IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 9 ENGLISH | Page 85

civil rights.
However, the so-branded individuals
did not build a black pride to counter
the myth of the white nation and to
challenge the disdain. Blackness turned
away from the reference to the African
origin and the allusions to dark skin
color were progressively related to class
position, regardless of phenotypic traits
(Adamovsky, 2013: 92).
This trend is observed since early
twentieth century. Afro-features were
less and less attributed to individuals
and so the figures of true blacks in
Buenos Aires decreased (Frigerio, 2008,
70). Only from the 1980s on, being
black began to be claimed as a matter of
pride, though the word black keeps on
being mostly used in contemptuous
sense.
The use of epithets as black, black head,
groncho and morocho (brunette)
colloquially refers to the lower classes
and the plebeians by assigning them a
racial type that is not necessarily
visible. Even a white skin person can be
considered a black soul or simply a
black. These epithets play rather a
classist role than a racial mark within a
class identity.
Herein we argue that, thanks to
Peronism and its detractors, this
peculiar conception of Otherness was
imposed in the mid-1940s. Poor became
associated with black regardless of the
African footprint. On the contrary, we
speak of blackhead due to the
zoological barrage, per the critics of the
internal migration movements that
preceded and accompanied Peronism.
The newcomer was the creole from the
inland, the parochial people, the
mestizo, the people without African
roots, according to the functional claim
by the story of the national whitening
(Frigerio, 2008: 72; Solomianski, 2003:
255). Nonetheless, the African footprint
was present and melted among the
people coming from the inland. That
presence was replacing the faces of the

Italian and Spanish immigrants from the
nineteenth century.
Black men and women unconditionally
supported Peronism and came to all
political rallies within the perimeter of
the city, although towards its limits
(Solomianski, 2003: 32). Despite the
friendliness of the Peronist State to
these black people, the official agenda
did not include how to confront the
myth of the white nation. Popular
attempts ended up being rejected by the
powers that be. Blackness ended up
being a metonymy of both Argentine
cultural diversity and popular classes
regardless
of
phenotype,
but
encompassing a unified entirety without
(apparently)
ethnic
oppositions
(Adamovsky, 2013: 99, 111-112).
Conclusion
The anthropologist and researcher
Alejandro Frigerio argues that the
invisibility of blacks takes place not
only in the dominant historical
narrative, but also in the representations
of the daily life. The curious thing is
that the disappearance of the Afro is
still voiced, but the word black is rooted
in the discourse as a colonial hindrance
to allude and to vilify the exploitable
labor force. As Frigerio explains, the
blacks from the 1940s were the new
categorization of subaltern classes, quite
similar to the characterization of true
blacks twenty or thirty years ago, who
were considered missing by the official
historiography.
The invisibility consisted in making
people believe that African descent
were diluted and finally disappeared .
Such a view distorts that African
ancestry was present since the earliest
colonial times and its mark is indelible.
There is clear ethnic link between the
blacks from the past and the blackheads
of the present, because of the dismissive
way to describe them (Frigerio, 2008:
66, 72-73, 76, 79).
Despite the repeated assertion about the

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