IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 6 ENGLISH | Page 82

There was another in 1810, and the
statistical period started in 1869, with
the First National Census under
Sarmiento’s presidency. The Second
National Census (1895) took place under
Uriburu’s government, and there were
six more in the twentieth century (1914,
1947, 1960, 1970, 1980 and 1991): there
have been two since the beginning of the
twenty-first century (2001 and 2010).
Thanks to Anderson, we understand that
those first three were decisive for
configuring the Europeanized, national
citizens who were formed by the 80s and
the Centennial; the sub-Saharan and
Afro-descendant population (and the
indigenous one) were underrepresented.
According to Hernán Otero (2007), this
whitening was based on the idea that
censuses not only quantified the present
moment, but also qualified the future in
the form of a kind of national,
genealogical, carte blanche, more
constructing than describing its results
with a vast and complex rhetoric that
articulates political and historical
elements. This is precisely how the
Second National Census alluded to the
imminent beauty of Argentineness, upon
concluding its “Black Race” chapter’s
few paragraphs: “The issue of races that
is so important in the United States does
not thus exist in the Argentine Republic,
where soon its population will be
completely unified to form a new and
beautiful, white race product of contact
among all the European nations
populating American soil” (Second
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