IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 6 ENGLISH | Page 75

Rethinking Negritude in Argentina Through Its Historic Moments Omer Freixa Professor and researcher, University of Buenos Aires Argentina Conservatives estimates state that 9 million enslaved Africans came to the New World between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is impossible for this massive influx not to have left its mark. Afro-descendants have a very visible presence in Brazil, Colombia, and Cuba, as well as in other American nations, in smaller proportions. Yet, they have been erased from the register of historical memory in places where they are not so numerous, e.g., Argentina, Costa Rica, and Mexico. The prevailing racism of the dominant classes also embraced a presumption of whitening. Of all the countries where this was the case, Argentina is the most paradigmatic, and considers itself the region’s whitest and most Europeanized nation. Although all the origin of all the Americas is tripartite (Amerindian, European, African), history has purposefully excluded Africans from the country whose capital is known as the “Paris of South America.” Nevertheless, the last census (in 2010), revealed that those with black ancestry are about 2 million of ѡ