Identidades in English No 4, December 2014 | Page 50

blacks disappeared without leaving a trace holds
no water at all in the face of historical evidence.
The Afro-Argentine problem rests in the fact that
it is not acknowledged, and in the repression of its
representation in the shaping of the national imaginary and resulting narrative. Perspectives that
make invisible the contributions of this social
group tend to confine their presence to the colonial (non-Argentine) past and highlight their current absence, to reinforce the myth of their
extinction. For example, at school presentations
children in blackface selling empanadas, candles,
and other products represent scenes of 1810, commemorating the year independence was declared.
Everyone knows that it was blacks that mostly did
this kind of work. Yet, as if by magic, at commemorations of Argentina’s Independence Day,
July 9th, all the actors are white.
To counter this myth, we should recall that AfroArgentines made numerous contributions to our
national culture, even if historical rhetoric took on
the task of silencing them (quite successfully).
Three specific areas in particular are worth a close
look: statistics, language, and music. The most recent national census (2010) estimated the Afrodescendant population at about two million. At
least 150,000 people self-identified as Afro-Argentines. As a result of the Diaspora, a considerable group of Cape Verdeans (and their
descendants) came to Buenos Aires and other areas close to the capital, from the beginning of the
twentieth century on. They now number about
15,000, although they aren’t even noticed in the
context of the enormous mass of people that arrived from Europe. Currently, Argentine Spanish
contains 1,500 words that were introduced by African slaves; they are called Africanisms and
fused with lunfardo (port slang in the River Plate
area). Words like mina, mucama, quilombo, and
tango are some of the quite commonly used
words in Argentine speech, and they are African
in origin, principally from the Bantu language
family spoken in central and southern Africa.
Even so, slaves from western Africa also ended
up in the Río de la Plata region. Throughout Latin
America, the devil is seen as mandinga; it is no
coincidence that this word is the name of an ethnic group from West Africa that was enslaved in
America.

50

The tango, which quintessentially defines Argentina, is African in origin (although this is highly
disputed). Those who started developing the
genre, in its early days, were black. Today, wellknown pianist and composer, Horacio Salgán, is
an Afro-Argentine. The word ‘tango’ is an Africanism that had multiple uses associated with the
slave trade; it is of Yoruba origin (an ethnic group
in Nigeria) that explains the presence of the god
of thunder, so ‘tango’ is like something sacred:
Shangó is the orisha of thunder and lord of percussion instruments. Candombe, an extremely
popular Río de la Plata rhythm, is undoubtedly
African in origin. Some link it to the birth of
tango, and the famous milonga, too. This is more
evidence of the black imprimatur on Río de la
Plata Spanish.
What is the place of blacks today? We must repatriate the absence that resulted from the efforts
of an oppressive group to make invisible another
oppressed group; they put into action a deliberate
policy to negate and silence this reality. Despite
this terrible silence, one of the most common insults employed when talking about the poorest
people in society (and they are not necessarily
non-whites) characterizes them as “shitty blacks,”
“people with black souls,” “pickaninnies,” and
“gronchos.” Throughout much of the Americas,
“blackness” now refers not only to Africanness,
but also to the lowest element in society.
This is the reality, the ways that an exploitable
workforce are referred to and reviled, as a lingering hindrance since colonial times. According to
Van Dijk, Latin American racism confuses social
class with the idea of a “color hierarchy.” In the
Argentine case, said identification is not racial,
but socio-economic, as Argentine sociologist
Alejandro Frigerio explains it. The problem lies
with the fact that despite the myth of physical disappearance (in theory) of Afro-Argentines, they
reappear (diffusely, along with others) negatively
in rhetoric, as marginalized subjects who are no
longer racialized. Thus, racism is not only a relevant issue for Argentina, but also for all of Latin
America. Yet, as a prestigious Argentine musician once sang: “Some Things Are Better Left
Unsaid.”