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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