In Argentina, there are and have been cases of discrimination based on ethnic characteristics or national origin. In turn, racial discrimination tends to be closely related to discriminatory behavior for socio-economic and political reasons."La escuela es el peor nido de los prejuicios y el racismo en Argentina", Interview with Víctor Ramos, president of SOS Internacional
The prevalence and characteristics of racism in Argentina remain debated. Some commentators describe explicitly racist behaviour as marginal or socially rejected, while other writers and researchers argue that racism is widespread and expressed through language, social hierarchies, political identities, and institutional practices.
In 1995, Law No. 24,515 established the National Institute Against Discrimination, Xenophobia and Racism (INADI), which began operating in 1997. The institute was created to receive complaints, conduct investigations, develop public-awareness campaigns, and provide assistance to people affected by discrimination. Against specific groups
Black people
Black people, many of whom were brought to the region through the legal and illegal transatlantic slave trade, constituted a substantial share of the population during the late colonial period. Analyses of the 1778 colonial census estimate that people of African descent made up roughly one-quarter to one-third of the population of the territory that is now Argentina, with higher proportions in Buenos Aires and several interior provinces. Following the gradual abolition of slavery—beginning with the Freedom of Wombs Act in 1813 and culminating in constitutional abolition in 1853—the Afro-Argentine population declined in relative size through a combination of emancipation, intermarriage, wars, epidemics, large-scale European immigration, changing census classifications, and state policies promoting European immigration and whitening ().
Ever since at least the 20th century, blackness has been conceived in Argentina as both a low social class and a biological category. In this view, a person can be considered black, a "negro boludo", regardless of their racial heritage or personal appearance. Not only biological traits such as dark skin, but also class markers such as attitudes, economic status and appearance, can make a person a "negro" (and identify themselves as such), even if they fit other stereotypes of whiteness. The use of the word "negro" is not necessarily derogatory, as it can also be used as a term of endearment.
In 1996, during a diplomatic trip, when asked if there were black people in Argentina, President Carlos Menem remarked that "no, this is a problem Brazil has"."¿Hay negros en Argentina?", BBC Mundo, 16 de marzo de 2007"De donde sos?", The impossible Union of Blackness and Argentinidad by Arielle C. Knight, Wesleyan University, 2011
Whiteness in Argentina Although most other Latin American countries began identifying themselves as multi-ethnic and mixed-race democracies during the 20th century, Argentina continued to identify itself as uniformly white even though it was not.
Self-identification for Indigenous Argentines was first included in the country's 2001 Census, and for Afro-Argentines in the 2010 Census - amounting to 1,306,730 and 302,936 persons, respectively, as of the 2022 Census.
Racial terms A series of terms are used in Argentina that have a certain discriminatory intention and constitute a particular form of racism.
There has been a trend over the last several decades of naming children with indigenous namesIncentivan a poner nombres indígenas, La Gaceta de Tucumán, 20 de diciembre de 2005 such as Ayelén, Maitén, or Lautaro, particularly since the Argentine government revised its laws prohibiting the use of indigenous names.Por la Ley 23.162 de 1984 se agregó el artículo 3 bis a la Ley del Nombre nacional, autoriza la inscripción de "nombres aborígenes o derivados de voces aborígenes autóctonas y latinoamericanas".
There is a tendency to label all indigenous people as or without the speaker specifying, or even knowing, which group the person belongs to. This is a generalized practice that is common to Latin America as a whole and not just Argentina,MANN, Charles (2006), 1491, Apéndice A: Palabras lastradas, Madrid, Taurus, pag. 443–449 and is directly related to the effacement of non-European cultures.
The word mestizo is not used very often in daily speech, although it is relatively common in the context of social sciences and history, sometimes with racial connotations.
The use of as a racist term comes from the colonial caste system which was based on the concept of pure blood: the mestizo was considered inferior to the pure Spanish because his blood was mixed which made him impure. Although today it is known that biologically there is no such thing as a pure person, and various researchers have recycled the term to refer to any exchange of DNA,La investigadora María Elena Sáenz Faulhaber sostiene que el concepto de "raza" debe ser referido al ADN y el de "mestizaje" a su combinación. Para ella "mestizaje" significa que "los respectivos cromosomas con sus genes se combinan entre sí, sin mostrar preferencia alguna por los de uno u otro grupo y con una independencia absoluta de la cultura". Sáenz Faulhaber, María Elena (1993). El mestizaje en la integración de la población colonial, en Bernardo García Martínez, Cecilia Rabell Romero, et al., El poblamiento de México. Una visión histórico demográfica, tomo II: El México colonial, México: Consejo Nacional de Población, pp. 86–107. and various other experts assert that all peoples and races are the result of prior mixing of races, during the Spanish colonization of the Americas the idea was imposed that should be applied only to those persons of mixed indigenous and European ancestry, in order to demarcate their difference from the pure people who were generally of European ancestry.
The racist colonial concept of to some extent endures to this day, as witnessed by the recent debate about the racial origin of José de San Martín, one of the founders of Argentina. Commenting on this phenomenon, historian Hugo Chumbita asserted that "there has been and continues to be resistance to revising official history due to the idea that by corroborating the mixed racial origin of San Martín, then Argentina's image would be tarnished."Prócer mestizo. Investigadores señalan que el ideal americanista y popular del libertador fue impulsado por su sangre indígena, La Capital, 7 de noviembre de 2006 In a similar vein, an Argentine newspaper reported that conservatives voices were complaining: "If the founding father is a mestizo bastard, then so is Argentina."El terremoto sanmartiniano, Los Andes, 31 de agosto de 2001
The word , a combination of ('Bolivian') and ('Paraguayan'), is a blatantly derogatory term that first appeared in the 1990s and its use is growing rapidly in the first decade of the 21st century. The term's derogatory nature comes precisely from the speaker's indifference to the immigrant's identity and a disrespect towards their indigenous background.
The following interview with a rugby player demonstrates how the term is used:
Types of racism in Argentina
"European" racism and Article 25 of the Constitution In Argentina, an extensive racist ideology has been built on the notion of European supremacy.La discriminación en la discursividad social, por Mario Margulis, en Margulis (1998):17–37 This ideology forwards the idea that Argentina is a country populated by European immigrants (straight off the boat), frequently referred to as "our grandfathers", who founded a special type of European society that is not Latin-American. In addition, this ideology holds forth that cultural influences from other communities such as the Aborigines, Africans, fellow Latin-Americans, Arabs, Asians, and Pacific Islanders, are not relevant and even undesirable.
European racism in Argentina has a history of government participation. The ideology even has a legal foundation that was set forth in Article 25 of the National Constitution sponsored by Juan Bautista Alberdi. The article establishes a difference between European immigration (which should be encouraged) and non-European immigration.
Alberdi, the article's sponsor and the father of the Argentine Constitution of 1853, explained in his own words the basis for White-European discrimination:
The discrimination between European and non-European immigration established by Article 25 of the Constitution has survived all subsequent constitutional reforms (1860, 1868, 1898, 1949, 1957, 1972 and 1994).
Alberdi claimed that the "races which could improve the species" in Argentina were those that originated from Western Europe, chiefly Spain, England and France. Alberdi was also very partial to France where he spent much of his life in exile and where he died in 1884. In this way, despite the predominantly Hispanic and Latin culture of Argentina, Alberti proposed a semi-nordicist policy somewhat similar to the later White Australia policy and the United States Immigration Act of 1924.
Alberdi, who was a proponent of French being the national language of Argentina, believed that Latino and Christian traditions were enemies of progress and supported discrimination against Latin American and Jewish immigration.Bárbaros y civilizados, por Pacho O'DONNEL, Desarrollo y región, 30 de mayo de 2006
On the other hand, Argentine racist ideology against Jews became stronger over time. The apex of this tendency occurred when the Argentina foreign minister during the presidency of Roberto M. Ortiz issued a secret order in 1938 to deny Jewish immigrants visas to Argentina.Argentina: Grietas nazis en pasado encubierto, por Marcela Valente, 2005
Antisemitism Leonardo Senkman, editor of the book Antisemitism in Argentina, stated:
Serious acts of racism against Jews have been committed in Argentina, such as the Argentine Chancellor's secret order in 1938 to prevent the arrival of Jews on national territory and the terrorist attacks on the Israeli embassy in 1992 and the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina in 1994. Both attacks targeted Jewish institutions in Argentina, with Argentine investigations concluding that they were planned and carried out by actors operating from outside the country. The terrorist attacks against Jewish targets has sparked a debate between those who believe that they were not antisemitic acts and those who believe that the attacks were the "worst act of anti-Semitism since the second world war".Doce Años y aún sin Respuesta: El Impacto del Atentado a la AMIA Sobre la Comunidad Internacional, por E. R. Goodkind, 18 de julio de 2006, Washington, D.C. (ver)
In an attempt to synthesize the positions of both sides of the debate, the researcher Daniel Lvovich has written:
In 1937, during the government of Augustín P. Justo, the Argentine consul in Gdynia, Poland sent several notes to the Minister Carlos Saavedra Lamas under the heading "Jewish problem" that demonstrate the generalized antisemitic sentiment of the Argentine government. In a letter sent July 13, 1937, on the eve of the Nazi invasion, the consul wrote:
During the military regimes in Argentina, and especially during the dictatorship known as the Proceso de Reorganización Nacional, serious acts of antisemitic persecution occurred. Some were tortured, degraded, and even murdered for the sole fact of being Jewish. In the secret detention centers it was common practice to burn the Star of David onto the bodies of Jewish prisoners. Ramon Camps, the Chief of Police in Buenos Aires, who allegedly kidnapped and tortured Jacobo Timerman, claimed that Zionists were enemies of Argentina and had a plan to destroy the country. This ideology was used as a pretext to implement illegal repressive methods to resolve what was referred to as "the Jewish issue".Ramón Camps: el peor de todos, Terra, 18 de marzo de 2006