IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 8 ENGLISH | Page 52

A contribution to the photographic
study of Afro-Argentinians: The
Collection of Rita Lucia Montero
Norberto Pablo Cirio
National Institute of Musicology "Carlos Vega"
Buenos Aires, Argentina

O

ne of the pillars of the Argentinian
imaginary
emphasizes
the
whiteness of the population and culture.
This allowed us to differentiate
ourselves from the mixed identity as
common.denominator.of.America,.whil
e.approaching.advantageously to the
European powers, considered a model
worth to imitate. We differ from other
American countries for not having
population of sub-Saharan origin, and
we neither recognize it as constitutive
and fundamental part of the nation nor
give it the place and merit it deserves.
Even today the Afro-Argentinians of
colonial tree —those descendants of
African slaves in what is now the
national territory— are one of the most
invisible and less understood social
groups, as a result of the so-called
"certificate of biological and cultural
death", which was as quickly as
forcefully issued in the second half of
the nineteenth century (CIRIO 2008).
This "certificate" asserts that AfroArgentinians disappeared due to four
basic reasons: its massive participation
in the wars of independence (18061825) and from Paraguay (1864-1870),
the yellow fever that devastated Buenos
Aires in 1871 and, as a result of the
wars, the disproportion of more black
women than men, whose miscegenation
with whites led to an increasing
bleaching of their offspring and so the
color palette of the Argentine phenotype
tended toward whiteness. Following this
pattern, the biological disappearance of

Afro-Argentinians was correlative to
their cultural disappearance, since none
of their cultural standards seemed to
survive or to have a social impact.
While the four reasons given are true,
they fail to explain why actually a
considerable sector of our population of
African descent (STUBBS and REYES
2006) recognizes itself as such and
maintain their own cultural practices.
Currently the descendants of enslaved
Africans (who call themselves "the
colonial tree" in order to differentiate
from African immigrants who started to
arrive in the twentieth century) are
fighting for their visibility by promoting
the public debate about their presence.
They have raised the need to revisit the
national historiography, from which
they are virtually excluded, as well as to
better position themselves in the present
and to ensure that the State meets their
demands. Researchers concerned with
the subject are producing new
knowledge for better understanding of
the matter. Among the many
shortcomings in this field of study there
is a shortage of document repositories
as base of the investigations. In a joint
effort between Afro-Argentinians and
the researchers not only involved in
producing
this
knowledge,
but
committed to the fight for historical
reparation, new documentaries roads
have been opened. I’m bringing up my
personnel transit through one of them.

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