Afro-Argentines (), also known as Black Argentines (), are Argentines who have predominantly or total Sub-Saharan African ancestry. The Afro-Argentine population is the result of people being brought over during the transatlantic slave trade during the centuries of Spanish domination in the regionGates, Henry Louis. Black in Latin America. New York: New York UP, 2011. Page 2Klein, Herbert S. African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean. New York: Oxford UP, 1986. Print. and immigration.
During the 18th and 19th centuries Black Argentines accounted for up to fifty percent of the population in certain cities, and had a deep impact on Argentine culture. Some old theories held that in the 19th century the Afro-Argentine population declined sharply due to several factors, such as the Argentine War of Independence (c. 1810–1818), high infant mortality rates, low numbers of married couples who were both Afro-Argentine, the War of the Triple Alliance, cholera epidemics in 1861 and 1864 and a yellow fever epidemic in 1871. There are also Afro-Argentines descended from the small wave of Cape Verdean immigration in the 20th century.
In recent years, immigrants of Senegalese, Afro-Venezuelan, Afro-Brazilian, Afro-Uruguayan, Afro-Peruvian, Afro-American, Afro-Colombian, Afro-Ecuadorian and Afro-Caribbean origin have begun to arrive. They currently make up a large part of the country's Black population, although (with the exception of Afro-Uruguayans) they do not share close cultural or historical ties with Afro-Argentines.Educar Argentina. Pasado y presente de los Negros en Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires, Octubre de 1997.
Research in recent decades cites strong racial intermixing with whites and Indigenous peoples in the 18th and 19th centuries as the main reason for the decline of the Black population in Argentina.
Importation of enslaved Africans during colonial period
As part of the process of conquest, the economic regimes of the European colonies in the Americas developed various forms of forced labor exploitation of Indigenous peoples. However, the relatively low population density of some South American territories, resistance by some aboriginal groups to acculturation, and especially the high rate of mortality caused by the diseases introduced by Europeans caused the decline of the native population. Studies have shown that owing to their immunological isolation from the peoples of the Old World prior to first contacts with Europeans from 1492 onwards, some 50%–90% of the indigenous population throughout the Americas died from epidemic diseases,Brendan D. O'Fallon and Lars Fehren-Schmitz, "Native Americans experienced a strong population bottleneck coincident with European contact", PNAS, 20 December 2011, 108 (51) 20444-20448; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1112563108. exacerbated by the stresses brought on by violent conquest, dispossession and exploitation. This led the Spaniards to supplement aboriginal manpower with slaves from West and Central Africa.
Well into the 19th century, mining and agriculture accounted for the bulk of economic activity in the Americas. African slave labor held the advantage of having already been exposed to European diseases through geographical proximity, and African laborers readily adapted to the tropical climate of the colonies. In the case of Argentina, the influx of African slaves began in the colonies of the Rio de la Plata in 1588. European slave traders purchased African slaves, who were then shipped from West Africa across the Atlantic to the Americas and the Caribbean. The slave trade flourished through the port of Buenos Aires, where thousands of African slaves arrived to be sold, and to be sent mostly to Brazil as part of a slave-smuggling network. To provide slaves to the East Indies, the Spanish crown granted contracts known as Asientos to various slave trading companies from Spain and other European nations. However, in Argentina and Uruguay—unlike in other territories of the Viceroyalty—enslaved people were primarily assigned to domestic tasks, as the intensive cultivation that characterized the central and northern parts of the South American continent and the Caribbean did not take place in the Southern Cone.
Before the 16th century, slaves had arrived in relatively small numbers from the Cape Verde islands. Thereafter the majority of Africans brought to Argentina were from ethnic groups speaking Bantu languages, from the territories now comprising Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of the Congo (largely Bakongo and Mbundu people). Relatively few Yoruba and Ewe were taken to Argentina; larger numbers of these groups were taken to Brazil.
The Buenos Aires neighborhoods of San Telmo and Monserrat housed a large quantity of slaves, although most were sent to the interior provinces. The 1778 census conducted by Juan José de Vértiz y Salcedo showed very high concentrations of Black people (though largely the product of varying degrees of racial mixing with white and Indigenous people) in cities located in regions where agricultural production was greatest: 54% in Santiago del Estero, 52% in San Fernando del Valle de Catamarca, 46% in Salta, 44% in Córdoba, 44% in San Miguel de Tucumán, 24% in Mendoza, 20% in La Rioja, 16% in San Juan, 13% in San Salvador de Jujuy and 9% in San Luis, as well as smaller percentages in other cities and towns. For example, one of the currently rich neighbourhoods of the city of Corrientes is still known as "Camba Cuá", from the Guarani kamba kua, meaning "cave of the Black people".
Black people in the independence and early history of Argentina
In 1801 the first Afro-Argentine militias were organised, under the auspices of the Compañía de Granaderos de Pardos libres de Buenos Aires and Compañía de Granaderos de Morenos libres de Buenos Aires. The pardos were free people of mixed European, African, and Native American, particularly Guaraní, descent, whereas the "morenos" seem to have been composed of soldiers of largely African ancestry. These forces were unified into the Batallón de Pardos y Morenos, also known as the Batallón Castas, at a strength of nine companies, plus four auxiliary slave companies, at the time of the first British invasion of the River Plate. Regimental status was gained in 1810, and the new Regimento de Pardos y Morenos participated in the Argentine War of Independence.
In 1812, Argentine politician Bernardo de Monteagudo was not allowed as a member of the First Triumvirate, due to his "questionable mother"—i.e., African ancestry. Bernardino Rivadavia, also of African descent, was one of the politicians barred from joining the triumvirate. The Assembly of the Year XIII, called to establish the new independent state of Argentina, passed the law of freedom of wombs—whereby children born to slaves thenceforth were automatically free citizens—but did not free those who were already slaves. Many Black people were part of militias and irregular troops that eventually became part of the Argentine Army, but mostly in segregated squadrons. Black slaves could, however, ask to be sold and even find a buyer if they were unhappy with their owners.
Forty years on from the 1813 establishment of freedom of wombs, in 1853, slavery was completely abolished. However, after the abolition of slavery, many Black people faced widespread discrimination. Only two of the fourteen schools in Buenos Aires in 1857 admitted Black children, although 15% of students that year were Black. In Córdoba in 1829, Black children were entitled to only two years' secondary schooling, while white Argentine children studied for four years. Universities did not admit Black people until 1853, when slavery was abolished by the constitution.
Black people began to publish newspapers and to organize for their rights. In 1877 one paper, The Unionist, published a declaration of equal rights and justice for all people regardless of skin color. One of its statements read:
Other newspapers were The African Race, the Black Democrat and The Proletarian, all published in 1858. By the 1880s there were about 20 such Black-published newspapers in Buenos Aires, and some researchers consider these social movements integral to the introduction of socialism and the idea of social justice in Argentine culture.
Some Black Argentines entered politics. José María Morales and Domingo Sosa were in action as senior military officers and held significant political posts.
Decline of the Afro-Argentine population
In recent decades, theories have been disputed over the causes of the decline in the Afro-Argentine population. Older theories alleged a genocide as the main factor. Among the causes expressed are the supposed high mortality of Black soldiers in the wars of the 19th century (the theory goes that Black soldiers were a disproportionately high number within the armed forces, and that this was planned by the governments of the time) and in a yellow fever epidemic in 1871 that affected the south of the city of Buenos Aires, as well as mass emigration to Uruguay (due to the fact that there would have been a larger Black population and a more favorable political climate).
Research in recent decades has ruled out such theories. Although it is true that Black people made up an important part of the armies and militias of the 19th century, they were not the majority, nor did their number differ much from that of Indigenous and white people, even in the lower ranks (the so-called cannon fodder). Demographic studies also do not support the view that the yellow fever epidemics that affected Buenos Aires (especially the most lethal, which was that of 1871) had a big effect—on the contrary, they show that the most affected were recent European immigrants living in poverty—and, furthermore, this theory does not explain the decline of the Black population in the rest of Argentina.
The most widely accepted theory today is that the Black population gradually decreased over the generations due to mixture with whites and, to a lesser extent, Indigenous peoples, which occurred frequently from the 18th century in the colonial period, and accelerated even more in the late 19th century (in the already independent Argentina) with the arrival of the massive immigration wave from Europe and the Middle East.
Unlike other regions of the Americas, where there was strict, violent segregation of non-whites in an attempt to prevent racial mixing, the Argentine elite thought that non-white offspring could be improved through genetic mixing with whites (Blanqueamiento). The exception, since the mid-19th century, were those non-whites who still lived in tribal societies that were not part of Argentine culture and were not under the control of the government. Several local Indigenous nations often had conflicts with the government (others, meanwhile, were becoming assimilated into the country's society), and were thus seen as incorrigible savages, an obstacle to progress and a threat to the nation. This led to wars against them (like the Conquest of the Desert) that in some cases ended with genocides or mass murders, along with the colonization of their lands.