HISTORY + VIDEO: Afro-Argentines – Still the people in the land of the vanishing Blacks? > Afro-Europe

Afro-Argentines – Still the people

in the land of the vanishing Blacks?

Have Afro-Argentines stopped being vanishing blacks, as Ebony Magazine called them back in 1973? Ebony editor Era Bell Thompson wrote, “What I found was not a viable, but a vanishing black people: relatively few in numbers, relatively free of racial discrimination and relatively content. Summarized by one gentleman, if there were more of us, perhaps it would be different.”

But thirty-eight years later the attidute has changed. Descendants of slaves are starting to assert their identity. The Global post called it ‘The reawakening of Afro-Argentine culture’. But that’s not easy in South America’s whitest country. But restfull attidute has changes. Now, for the first time in a century and a half, Argentine descendants of African slaves are organizing and going public to assert their identity“We’ve been exiled from the collective memory of Argentina,” said Juan Suaque, a seventh-generation descendant of Argentine slaves, in the Global post. “It’s as if you pass someone in the street and you have to explain your whole life, what and who you are.”

At the beginning of the 1800s, black slaves were 30 percent of the population of Buenos Aires, and an absolute majority in some other provinces. The first president of Argentina had African ancestry, and so did the composer of the first tango. Even the word “tango,” like many other words common in the Argentine vocabulary, has an African root; so do many beloved foods, including the national vices of the asado barbecue and dulce de leche.

To follow up on the story of the Black Argentine soldiers, some links and videos of the Afro-Argentines since they are part of the Black Diaspora, the history of Latin America and of course part of the history of Spain.

Article – Afro-Argentines
The must-read blog – AfroAmericanas
Organisation – Misibamba – Comunidad Afroargentina de Buenos Aires
Organisation – Diaspora Africa de la Argentina

Black history video Afro Argentines