Afro-Argentines and the State violence( 1973-1983)

Norberto Pablo Cirio Free Chair of Afro-Argentinean and African American Studies National University of La Plata Buenos Aires, Argentina

D uring the last civic-military dictatorship( 1976-1983) and the former Democratic triennium( 1973-1976), the Argentine State exercised physical violence on the civilian population and used the arrest-disappearance as modus operandi. Though under constant verification, the total number of victims has been estimated in around 30 thousand, including Afro-Argentinean of the colonial trunk. Some cases were brought to justice and are treated by the specialized literature, but rarely the African ancestry is taken into account and, by abusing of the social imaginary, it is understood that they are of European descent. For this suggestive operative of silence, the physical violence is replicated as symbolic violence. Thus, certain aspects of their tragedies are neglected without analysis that allows both the justice to holistically meet the human dimension and the history to honor the ethnic diversity of the country. In 2013 I formalized this research to fill a vacant in the field of both the African studies and the Argentine state violence. The project is ongoing and I do not know how many victims were, but I have gathered information on 19 cases that are sufficient for a general approach. Why is relevant this cut in the universe of victims of violence? Because some witnesses agree that the motive was the African ancestry and, consequently, they suffered a plus of viciousness. Moreover, because the pain was nothing new, since it recalled another one suffered by their ancestors: the slave trade or, in emic perspective, the African genocide. Since its colonial period, Argentina was an accomplice and direct beneficiary of the slave trade. After several statements— such as the Freedom of Wombs( 1813)— that rarely transcended beyond the formalities, slavery was abolished in the provinces( 1853) and Buenos Aires( 1861). But the sufferings of the afros did not cease with the awaking to freedom. Inequality tragically embedded in their pursuit of social reintegration because of racist, discriminatory, segregationist and even silencing practices in the historical narrative and the building of the national identity by the powers that be. In the tandem master-slave only the former was financially compensated by the State for becoming detached from the latter, who were not only segregated and turned invisible across the continent, but also subjected to various physical and symbolic violence aimed to leave them in a minority virtually immobilized and relegated to the lowest possible significance( Andrews 2007). Such operatives found a practically irrefutable basis in the evolutionary theory, created and supported by the European academy with an exclusive claim to truth. It ´ s still lurking in the common sense and in