IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 5 ENGLISH | Page 110

who brought with them enslaved Africans for use as workforce and status
symbol. We are talking about a slavedependent world-system represented by
a commercial triangulation of EuropeAfrica-America that achieved a formidable accumulation of wealth for 350
years. This permitted Europe to position
itself as the First World and for the Industrial Revolution (Dussel 2001; Mignolo 2001). Beyond its quantification1,
the fact is that Argentina participated
and benefited from this commerce, academically known as ‘the slave trade’
and ‘the slave route, well into the nineteenth century (1853, in the provinces
and 1861 in Buenos Aires, the years
when slavery was virtually abolished).
Yet, some Afro-Argentines employ a
more politically motivated term, “African genocide,” which I, too, will use.

Currently, our generously monochromatic view of “ourselves and what is
ours” undervalues any non-white presence, denying it, minimizing it, or exoticizing it (making it foreign) (Segato
2007). This explains why common
sense today, and academia (with few
exceptions), continues to insist that
“there are no blacks here,” “there were
few, and they were well treated,” and
“there is nothing left of them.” The desire here is to dramatically and brilliantly differentiate the country from other
countries in the Americas, to give it a
glowing distinction. If music is a form
of aesthetic communication that requires a receptor to fulfill its function,
perhaps we can consider silence as the
absence of the same, or of the transmitter.
We could also talk about express coercion to silence it, a general disinterest in
considering it valuable, pertinent or
current, which led to no one researching
it until recently (Cirio 2007b). Ultimately, silence is a metaphor for a violence
that tends to nullify the uncomfortable
reminder of a slave past and an American present deeply rooted in miscegenation.

What we will see here is the part of our
mat W&