IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 9 ENGLISH | Page 84

marched; Perón appeared in Plaza de Mayo to deliver a speech more substantial than the previous one a week ago (Rapoport, 2010: 137-138). This rally against antiPeronism proved that the establishment was no longer in power. Peronism, poverty and Blackness Thusly, the unprecedented mass demonstration on October 17, 1945, gave birth to Peronism. A new and decisive stage in the history of Argentina was open by the founding pact between the leader and the people. From there, all massive popular concentration had a plebiscitary legitimizing effect for the nascent regime (Torre, 2002: 33). Peronism was born as a warning to those who described the rally as a gesture of barbarism, in which thousands of sansculottes from various parts of Greater Buenos Aires came to Plaza de Mayo bearing the brand of Peronist identity marked by drums and popular songs (Solomianski, 2003: 256). The enemies of this budding movement did not see a popular feast, but a portrait of barbarism against the status quo. And the word black surfaced in this context to name these popular sectors that became very visible in the City of Buenos Aires. The demonstration on October 17, 1945, culminated at Plaza de Mayo and the demonstrators cooled themselves at the fountain. The historical study of the working class in twenty-century Argentina omitted the dimension of skin color, while the elite building the nation claimed the indisputable Whiteness and Europeanism of the people. Thus, the disappearance of the Africans or, at most, their minimal presence without specific weight in society, was raised since the late nineteenth century to cement the idea of no legacy in the present. The melting pot theory explained how the perfectly white Argentina was created, but about 5% of its population is of African descent. Being colloquially branded as black and having a dark skin are interpreted as signs of non-European origin, but they are also indicators of a rather low social status, marginalization, and negative consideration (Adamovsky, 2013: 8789; Frigerio, 2008: 63, 66-67; Picotti, 1998: 42, 79; Solomianski, 2003: 16). As Yrigoyen´s years ago, Perón's followers were dismissed as blacks associated with an alleged barbarity. The purpose was to justify their innate inability to exercise their 83