Support grows for black awareness in Argentina(1)

Argentina’s small black community, ignored by historical constructions that have traditionally focused on the influence of European immigration, is now fighting for recognition of its contribution to culture in the Argentine capital.

"We are fighting for visibility, for recognition of our contribution to culture, and to resist the prejudice that associates black people only with entertainment and carnival," said Diego Bonga, a musician and luthier of Angolan and Congolese ancestry, and an active member of the Afrocultural Movement in Buenos Aires.

Bonga was born in Uruguay, where "candombe," a musical genre of African origin, is part of the national identity. In the last few decades a wave of Afro-descendants from neighbouring Uruguay, mainly Montevideo, arrived in Buenos Aires, and their drumming has contributed to raising the visibility of black people in Argentina.

The Afrocultural Movement, which emerged in the late 1990s, offers workshops in dance, candombe, capoeira (an Afro-Brazilian blend of martial arts and dance), and making musical instruments, and has a video library and a games room. But for months now it has been threatened with eviction. Its premises, formerly an abandoned factory, are now being claimed by the owners.

Legal action taken by the members of the Movement extracted a commitment from the Buenos Aires city government to provide alternative premises for their activities, which have been declared of cultural interest by the city parliament. Meanwhile they have suspended classes and packed up their equipment in boxes.

"Our culture cannot be learned at a university. We need these spaces in order to preserve it. The centre we created is unique, all the representatives of African culture in Argentina meet here," Bonga said. The Culture Secretariat's promised solution has still not materialised.

Black peoples’ presence and contribution to national culture have been systematically denied by official historiography. There is also a widespread perception that there are no people of African descent in Argentina, where 97 percent of the population describe themselves as white.

However, the latest scientific research has shown that more than half of the population has at least one Amerindian ancestor, and that the average genetic structure of the Argentine population contains a European contribution of around 78 percent, an indigenous contribution of between 16 and 19 percent, and an African contribution of between 2.5 and four percent.

In 1810, when the territory that is now Argentina ceased to be a colony of Spain, black people made up 30 percent of the population of Buenos Aires, and in some provinces they were the majority, as in Córdoba in the centre, Catamarca in the west and Tucumán in the north.

This very significant population, descended from Africans brought over as slaves in colonial times, was decimated when black soldiers served as cannon fodder in the War of the Triple Alliance (1864-1870), in which Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay virtually devastated Paraguay, which lost one million of its then 1.3 million people.

The yellow fever epidemic that killed off about eight percent of the population of Buenos Aires, apparently introduced by soldiers returning from the war, caused ravages particularly among Afro-descendants, who lived in overcrowded conditions without any sanitation.