Blacks in BA ?

[ssr]

I am a black female from Texas that is now living in BA I have had many conversations with Argentinos about Blacks. They tend to have a lot of questions and random comments I have heard everything from how do you wash your hair (I have locks) to could you talk like a black person because you should like a white girl (?) this guy also told me that I was the first African-American that he had ever talked to. My all time fav. was when an Argentino tried to explain why there were no blacks and how they died here and he thought it was the most hilarious thing ever! I personally think it’s funny.

My brother-in-law's mother is from Argentina and his Argentine cousins, like many Argentines, spend most of their vacation time inside Argentina. But they finally decided to take their kids on a trip outside of Argentina and chose South Africa so they could go on safari. Well, it was also the first time in their lives--and these are middle-aged people I'm talking about--that they had ever seen black people in real life. They had only ever seen black people on television. Think they had a pretty big culture shock over there in Africa.

 

[HenryNisental]

There is a local book about black history in Argentina.
For once there never were any large plantations here, the few slaves were horse stable boys, house servants, drivers, etc.
Many families treated them as members of the family, they would eat at the same table with the masters,etc.
With the large influx of foreigners in the late 1800,s and early 1900´s they begun to intermarry and were largely " diluted" if I could say so. It happened to tthe jews too.
The Italians were particularly fond of black women, I was told.
Some of the local artist are descendant from blacks, thogh you can not notice it.
good luck henry

 

[missveronica]

I love this post.
As an Argentinian you've answered questions I'd never asked myself.
About touching a black person, never heard of it bringing good luck, but ladies do have some "curiosities" (dont mean to be disrespectful)
Me, personally, I've seen very few black ppl in my almost 31 years.

 

[ssr]

I love this post.
As an Argentinian you've answered questions I'd never asked myself.
About touching a black person, never heard of it bringing good luck, but ladies do have some "curiosities" (dont mean to be disrespectful)
Me, personally, I've seen very few black ppl in my almost 31 years.

My buddy, black guy from London, cleaned up down here. Had hot girls jumping all over him. I'm sure the British accent helped. Black guy with a British accent = super-exotic to Argentine girls. Bastard.

 

[NoVegetables]

Travelking,

Did you ever find a place to get your haircut? I couldn't so I ended up buying clippers and trusting them in the hands of a friend. It would be nice to find a place I could get it professionally done.

 

[2GuysInPM]

There was a pilot census study in 2006 where they found almost 5% of argentines recognized african ancestry. The previous time they included a racial makeup question in the census was 1887.

http://www.clarin.com/diario/2006/06/09/sociedad/s-03801.htm

Interesting results, given the many stories about the subject. Sadly, there's still ignorance, denial, and prejudice among some which have lead to discrimination incidents like this one:

http://www.clarin.com/diario/2002/08/24/s-03001.htm

 

[mendozanow]

The most complete survey of the objective, academic work on this area can be found at http://www.calstatela.edu/faculty/asolomi/images/Afro-ArgReview.pdf

An interesting statistic from this survey: "In 1869, the proportion of the national population who were of African origin was registered as 26.1%; in 1895, it was 1.8%"'.


This means that from over twice the population of blacks in the present USA, there was a massive change to almost negligible. There is no "documentary evidence", but the obvious answer is staring us in the face. In a country where INDEC can say the the present inflation rate is only 1 to 3 %, when we know from being here that it is at least 25%, we know that it is easy to hide the truth. There was a concerted and public action to annilihate the black Argentineans in the late 18th Century. There wer no significant wars from 1870 on (Argentina's only significant war from Independence to the Falklands War was the War of the Triple Alliance in which mainly Paraguayans died and which was bascally over by 1869).

Obviously the only logical conclusion is that all-out genocide was started by President Sarmiento (called "the great educator" here for his public school programs) who hated blacks and feared that the blacks here would be encouraged to be assertive after the American Civil War. He wrote in his diary in 1848 during a visit to the USA after observing the complications that the slavery issue raised in the US at that pre-civil- war time, and that Argentina's solution would only be the death of the blacks. When he was President of Argentina in the 1870's, he allowed and encouraged the paramilitaries to do their worst in a way that the KKK (and the Nazis) could only dream of. Many Gaucho ballads from the 1870's and 1880's joyfully talk about killing blacks as sport practiced with impunity. One of the key passages of Martin Fierro, written in 1872 and considered the national book of Argentina, consists of two such encounters. That they may have been protected by the economy is irrelevant, the laws arenot even in force in Argentina now.

The excuses of war or disease or assimilation intothe general population or swamped by immigrants are completely laughable, they make no logical sense whatsoever. The Argentine education ststem has tried to eliminate Black history in Argentina. We know that as much as half of General San Martin's liberation army in the 1810's were black slaves, and that the celebrated Sargento Cabral who saved San Martin during a battle was black, but the history books here are silent on this point. The southern US states had fromal means of discrininating and eliminating blacks after the civil war, and they did obviously not come close to what Sarmiento and his cohorts did in the late 19th century.

This is just another example of studied ignorance that we see in Argentina every day.

I love Argentina, and I am not black, but it is amazing how truth has / is completely ignored and suppresed here.

 

[mendozanow]

There is a local book about black history in Argentina.
For once there never were any large plantations here, the few slaves were horse stable boys, house servants, drivers, etc.
Many families treated them as members of the family, they would eat at the same table with the masters,etc.
With the large influx of foreigners in the late 1800,s and early 1900´s they begun to intermarry and were largely " diluted" if I could say so. It happened to tthe jews too.
The Italians were particularly fond of black women, I was told.
Some of the local artist are descendant from blacks, thogh you can not notice it.
good luck henry

This is the sort of ridiculous ignorance of history that you see from holocaut deniers. The records of the Jesuit estancias in Cordoba alone shows hundreds of thousands of black colonial slaves. Blacks were preferred because the Indians were considered too weak. The governments' own statistics showed that over a quarter of Argentineans ín 1869 were black.

 

[KatharineAnn]

There are lots of blacks in Once. I used to live there, and you'll find a lot of racial and ethnic diversity - largely from Bolivia, Peru, Paraguay, etc, but also many immigrants from Africa or possibly Brazil. A sad point about where I lived was that all the prostitutes were black ladies from central american countries, or so they say (I personally never spoke to one to be able to confirm this). I'm not quite sure why all the female prostitutes were black ladies. But the transvestite hookers were all white...

 

[winston]

I see nothing but white white European people on Argentinian TV, commercial, in magazine ads, etc. I bet the media isnt that homogeneous in Finland! I live here full time, while the county has more european looking people than some other countries in South America, I see mixed race Argentines all day (mix of indigenous, black, etc).

So, I often wonder what all of those non white Argenine kids think of their future when they never ever see anyone like themselves on tv dramas, reporting the news, on any Arg. TV show or in advertising. No way! Argentine ads have cute blonde pure white kids.

Dont take my word for it, just turn on the Arg. TV channels or buy a magazine. You'll see! (why do you think nearly all Arg. job ads require a photo? They arent racist, its just that it wouldnt look good for the office!)