Contesting Racism
Democratic Citizenship, Human Rights, and
Antiracist Politics in Argentina
by
Barbara Sutton
In Argentina, racism is a relatively hidden but entrenched social problem that has
undermined democratic citizenship and social justice efforts. An analysis of ethno-racial
discourses (by the state, in the media, and in self-identity representations) as well as
political strategies for contesting racism reveals that civil society and governmental
organizations have extended frameworks that already had resonance in Argentina, borrowed approaches from other places, and formulated strategies in the context of international dialogue.
Keywords: Argentina, Racism, Citizenship, Human rights, Politics
In Argentina, racism is a relatively hidden but entrenched social problem
that has undermined democratic citizenship and the possibility of social justice. Argentines’ widespread perception that “we don’t have racial problems”
is reflected in the work of many scholars, who tend to overlook racism and
focus exclusively on other important issues such as economic crisis, party politics, poverty, and the legacy of state terrorism. While many of these studies
would benefit from attending to the way racism intersects with the problems
under examination, a small body of literature addresses racism explicitly
(e.g., Andrews, 1980; Margulis and Urresti, 1998; Courtis, 2000; Villalpando
et al., 2005). Galen Joseph (2000: 337) notes that, for many Argentines, race,
“like class in the US, is taboo: the proverbial elephant in the room.”
While still a marginalized issue, racism in Argentina has received increasing attention in academic and political circles during the past decade. Recent
studies reveal racism to be an important mechanism of exclusion, one that permeates other cleavages such as inequalities based on class, gender, national
origin, and citizenship status. This article examines responses by civil-society
groups and government institutions to Argentina’s specific configurations of
racism. First I provide a brief account of the historical promotion of whiteness
Barbara Sutton is an assistant professor of women’s studies at the University at Albany, State
University of New York. She is interested in social inequalities, body politics, human rights,
women’s and global justice movements, and Latin American societies (particularly Argentina,
her country of origin). Research for this article was supported by the Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars and the Ford Foundation. The author thanks the following
scholars for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article: Guillermo O’ Donnell,
Enrique Peruzzotti, Joseph S. Tulchin, Khaya Clark, Beth Piatote, Kari Norgaard, Elizabeth
Borland, Hava Gordon, and Marcela Mendoza.
LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 163, Vol. 35 No. 6, November 2008 106-121
DOI: 10.1177/0094582X08326022
© 2008 Latin American Perspectives
106
Downloaded from lap.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on May 17, 2016
Sutton / CONTESTING RACISM IN ARGENTINA
107
and marginalization of people signified as ethno-racial “others.” Then I analyze
contemporary ethno-racial discourses by the state, in the media, and in selfidentity representations. Finally I discuss governmental and nongovernmental
political strategies and frameworks for contesting discrimination based on
race-ethnicity, describing in particular the interpenetration of antiracist and
other human rights struggles, the politics of visibility/invisibility, and the
impact of transnationalism.
I draw on several sources of information. In 2002–2003 I conducted a qualitative project focused on the politics of women’s bodies in Argentina in which
a number of interviewees drew on prevailing racial discourses, shared experiences of racist discrimination, and/or described their antiracist efforts.1 In
2005–2006 I looked more specifically at the connections between racism and
the lack of effective democratic citizenship. I conducted interviews with
members of governmental and nongovernmental organizations that include
racial discrimination among the problems they address and studied documents that they had produced.2 I also analyzed the coverage of racism and
xenophobia in the print media.
ARGENTINA “THE EUROPEAN”:
PROMOTING WHITENESS, SUSTAINING RACISM
Processes of exclusion with racial overtones have deep historical roots in
Argentina. The nineteenth-century nationhood project was geared toward
making Argentina more economically powerful, white, and “civilized”
(Carballude, 2005; Quijada, Bernand, and Schneider, 2000; Shumway, 1991).
This involved the decimation of indigenous populations (especially during
the “Conquest of the Desert” in the late 1870s) and the annexation of the lands
they inhabited. The government also encouraged European immigration,
diluting the presence of non-European groups, including Afro-descendents
(Andrews, 1980; Liboreiro, 2001). The project’s result was the unjust imposition
of a dominant model of citizenship based on the legacy of white Europeans
(Rotker, 2002; Viñas, 2002), particularly Spaniards and Italians. The seemingly
inclusive idea of the crisol de razas (melting pot), popularized at the dawn of
the twentieth century (Devoto and Otero, 2003), failed to incorporate on an
equal footing those groups rendered invisible.
The national narrative posits that Argentines “descend from the boats” that
brought (white) Europeans. The “others” who have also inhabited the country
are seen as having conveniently disappeared. In the case of indigenous
people, disappearance is attributed to conquest, framed either as genocide or,
with no remorse, as a successful military campaign. The alleged disappearance of Afro-descendents is often attributed to their having been killed in wars
and by disease in the nineteenth century. Villalpando et al. (2005: 96) point out
that the dominant narrative also marked the discrimination against Jewish,
Roma, Armenian, and Arab peoples, deemed “inassimilable” at the beginning
of the twentieth century. Miller (2004: 90) suggests that Argentina “circumvented” the notions of mestizaje common in other parts of Latin America: “As
processes of miscegenation and mixture are purified or simply denied,
Downloaded from lap.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on May 17, 2016
108
LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
Argentina is established as a site of whitened and enlightened mestizaje” (82;
see also Oboler and Dzidzienyo, 2005: 8).
In Argentina, class inequality is one of the ways in which racism has done
its work. In El cabecita negra, Hugo Ratier (1971) delineated how notions of
class, civilization, and race were intertwined in the thinking of nineteenthcentury ideologues such as Domingo F. Sarmiento and Juan Bautista Alberdi.
While positions of economic privilege are often associated with people of
European descent, people with mestizo or indigenous features have historically been located among the poor and the working class (Villalpando et al.,
2005). The racial coding of class continued well into the twentieth century,
shaping specific sociopolitical developments such as internal migration and
Peronism. The industrialization that took place in Argentina after 1930 was
accompanied by the massive migration of people from rural areas to urban
centers in search of work. Buenos Aires was a prime destination, and here
indigenous or mestizo (“brown”) migrants met with the scorn and even
hatred of members of the middle and upper classes. The working class found
a champion in Juan D. Perón, who won the presidency in 1946 with the help of
this new political force (Brennan, 1998). The swelling presence of poor and
working-class people from the “interior” horrified the privileged of Buenos
Aires, who described these internal migrants in racialized and pejorative
terms such as cabecitas negras (little black-heads) and referred to their migration as an aluvión zoológico (zoological flood). Ever since, the term cabecita negra
has invoked images of poor dark- or brown-skinned people. Nowadays it is
replaced by other derogatory labels such as negro villero (black from the shantytown), eliciting similar images (Villalpando et al., 2005). This common
dynamic, which inscribes racialized bodies and cultures into social class, has
been called the “racialization of class relations”3 (Margulis and Urresti, 1998).
Although the marginalization of racialized individuals is part of the
Argentine social fabric, the hegemonic discourse has provided few ways to
articulate experiences of racism (Farred, 2004; Joseph, 2000). In the Latin
American context, the playing down of racism is not unique (Dulitzky, 2005;
Warren and Twine, 2002), but different countries have developed specific forms
of racism, often tied to their own nationhood projects. Several writers have
argued that inattention to racism in different Latin American countries is related
to an implicit (or explicit) comparison with the United States (Dulitzky, 2005;
Wade, 2003; Warren and Twine, 2002). With this reference in mind, racism is
construed as tension between blacks and whites associated with the legacy of
slavery, racial segregation, and discrimination. From this perspective, racism is
presented as almost the monopoly of the United States. However, as Warren
and Twine (2002: 540) argue, the “use of racial conflict, rather than racial sentiments, disparities, or discrimination, as the principal measure of the ‘race problem’” can blind observers to local racist dynamics. Joseph (2000: 336) points out
that the alleged lack of racial problems in Argentina is sometimes explained by
saying that “there are no blacks” in the country.
The dominant culture in Argentina promotes a deracialized “common
sense”4 that obscures the racial hierarchies that permeate everyday life, the
history of the nation, and its formally democratic institutions. While this
common sense, in practice, evokes racialized images (e.g., valuing whites over
Downloaded from lap.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on May 17, 2016
Sutton / CONTESTING RACISM IN ARGENTINA
109
“others”), it appears to be deracialized in that it eschews the concept of race,
racial identity, racial tension, or any other consciously racial discourse for
understanding Argentine society. The prevailing emphasis is on an “Argentine”
national identity, but since this identity is coded as white and Europeanness is
repeatedly asserted, we can conclude that “race” matters to many Argentines
despite rhetoric to the contrary.
While race has no scientific basis, racism has real consequences. For
Argentines who have been signified as ethno-racial “others” and have experienced invisibility, everyday mistreatment, physical violence, erasure from
history, economic disadvantage, expulsion from their land, harassment by the
authorities, racist media representations, and environmental injustice, racism
continues to be very real even though the culture does not provide sufficient
tools to name it.
CONTEMPORARY ETHNO-RACIAL DISCOURSES:
STATE, MEDIA, AND IDENTITY
STATE DISCOURSES
Historically, the Argentine state has fostered racism both with concrete policies and practices (e.g., military campaigns, immigration laws, the justice system)
and with the promotion of particular “stories” about Argentina’s population
(e.g., through public education, the media, official information). Yet the state is
not a monolithic structure but a site where conflicting interests and worldviews
play out. Since the restoration of democracy in 1983, gestures toward progressive
policies have coexisted with racist governmental discourses.
One way the state reproduces racism is through the construction of restrictive categories of belonging and suspicion. For instance, police harassment of
members of the Bolivian community for portación de cara (carrying face)—
profiling based on physical appearance—has been one of the preoccupations
of the Federación de Asociaciones Civiles Bolivianas (Federation of Bolivian
Civil Associations—FACBOL). The director of Africa Vive (Africa Lives), a
nongovernmental organization that promotes Afro-Argentines’ rights, also
suffered this type of discrimination when she was detained at the airport on
suspicion of holding a false passport. The officers apparently could not believe
that she could be both Argentine and black (Kiningsberg, 2002). The state is
thus implicated in racist practices not only through the ideas it helps to spread
about the “authentic” Argentine but also by policing the perceived “deviant”
subject. In the aftermath of 9/11, the surveillance of racialized groups took a
new twist. As the U.S. government waged the “war on terror” and asked other
countries to join it, a number of people with Arab last names and from Muslim
countries were detained in airports, border towns, and tourist destinations in
Argentina (e.g., Carbajal, 2005; Fourcade, 2005; La Nación, 2005b).
The image that the state projects abroad also provides a lens for examining
ethno-racial politics at home. World fairs, travelers’ guides, tourist brochures,
and other official information for visitors are sites where national identity is
performed and packaged as an export product. A visit to the web site of
Argentina’s Secretariat of Tourism during 2006 revealed the reiteration of old
Downloaded from lap.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on May 17, 2016
110
LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
tropes. While the web site called attention to “colorful” attractions (fiestas,
rituals) related to indigenous traditions, Buenos Aires (which in the dominant
imaginary is coded as European) was presented as “the most elegant and the
busiest city in South America which represents the Argentine essence”
(Secretaría de Turismo de la Nación, 2006). This vision of civilization and
modernity is closely tied to racialized portrayals of the population. The official
web site also informed prospective visitors that
95% of the population is white and most are descendants of Italians and Spaniards.
As a result of the massive European immigration, the white and Indian half-castes
[mestizos] were slowly reduced and at the present they amount only to 4.5% of the
population. The pure indigenous population—Mapuches, Collas, Tobas, Matacos,
and Chiriguanos—amount to 0.5% of the population.
Another official web site, that of the Ministry of Foreign Relations, has offered
ethno-racial statistics, stating that Argentina’s “ethnic groups” are the following:
“Whites (85%), mestizos (10%), aborigines and others (5%)” (Ministerio de
Relaciones Exteriores, Comercio Internacional y Culto, 2006).
While it is not my intention to challenge the importance or magnitude of
European immigration to Argentina, I do want to raise some questions about this
official information. First, one wonders where the data for these quantitative
statements came from. These kinds of statistics are reproduced by different sources
and accepted as truths, but it is unclear how the numbers were calculated and
the categories constructed. Were these results calculated on the basis of selfidentification? Are these projections based on historical immigration figures?
How is mestizaje accounted for? How is “whiteness” conceptualized? Who
did the count? My inquiries of various government agencies5 did not yield
precise information regarding the research from which these data originated.
The national census—a major official instrument—has traditionally not
used race-ethnicity as a category of information.6 It has collected data on
immigration but has generally not accounted for ethno-racial variation among
people born in Argentina. A few years ago the census included a question to
determine how many people identify themselves as descending from or
belonging to an indigenous group (INDEC, 2001).7 Activists from the Afrodescendent community have been demanding that government agencies
acknowledge their existence as well. While the census does not use race as a
category of information, the alleged irrelevance of racial categories has not
impeded other governmental branches (e.g., the Secretariat of Tourism, the
Ministry of Foreign Relations) from making statements and even presenting
numbers about the population’s racial makeup.
MEDIA DISCOURSES
As in other parts of the world, and despite claims of objectivity, the media
play a key political role in Argentina, affecting public opinion, government decisions, and political agendas. I examined the coverage of issues related to racism
during 2005 in a collection of newspaper articles on all sorts of discrimination kept by the National Institute against Discrimination, Xenophobia, and
Racism8—mainly from the nationally circulating newspapers Clarín, La Nación,
Downloaded from lap.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on May 17, 2016
Sutton / CONTESTING RACISM IN ARGENTINA
111
and Página 12. From this corpus I analyzed 178 pieces broadly related to racism.
The articles pay special attention to cases involving sports, celebrities, and
people in the political arena. Some space is dedicated to reporting research,
court cases, and legislative changes related to discrimination or ethnic minorities. Forty-four of the articles refer explicitly to racism, racial discrimination, or
racial hatred.
The articles I examined were more likely to talk about racism when there
was a willful agent (e.g., graffiti painting) or interpersonal interaction (e.g.,
physical aggression) than to report cases of institutionalized racism and frame
them as such. In some cases, the news reports themselves reinforced racist
assumptions. For example, a La Nación article reporting that 57 percent of
indigenous children in the province of Misiones are malnourished presents
an expert opinion attributing the problem to indigenous people’s “failure to
assess the illnesses that they suffer.” The article informs us that indigenous
people “don’t have the same assessment of a thin child who has not eaten all
day, they let more time pass before obtaining medical attention” (La Nación,
2005a). This cultural explanation of indigenous malnourishment depoliticizes
the problem and skirts the question why indigenous children have little access
to food in the first place. Why are indigenous populations likely to be poor?
How have the destruction of the natural environment and imposed economic
arrangements affected their ability to produce or obtain food? Do they have
proper transportation? Do they have access to medical facilities and to doctors
who speak their language and understand their culture? These are some questions that could point in the direction of institutionalized racism but are not
even considered. The reader is left with the idea that indigenous people must
be solely to blame for their problems.
Conversely, the same newspaper published a piece that discredited—as too
political and one-sided—a press release signed by a reporter from TELAM
(the official news agency) that called the conquest and colonization of the
Americas the “greatest genocide in history” and opposed the celebration of
October 12, Día de la Raza (La Nación, 2005c). The critique embedded in La
Nación was twofold, objecting to the official agency’s presentation of a politicized
version of history that adopted an “indigenist” tone and disputing the veracity
of that version by reporting expert opinions in contradiction—for example, a
historian’s view that “while the conquerors mistreated the conquered they did
not intend to eliminate a culture” and therefore it was not genocide. While
from some perspectives the TELAM report may have been controversial or
inaccurate, La Nación could have used the opportunity to initiate a discussion
about the meanings and assumptions behind the Día de la Raza and could have
given voice to groups that are often not heard, such as indigenous people.
While the media do report instances of racism and sometimes disseminate
useful information about the plight of different ethno-racial groups, the
coverage usually does not lend itself to an understanding of institutionalized
racism or mundane/“private” forms of racism (e.g., the fact that a Jewish
surname may preclude access to a job) (Gomel et al., 2005: 293). Furthermore,
the media sometimes perpetuate racism: The radio show host Oscar González
Oro, who had been nominated for an important media award, said in reference
to Bolivian women that “the cholas continue to give birth by hanging from a
Downloaded from lap.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on May 17, 2016
112
LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
tree and expelling the fetus in a vertical position on the ground . . . amazing!
And the corpses of the children swim in one of the main rivers that go to La
Paz” (as quoted in Página 12, 2005). In order to counter racist discourses,
members of marginalized groups have developed their own communication
venues, which analyze social problems and disseminate culture in their own
terms. For example, Grimson (2005b) describes the significant role of radio shows
managed by Bolivian immigrants in this respect. Indigenous communities
(e.g., Toba, Mapuche, and Pilagas) have created their own media network,
with radio shows and a news agency (Gorodischer, 2005). Yet the ownership
structure of the mass media makes it difficult for marginalized groups to reach
a wide audience.
IDENTITY DISCOURSES
While in Argentina race is usually not an explicit category of self-identification, some people are still placed in racialized categories. The imposed
placement of people in the “wrong” categories in everyday language and
interactions makes self-representation a particularly slippery terrain. People
with indigenous or mestizo ancestry have often been placed in the “black”
category (e.g., cabecita negra or negro) or in the “foreign” category (e.g., “Bolita,”
a slur meaning “Bolivian”) even if born in Argentina. Grimson (2005a: 26)
argues that in Argentina “‘blackness’ was constructed around characteristics
other than the conventional African phenotype.” The stigmatization of the
cabecita negra is a case in point. Yet, whereas the “blackness” of the cabecita negra
usually invokes indigenous or mestizo (“brown”) phenotypes, the erasure of
the Afro-descendent population from Argentine consciousness also suggests
a racist connotation of “blackness” as pertaining to black Africa. This poses a
paradox: while Afro-descendents who want to be recognized as such have a
hard time asserting their blackness and their Argentine belonging (hence the
power of labels such as “Afro-Argentine”), many other people who are poor
and have indigenous ancestry have been called negros/as. Other people are
also forced into categories that may not describe them correctly, such as “Turks”
for people of Arab origin, “Russians” for Jewish people, and “Chinese” for
people of Asian descent.
In my study on body politics, I interviewed women who exhibited a spectrum of skin-color hues and other physical characteristics that can function as
racial signifiers. When I asked them about their ethno-racial identities, many
of them were puzzled, reluctant to identify themselves as racialized persons,
or evidenced with their questions and comments that race-ethnicity was not
an identity category that made sense to them. For example, Viviana, a lightskinned middle-class woman, responded, “I . . . I think I am . . . I don’t know,
Arian [laughs].” Candela, a brown-skinned poor woman, said, “I never paused
to think about it [laughs]. I don’t know, I have no idea. Uhhm, I think that—
based on the movies—I’m Latina.” Rosalía, a woman of working-class background, looked at me confused and said, “I have no idea!” Race is more often
invoked in Argentina when making derogatory comments than as positive
self-identification. Furthermore, in that country it is not customary to include
questions about race-ethnicity in surveys, business forms, or government
Downloaded from lap.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on May 17, 2016
Sutton / CONTESTING RACISM IN ARGENTINA
113
documents. Finally, major social conflicts and confrontations (e.g., Peronists
versus anti-Peronists) have not been defined in terms of race-ethnicity even
when this was an implicit component in the conflict (e.g., in constructions of
working-class Peronists as cabecitas negras). Yet some groups have organized
around their ethno-racial identities to redress social injustice and racist
discrimination.
ANTIRACIST POLITICS: CONTESTING DISCRIMINATION,
EXCLUSION, AND OBLIVION
A number of civil-society groups and government institutions have taken
antiracist action in contemporary Argentina, particularly since the transition
to democracy. Grimson (2005b) and Briones (2004) observe that international
attention to questions of diversity and multiculturalism has also influenced
the local level, politicizing identities, affecting the flow of funds from transnational agencies, and shaping political debates about the distribution of economic and symbolic resources.
The Argentine government has moved to redress discrimination based on
race, ethnicity, and national origin, among other things by adopting the
International Convention against Racism, which has constitutional rank. In
1988, Law 23.592 established the legal bases for antidiscrimination claims and
set penalties for crimes driven or aggravated by hatred of a racial, ethnic, or
religious group or nation. In 1995, a government agency, the Instituto
Nacional contra la Discriminación, la Xenofobia y el Racismo (National
Institute against Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Racism—INADI), was created to design and ensure the application of antidiscrimination policies. In
2003, Law 25.871 established the right of immigrants to be admitted to private
or public educational facilities and to receive medical attention, no matter
what their immigration status. Currently, the Patria Grande program aims
to regularize the immigration situation of migrants from Mercosur and
associated countries.
While many of these policies are positive steps, there is a gap between the
letter of the law and its implementation. Human rights organizations like the
Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (Center of Legal and Social Studies—
CELS) have reported the deficiencies of the antidiscrimination law, its almost
nonexistent application, and insufficient dissemination of information about
its existence (CELS and CAJ, 2001). Institutions like the INADI, while necessary, also have shortcomings described by people both outside and inside
them. Among the problems observed are insufficient funding, vulnerability to
political changes, political appointments for technical positions, short-term
contracts for workers, lack of rotation of nongovernmental organizations on
the board, and discontinuity for projects as a result of both internal restructuring and the country’s precarious economic conditions.
The INADI and other government agencies, with the support of the United
Nations, have produced a National Plan against Discrimination that includes
proposals to fight racism and other forms of discrimination based on gender,
age, sexual identity, religion, disability, nationality, and economic status,
Downloaded from lap.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on May 17, 2016
114
LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
among others. The document presents racism as a key axis of discrimination
that permeates other forms. It also analyzes the situation of “ethnic-national”
groups that have been targets of severe discrimination (indigenous, Afro,
Jewish, Arab, Roma, and Latin American and Asian immigrants [see also
Braylan and Jmelnizky, 2006; Casaravilla, 1999; Courtis, 2000]). In December
2005, Presidential Decree 1086 approved the plan and assigned the INADI the
task of coordinating efforts to implement it. The plan consists of 247 proposals to change aspects of legislation, the justice and penitentiary system, security forces, public administration, education, mass media, health care,
religious institutions, and migration and refugee policies. The implementation
of the plan requires political will to allocate resources to sectors traditionally
neglected and to infringe on the privileges of groups with more power.
THE POLITICS OF HUMAN RIGHTS
Human rights frameworks gained momentum in Argentina with the return
of democracy in 1983. Such discourses demand justice in relation to the actions
of state terrorism during the last military dictatorship (1976–1983): torture,
disappearance, concentration camps, illegal executions, and appropriation of
children. However, they can also foster public understanding of racism,
particularly since the language of human rights is increasingly familiar to
people because of the activism of human rights organizations. State agencies
such as the Secretariat of Human Rights reflect this connection: its mission
includes “reparatory” initiatives related to state terrorism as well as work to
protect the rights of groups (e.g., indigenous peoples) whose members have
historically been discriminated against. Expanded definitions of human rights
resonate with antiracist struggles given that various forms of racism undermine the actualization of human rights to food and shelter, physical integrity,
free speech, decent work, and so forth. In fact, not to suffer discrimination
based on “race” has been defined as a human right in itself (Secretaría de
Derechos Humanos and Ministerio de Justicia y Derechos Humanos, 2005).
Some civil-society organizations composed of ethno-racial minorities have
shown the interconnections between racism and human rights violations associated with state terrorism. For example, the Delegación de Asociaciones
Israelitas Argentinas (Delegation of Argentine Israelite Associations—DAIA),
a major Jewish organization, has established this link by disseminating information about how anti-Semitism infused the “special treatment” that the
military inflicted on the Jewish disappeared (Braylan et al., 2000). In 2006, the
DAIA organized a number of activities repudiating both state terrorism and
racism in commemoration of the thirtieth anniversary of the last military
coup. Africa Vive also draws on and contributes to public understanding of
human rights in Argentina by pointing out that Afro-Argentines were “the first
disappeared” (Baig, 2002). This way of framing the plight of Afro-descendents
calls attention to the parallel between the erasure of Afro-Argentines and
the disappearance of groups also labeled “Others” (i.e., “subversive”) during
the dictatorship. Similarly, the Organización de las Naciones y Pueblos
Indígenas en Argentina (Organization of Indigenous Nations and Peoples in
Argentina—ONPIA) issued a declaration for the thirtieth anniversary of the
Downloaded from lap.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on May 17, 2016
Sutton / CONTESTING RACISM IN ARGENTINA
115
military coup suggesting a longer history of genocide: 1876–2006. While
ratifying its “repudiation of the genocidal dictatorship of 1976, as it is the consolidation of a systematic genocidal process that victimized indigenous
Peoples and Nations,” it also names concrete “genocidals and ethnocidals”
including not only generals from the last dictatorship but also nineteenthcentury generals who attacked indigenous peoples. The link between relatively
recent and older human rights violations frames current demands for “the
restitution of indigenous lands and territories that were usurped and given to
private and foreign [holders] before, during, and after the dictatorship”
(ONPIA, 2006).
From a different entry point, human rights organizations initially concerned
with state terrorism have also linked aspects of their struggles to efforts to create
a more culturally inclusive, democratic society. While the political work of the
Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo is not centered on racism, their activism
around the “right to identity” of the children appropriated by the military (i.e.,
the right to know who they are) can be extended to issues of racist discrimination. Among the Grandmothers’ initiatives is the Schools for Identity
program, which approaches identity from a broad perspective, including
cultural and ethnic diversity as relevant to democratic citizenship (Educ.ar,
2005; Keve, 2005). The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo Founding Line (mothers
of those disappeared by the dictatorship) have supported immigrant rights
groups such as the Alejandro Almeida Space of Popular Reconstruction,
named after the son of one of the Mothers. In a letter to Nestor Kirchner
(Argentina’s former president) asking for the regularization of undocumented
immigrants, the group recalled his stated commitment to human rights,
invoking the disappeared to lend greater authority to its claim: “The undocumented are also disappeared, given that they do not have legal identity here.
That’s why we support them, because that’s what the 30,000 [disappeared by
the dictatorship] would have done” (ERP Almeida, 2005). As these cases illustrate, the link between human rights and antidiscrimination struggles can be
a fruitful path for politically tackling racism in Argentina.
THE POLITICS OF VISIBILITY/INVISIBILITY
A key issue that activist organizations confront in their efforts to redress
racist practices is the problem of invisibility. Grimson (2005b) argues that in
the 1990s and in the context of global discussions on multiculturalism, traditionally marginalized groups became increasingly visible, organizing along
ethno-racial lines to demand rights and recognition. In a nation that insists that
it has no blacks, Afro-descendents know what it is to grapple with invisibility.
Africa Vive’s director, María Magdalena Lamadrid, countered that she “was
not born from a bullet” from the nineteenth-century wars that supposedly
killed all black people (Ecos de Africa, n.d.) and has worked to show the ways
in which the African legacy survives in Argentine culture and in the bodies of
people who may not recognize their African ancestry. Africa Vive’s political
struggle for visibility is reflected in its past work with the Public Defender’s
Office of Buenos Aires to produce a report on the life conditions of people of
African ancestry (Defensoría del Pueblo and Africa Vive, 2001). It has continued
Downloaded from lap.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on May 17, 2016
116
LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
to demand the counting of Afro-descendents at the national level (Heguy,
2002). In 2005 the National Institute of Census and Statistics and the National
University of Tres de Febrero started a pilot study to survey Afro-descendents
in two areas: the city of Buenos Aires and Santa Fe. These efforts can also be
traced to international influences such as the world conference on racism (held
in Durban, South Africa, in 2001), which, according to the anthropologist Laura
López, asked the Argentine government “to include questions about Afrodescendents in the next census” (as quoted in Downes, 2005: 49).
Visibility has also been an explicit or implicit strategy of other groups that
is particularly apparent in the proliferation of cultural festivals, processions,
and fairs to celebrate and educate the public about the diverse cultures that
coexist in Argentina. While these activities may be structured not as political
events but as cultural venues, they have political meaning in the context of
discrimination. For example, in his ethnography on the Bolivian community
in Buenos Aires, Grimson (2005b: 96) explains that the “fiestas patronales [organized by Bolivian immigrants] are not hidden, clandestine, embarrassing
actions but the opposite. They are the key moment in which the meaning of
‘Bolivian,’ instituted as negative by the larger society, . . . is not denied but
proudly and positively reaffirmed.” Grimson sees these and other activities
that disseminate culture and publicly present a positive Bolivian identity (e.g.,
radio shows conducted by Bolivians in Argentina) as providing the foundation
for political projects and for the “struggle for full citizenship” (116).
The politics of visibility are not neutral. First, there is the visibility of social
conflicts with ethno-racial components in venues that portray ethnic minorities
as deviant. For instance, this kind of negative visibility is reflected in media
reports of a dispute between the Chinese supermarkets’ association and the
truck drivers who supply those markets in June 2006, a dispute that was
framed by union members—and broadcast by the media without significant
criticism—in ways that reinforced xenophobic and racist interpretations (see
Clarín, 2006). Then, there is the visibility that the state requires in order to
control certain groups or gain something from their presence (e.g., the impulse
to “legalize” undocumented immigrants may come partly from the idea that
the state is better served by identifying, regulating, and taxing those groups).
Finally, there is the visibility/recognition demanded by groups that have
endured discrimination, which can result in the expansion of rights for the
group and for others.
THE POLITICS OF TRANSNATIONALISM
Global agendas have influenced antidiscrimination politics in Argentina.
Many international conventions—on gender inequality, genocide, and torture
as well as racism and xenophobia—have been adopted as local legislation.
The Argentine government has developed many of its antidiscrimination policies through political commitments in international arenas. Furthermore,
antiracist activists in Argentina have established transnational connections by
sharing information at international conferences and demonstrations, organizing
transnationally through the Internet, drawing on international documents to
gain leverage in local struggles, and sometimes receiving financial support
from organizations abroad.
Downloaded from lap.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on May 17, 2016
Sutton / CONTESTING RACISM IN ARGENTINA
117
The proliferation of “summits” with state and business leaders from
around the world has given rise to counter-summits that develop alternative
proposals and make activists’ voices heard in the streets. Antiracist activists in
Argentina have benefited from transnational dialogues, for instance, during
the Durban conference, the World Social Forum, and international women’s
meetings. The Fourth Summit of the Americas, which took place in November
2005 in Argentina with the participation of the region’s heads of state, provides
a good example. This summit’s goal was “creating jobs to confront poverty
and strengthen democratic governance.” The event gained media attention
especially because of the loud protests triggered by U.S. President George W.
Bush’s visit and his free-trade agenda. Less advertised events, however, were
the parallel gatherings of groups that have confronted racism, including an
indigenous people’s summit. These kinds of events, while transnational in
nature, have local ripple effects.
The narrative of Neca, a Peruvian immigrant, shows the impact of transnational spaces on her struggle against racism and xenophobia. Her activist
efforts were bolstered through her participation in the Durban conference: “It was
there that I started to open my eyes. The great significance of globalization for
people is for us to try to defend our rights.” Neca saw the “other side” of globalization, that is, the intensification of what Grewal (2005) calls “transnational
connectivities” among activists. Neca argued that places like the Durban
conference serve to “give opportunities to organizations . . . to be able to
express what are our needs, how we are living in the country, what are the
obstacles we face, all of that.” Durban was an empowering experience for
Neca, allowing her to voice her grievances to a wider, international audience.
This strengthened her ability to fight for her rights in Argentina in tangible
ways, such as warning government officials that she would call the media if
denied the documentation she was entitled to. Another significant transnational site for Neca was the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil. This
event enhanced her ability to analyze discriminatory practices in Argentina in
connection with global economic processes (“We realized that neoliberal policies
very much harmed us all”) and offered her assurances that “another world is
possible” through collective organizing. As Neca established international
ties, she also wanted to extend her organization’s membership to Argentine
internal migrants, with whom she sees commonalities, “so that we don’t exclude.”
In her fight for citizenship rights for international migrants in Argentina, she
envisioned a more inclusive and democratic society for everyone.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
While racism has not been a major area of political contestation in Argentina,
it is still a significant social problem. Calling attention to racism is not imposing
a “foreign” framework but taking a close and fresh look at the beliefs, social
organization principles, and dynamics of exclusion that are influenced by local
racialized histories. Antiracist initiatives have been shaped both by specific
sociopolitical developments in Argentina and by transnational forces. Civil
society and governmental organizations have extended frameworks that
Downloaded from lap.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on May 17, 2016
118
LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
already had resonance in Argentina and have tried out strategies borrowed
from other places or emerging from international dialogue.
As a result of the 2001 economic crisis, Argentina underwent a period of
heightened political protest, including demands for effective democratic citizenship. While times of social upheaval may prompt xenophobic or racist sentiments,
the crisis also challenged ingrained beliefs and opened the way for unexpected
solidarities. These alliances created opportunities to learn from people in different
social circumstances and encouraged many people to participate in public affairs
and share ideas in transnational spaces. This kind of activist citizenship holds the
potential for a serious challenge to racism that is long overdue.
NOTES
1. I interviewed 50 women of diverse social backgrounds, about half of them political activists.
I mainly asked questions about their bodily experiences, feelings, and perceptions. Narratives
about race-ethnicity emerged from their responses to questions about their ethno-racial identity
and from narratives in which racialization was embedded (e.g., beauty, poverty, class).
2. I interviewed members of the National Institute against Discrimination, Xenophobia, and
Racism, the Secretariat of Human Rights, the Delegation of Argentine Israelite Associations, the
Forum of NGOs That Fight against Discrimination, SOS Discrimination International, the Center
of Cultures, the Permanent Assembly for Human Rights, the Federation of Bolivian Civil
Associations, the Center of Legal and Social Studies, the Organization of Indigenous Nations
and Peoples in Argentina, an organization of migrant women, an organization of indigenous
people, and a member of several Afro-descendents’ organizations.
3. The translation of this and all other quotations originally in Spanish are mine.
4. See Hall’s (1986) application of Gramscian notions of “common sense” to race relations
and Guano’s (2003) borrowing of the term to explain race relations in Argentina.
5. Secretariat of Tourism, Ministry of Foreign Relations, INDEC, INADI. Interestingly, the current version of the Secretariat of Tourism’s web site omits the information quoted in this article.
6. Census authorities asserted as early as 1895 that Argentina did not have race-based problems (Andrews, 1980; Quijada, Bernand, and Schneider, 2000). Thus using race as a category of
information was seen as irrelevant. Such assumptions were linked to the alleged “disappearance” of black people. George Reid Andrews (1980) reveals how census categories influenced the
discursive disappearance of blacks during the nineteenth century, when the census did use race
as a category.
7. According to these results, 2.5 percent of the households in Argentina include at least one
person who recognizes herself/himself as a member or descendent of an indigenous group
(INDEC, 2005).
8. This institution has systematically collected newspaper articles related to discrimination,
including homophobia, ageism, poverty, sexism, racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, discrimination against people with disabilities, and state terrorism.
REFERENCES
Andrews, George Reid
1980 The Afro-Argentines of Buenos Aires, 1800–1900. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Baig, José
2002 “En Argentina ‘no hay negros.’” September 28. http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/spanish/
misc/newsid_2285000/2285932.stm (accessed May 6, 2006).
Braylan, Marisa, Daniel Feierstein, Miguel Galante, and Adrián Jmelnizky
2000 Report on the Situation of the Jewish Detainees-Disappeared During the Genocide Perpetrated
in Argentina. Buenos Aires: Social Research Center–DAIA.
Downloaded from lap.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on May 17, 2016
Sutton / CONTESTING RACISM IN ARGENTINA
119
Braylan, Marisa and Adrián Jmelnizky
2006 Informe sobre antisemitismo en la Argentina 2005. Buenos Aires: Centro de Estudios
Sociales–DAIA.
Brennan, James P.
1998 Peronism and Argentina. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources.
Briones, Claudia
2004 “Formaciones nacionales de alteridad y movilidades estructuradas: reflexiones desde un
país ‘con pocos indios y sin negros’ (versión preliminar).” Paper prepared for the conference
“Más allá de la identidad: Perspectivas contemporáneas comparativas sobre lugar, espacio y
movilidad en América Latina,” Bogotá, Colombia, November 8–11.
Carbajal, Mariana
2005 “Apellidos bajo sospecha.” Página 12, July 16.
Carballude, Ana María
2005 “Construcción y representación social, pasada y presente: civilización y barbarie,” in
Néstor Cohen and Carolina Mera (eds.), Relaciones interculturales: Experiencias y representación
social de los migrantes. Buenos Aires: Antropofagia.
Casaravilla, Diego
1999 Laberintos de la exclusión: Relatos de inmigrantes ilegales en Argentina. Buenos Aires: Lumen.
CELS (Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales) and CAJ (Comité de Acción Jurídica)
2001 Presentación ante el Comité para la Eliminación de la Discriminación Racial. Buenos Aires.
Clarín
2006 “La tensa relación entre los camioneros de Moyano y los supermercados chinos.” June 18.
Courtis, Corina
2000 Construcciones de alteridad: Discursos cotidianos sobre la inmigración coreana en Buenos Aires.
Buenos Aires: Eudeba.
Defensoría del Pueblo de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires and Fundación Africa Vive
2001 Informe preliminar sobre la comunidad afro en la ciudad de Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires.
Devoto, Fernando and Hernán Otero
2003 “Veinte años después: una lectura sobre el crisol de razas, el pluralismo cultural y la historia nacional en la historiografía argentina.” Estudios Migratorios Latinoamericanos 17 (50):
181–227.
Downes, Patricio
2005 “Negros en el país: censan cuántos hay y cómo viven.” Clarín, April 2.
Dulitzky, Ariel E.
2005 “A region in denial: racial discrimination and racism in Latin America,” in Anani
Dzidzienyo and Suzanne Oboler (eds.), Neither Enemies Nor Friends: Latinos, Blacks, Afro-Latinos.
New York: Palgrave.
Ecos de Africa
n.d. “Ecos de Afroamérica: Argentina.” Ecos de Africa: Afromagazine. http://www.ecosdeafrica.com/afroamerica.htm (accessed April 15, 2005).
Educ.ar
2005 “Se lanzó el CD 10 de la Colección educ.ar: ‘Escuelas por la identidad.’” http://puentes
.gov.ar/educar/institucional/notas/verdoc.jsp?url=INSTITUCIONAL/20051128.html
(accessed June 6, 2006).
ERP Almeida (Espacio de Reconstrucción Popular Alejandro Almeida)
2005 “Carta del Espacio de Reconstrucción Popular ‘Alejandro Almeida’ al Presidente,” October
27. http://www.madresfundadoras.org.ar/noticias.shtml?x=43432 (accessed June 6, 2006).
Farred, Grant
2004 “Fiaca and Veron-ismo: race and silence in Argentine football.” Leisure Studies 23 (1):
47–61.
Fourcade, Santiago
2005 “Historias de la Triple Frontera: ser Libanés en Ciudad del Este.” Clarín, August 25.
Gomel, Liora, Vanina Volosin Menéndez, Valeria Loterztein, and Jorge Elbaum
2005 “La mirada diaria: el antisemitismo en los diarios argentinos durante 2005,” in Marisa
Braylan and Adrian Jmelnizky (eds.), Informe sobre antisemitismo en la Argentina. Buenos Aires:
DAIA-CES.
Gorodischer, Julián
2005 “Los que no tienen voz ahora si tienen programas propios.” Página 12, April 25.
Downloaded from lap.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on May 17, 2016
120
LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
Grewal, Inderpal
2005 Transnational America: Feminisms, Diasporas, Neoliberalisms. Durham, NC, and London:
Duke University Press.
Grimson, Alejandro
2005a “Ethnic (in)visibility in neoliberal Argentina.” NACLA Report on the Americas 38 (4):
25–29.
2005b Relatos de la diferencia y la igualdad: Los Bolivianos en Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires: Eudeba.
Guano, Emanuela
2003 “A color for the modern nation: the discourse on class, race, and education in the
Porteño middle class.” Journal of Latin American Anthropology 8 (1): 148–171.
Hall, Stuart
1986 “Gramsci’s relevance to the study of race and ethnicity.” Journal of Communication Inquiry
10 (2): 5–27.
Heguy, Silvina
2002 “Un censo para saber más de la comunidad negra en Argentina.” Clarín, August 4.
INDEC (Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos)
2001 Censo nacional de población y vivienda, República Argentina. Buenos Aires.
2005 “Primeros resultados de la ECPI: El INDEC ya contó más de 300.000 indígenas.”
http://www.indec.mecon.ar/ (accessed November 23, 2005).
Joseph, Galen
2000 “Taking race seriously: whiteness in Argentina’s national and transnational imaginary.”
Identities 7 (3): 333–371.
Keve, Carolina
2005 “Escuelas por la identidad.” Página 12, November 28.
Kiningsberg, Yanina
2002 “Racismo en el aeropuerto de Buenos Aires.” Clarín, August 24.
La Nación
2005a “Alta tasa de desnutrición en aborígenes.” May 13.
2005b “Musulmanes detenidos en el interior.” July 23.
2005c “Télam considera la conquista de América el mayor genocidio: varios historiadores
expresaron su asombro.” October 12.
Liboreiro, M. Cristina de
2001 ¿No hay negros argentinos? Buenos Aires: Dunken.
Margulis, Mario and Marcelo Urresti (eds.)
1998 La segregación negada: Cultura y discriminación social. Buenos Aires: Biblos.
Miller, Marilyn Grace
2004 Rise and Fall of the Cosmic Race: The Cult of Mestizaje in Latin America. Austin: University
of Texas Press.
Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, Comercio Internacional y Culto
2006 “Información sobre Argentina.” http://www.mrecic.gov.ar/ (accessed January 10, 2006).
Oboler, Suzanne and Anani Dzidzienyo
2005 “Flow and counterflows: Latinas/os, blackness, and racialization in hemispheric
perspective,” in Anani Dzidzienyo and Suzanne Oboler (eds.), Neither Enemies Nor
Friends: Latinos, Blacks, Afro-Latinos. New York: Palgrave.
ONPIA (Organización de Naciones y Pueblos Indígenas en Argentina)
2006 “Castigo a los genocidias de todas las épocas.” http://www.onpia.org (accessed May
15, 2006).
Página 12
2005 “El Inadi vs. González Oro.” June 17.
Quijada, Mónica, Carmen Bernand, and Arnd Schneider (eds.)
2000 Homogeneidad y nación, con un estudio de caso: Argentina, siglos XIX y XX. Madrid: Consejo
Superior de Investigaciones Científicas.
Ratier, Hugo
1971 El cabecita negra. Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina.
Rotker, Susana
2002 Captive Women: Oblivion and Memory in Argentina. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press.
Downloaded from lap.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on May 17, 2016
Sutton / CONTESTING RACISM IN ARGENTINA
121
Secretaría de Derechos Humanos and Ministerio de Justicia y Derechos Humanos
2005 Todos los derechos, los derechos de todos. Buenos Aires.
Secretaría de Turismo de la Nación
2006 “Argentina” [Official web site, English version]. http://www.turismo.gov.ar/eng/menu.htm
(accessed January 10, 2006).
Shumway, Nicolas
1991 The Invention of Argentina. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Villalpando, Waldo, Daniel Feierstein, Ana Fernández, Horacio Ravenna, María Sonderéguer,
and Miranda Cassino
2005 Towards a National Plan against Discrimination: Discrimination in Argentina. Trans. María
Eugenia Mendizábal. Buenos Aires: INADI.
Viñas, David
2002 “The foundation of the national state,” in Gabriela Nouzeilles and Graciela Montaldo
(eds.), The Argentina Reader: History, Culture, Politics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Wade, Peter
2003 “Race in Latin America,” in Philip Swanson (ed.), The Companion to Latin American
Studies. London: Arnold.
Warren, Jonathan W. and France Winddance Twine
2002 “Critical race studies in Latin America: recent advances, recurrent weaknesses,” in
David Theo Goldberg and John Solomos (eds.), A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies.
Malden, MA: Blackwell.
In Memoriam
Latin American Perspectives has lost one of its most valuable contributors, Stephen (Steve) Niblo, who died on February 29;
he was 66.
Steve joined La Trobe University’s History Department in early 1977 after six years of teaching at the University of the
Americas in Mexico. Before that he had completed his doctoral work in history at the University of Northern Illinois in
DeKalb, where he worked under the distinguished colonial Latin Americanist Benjamin Keen.
Although his early research centered on Mexico in the late nineteenth century, Steve devoted most of his academic
research over the past 20 years to exploring issues in contemporary Mexican history. In particular, he became a distinguished
pioneer in writing the history of Mexico in the 1940s and 1950s. His two books on this period have now become obligatory
readings for scholars and students both in Mexico and in the English-speaking world.
It would be a disservice to him, however, to remember him only in terms of the dry figures of publications,
conference papers, and courses taught. Steve Niblo was a man with a large personal following among his students and
friends. He was an immensely generous man, giving his time and energy to generations of undergraduates and postgraduates.
He had little sympathy for academic pomposity and aloofness. He knew how to introduce humor and lightness into his
teaching. His jokes and anecdotes enlivened his classes and lectures. He gave wise advice to many and strong support to
students and colleagues whose life circumstances had created problems.
Academic life for Steve Niblo was more than a set of narrow, scholarly games. He could always be counted on for
support when academic stupidities and crimes had been committed and, more generally, when social and economic justice
was denied. His outlook on life changed dramatically during his two years as a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer in Colombia,
where he first encountered the challenges facing rural workers and small peasant farmers. His career at the University of the
Americas in the eastern Mexican town of Cholula ended in 1975 when he helped lead a struggle by faculty against an
administration that sought to transform the university into a business enterprise.
Steve died on the deck of his holiday home at Fairhaven, on the Victorian south coast, while enjoying his favorite views
of the ocean, a bottle of fine wine, and the company of his wife, Diane. He enjoyed the good life that Australia can provide it
more fortunate citizens, and in return he gave back a good deal. He will be remembered not just as a fine scholar, historian,
and Mexicanist but also as a generous colleague, loving father, and supportive husband. He is survived by his wife, Diane
Niblo. and his son, Christopher Niblo.
Downloaded from lap.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on May 17, 2016