Aidi, a lecturer at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, wrote on Planete Afrique that in the 1950s, when the black American entertainer Josephine Baker arrived in Argentina, she asked the mixed-race minister of public health, Ramon Carilio: “Where are the Negroes?” In response, Carilio joked: “There are only two -- you and I.”
As in virtually all Latin American societies where blacks mixed with whites and with local Indians, the question of race is extremely complex and contentious.
“People of mixed ancestry are often not considered ‘black’ in Argentina, historically, because having black ancestry was not considered proper,” said Alejandro Frigerio, an anthropologist at the Universidad Catolica de Buenos Aires, according to Planete Afrique.
“Today the term ‘negro’ is used loosely on anyone with slightly darker skin, but they can be descendants of indigenous Indians [or] Middle Eastern immigrants.”
AfricaVive, a black empowerment group founded in Buenos Aires in the late 1990s, claimed that there are 1 million Argentines of black African descent in the country (out of a total population of about 41 million). A report in the Washington Post even suggested that 10 percent of Buenos Aires’ population may have African blood (even if they are classified as “whites” by the census).
"People for years have accepted the idea that there are no black people in Argentina," Miriam Gomes, a professor of literature at the University of Buenos Aires, who is part black herself, told the Post.
"Even the schoolbooks here accepted this as a fact. But where did that leave me?"
She also explained that almost no one in Argentina with black blood in their veins will admit to it.
"Without a doubt, racial prejudice is great in this society, and people want to believe that they are white," she said. "Here, if someone has one drop of white blood, they call themselves white."
Gomes also told the San Francisco Chronicle that after many decades of white immigration into Argentina, people with African blood have been able to blend in and conceal their origins.
"Argentina's history books have been partly responsible for misinformation regarding Africans in Argentine society," she said. "Argentines say there are no blacks here. If you're looking for traditional African people with very black skin, you won't find it. African people in Argentina are of mixed heritage."
Ironically, Argentina’s most famous cultural gift to the world – the tango – came from the African influence.
"The first paintings of people dancing the tango are of people of African descent," Gomes added.
On a broader scale, the “elimination” of blacks from the country’s history and consciousness reflected the long-cherished desire of successive Argentine governments to imagine the country as an “all-white” extension of Western Europe in Latin America.
“There is a silence about the participation of Afro-Argentines in the history and building of Argentina, a silence about the enslavement and poverty,” said Paula Brufman, an Argentine law student and researcher, according to Planete Afrique.
“The denial and disdain for the Afro community shows the racism of an elite that sees Africans as undeveloped and uncivilized.”
Argentina is among the least diverse countries in the world.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/07/18/the-most-and-least-culturally-diverse-countries-in-the-world/
Argentina, rank (s) among the least culturally diverse countries in the world. Argentina has taken in very few migrants.
Can the caravans head to Argentina, instead of the US?
What is the history in Mexico?
Whew.....that is a hot topic?
“Argentina is among the least diverse countries in the world. “
Good for them.
“Millions of these helpless Africans washed ashore in Brazil...”
No, they didn’t ‘wash’ ashore. They were imported as slaves. There was a bigger slave population in Brazil than in the US. Why do journalists have to screw up basic facts like that? It makes you mistrust the rest of the article.
Forced intermarriage isn’t the same as genocide unless one is a segregationist to a totalitarian degree.
Which, of course, American socialists are.
I have read that Paraguay has the highest percentage of Europeans in S. America.
Yeah, by a factor of 25. Not 25%, 25 times as many (10 million vs 0.4 million for the US).
Pope Francis gave money to migrants, to help them travel to the USA.
I think the Pope should help the caravaners travel to Argentina.
Many of the “migrants” already speak Argentina’s language...Spanish.
You folks ever notice that the one drop of blood notion is still alive and well? Only instead of being a weapon to keep people out it is a tool to keep them on the left wing plantations where every group is to keep to their ideologically assigned place and evidence the beliefs and attitudes that are appropriate to progressives of their skin color.
Gone is the dream to judge people by the content of their character, the Left judges by race and pretty much only by race. Everyone else is a Deplorable or an Uncle Tom.
And they cost more. One of the reasons many Southerners who moved to Brazil in the 1860s returned to the US.
Slavery in Brazil didn’t end until 1888.
ask anyone screaming about racist USA to name just 3 famous black Argentines, Cubans, Brazilians, etc?
then remember the many thousands of famous black Americans known to the entire world.
Just wait until the author figures out what happened to the millions of black slaves brought to the muslim world as there are virtually no decedents of them.
They also killed off most of their indian peoples. With the advent of the mass migration to Europe, Argentina is likely the whitest country in the world.
Pope Francis’s native Argentina is one of the least diverse countries in the world.
Why is the US being accused of being racist, selfish, insular?
> Spanish is nearly universally spoken in Argentina,
> 97% of Argentina is “white” (identifies as white)
> more than nine-in-ten Argentines are at least
nominally Roman Catholic, according
to the CIA’s World Factbook.”
Pew research said…(in 2013)
“Argentina, the Comoros, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Rwanda and Uruguay rank as the world’s least diverse countries. “
No.
Lowest maybe.
Perhaps you are thinking of Uruguay?
Man we fuched up the new worlds bringing them over. Shoulda left em all there.
Fascinating article. Thanks for posting this. It’s got a bit of personal connection for me as my paternal German grandfather visited Argentina sometime in the early or mid 1920s looking to flee Weimar Germany. He eventually moved his young family in 1927 to New York. I never heard why he changed his mind about Argentina. He visited Argentina in the third of five big Germán emigration’s to Argentina, 1918–1933. This third German immigration wave is attributed to increased immigration restrictions in the United States and Brazil as well as the deteriorating conditions in post-World War I Europe.
I worked for a short time in Argentina in 1976 and wondered why it was so white. Chile seemed to be nearly as white, too.
I am sure that what I read said Paraguay was the most European. Of course everything you read is not accurate.
The first two paragraphs deal with Brazilian slavery. “Washed ashore” is just a euphemism for slaves landing on Brazilian shores in slave ships. The author’s meaning is clear to me.
His use of language is good and it’s more colorful and interesting than “Brazil imported millions of slaves” (which is what I would have written in my pedantic and pedestrian style).
“Argentina is among the least diverse countries in the world.”
Maybe I’ll move there. I was thinking Iceland or Switzerland...
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