Editor’s note: Marcelo Raimon is an Argentine journalist and directs the IsraelEconómico portal. You find it on Twitter as
BUENOS AIRES- At this point, it is practically a rule: Argentina can only be international news for some negative event, a bizarre or picturesque event. If it is not the dribbling of Lionel Messi, it is O or the records of deaths from the coronavirus pandemic.
This week, the country was once again – after a long time of “tranquility” – on the online front pages of the most famous media in the world, from to, through and
The reason? It would not even be necessary to mention it because this Wednesday the Internet and social networks flooded the president of Argentina, Alberto Fernández, had no better idea than to affirm that Mexicans “come from the Indians” and that Brazilians came “from the jungle.”
After the stupor over the words that a flattering Fernández spoke to the head of the Spanish government, Pedro Sánchez, to generate some kind of racial connection – affirming that the Argentines “come from the ships” of immigrants who arrived from Europe -, the sad anecdote It serves, however, to review some elements behind the particular “racism” of the Argentines.
This is a country where even its most progressive layers cannot help but be “proud” of their “European heritage”. It is a concept with traces of reality and that has always served to differentiate itself from the rest of “poor, Indian and black” Latin America.
We Argentines like to feel part of the “big country”, but as long as it is recognized that we are the “white brothers” on the continent.
Indigenous and Afro-descendant populations are made invisible
The reality portion of this discourse is that, in effect, the indigenous and Afro-American population segments are generally smaller than in other countries in the region.
When the conquerors arrived here, they did not find massive organized native communities as happened in Peru with the Inca nation or in Mexico with the empire of the Aztecs. And although there were pockets of resistance on the part of some indigenous peoples, the massacres and forced assimilation were destroying the indigenous presence.
The final blow was the famous campaign of the Conquest of the Desert, which between 1878 and 1885 displaced the most warrior natives of Patagonia with arms, to end up handing over gigantic portions of land to a handful of Argentines of European origin.
The invisibility of blacks was a more “subtle” process. Many historians point out that the strong presence of African Americans in the country, especially in Buenos Aires, began to wane when the authorities sent thousands of black men to the front lines in the bloody War of the Triple Alliance of 1864-1870 that faced Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay against Paraguay.
Between this demographic cruelty and the nationalist “unifying” narrative, the natives and Afro-Americans merged here in the miscegenation with poor immigrants to create the popular “Argentine black man”, a concept that pretends to be benign but is fraught with discrimination, not so much racial as economical.
Indeed, Eva Perón herself, who made real merits to become champion of the poor, called the masses of proletarians – with undoubted naive affection on her part – “my little black heads.”
If you talk about Evita, the criticism becomes complicated. But when it comes to President Fernández, it is much simpler. The population in general, and the ruling class in particular, continue to believe here in the myth of the good “negrito”, led towards national greatness by “enlightened” whites, who can be from the right, left or Peronists.
The concept also extends to the rest of Latin America: Argentines are the privileged “white little ones” —many descendants, of course, of ragged immigrants who arrived from Spain, Russia, Italy or Syria — in a continent full of “nice little blacks.” .
For this reason, Fernández’s words may not be taken as an explicit racist comment, but rather as an expression of the mixture of arrogance and ignorance that is often the trademark of Argentines.
“Argentine society is so racist that it does not even realize its racism,” explained researcher Daniel Mato, an expert who works for UNESCO in an interview last year with the state news agency Télam. “He has it ‘naturalized’, which indicates how racist he is,” he added.
In Argentina it is despised for its socioeconomic condition, it is not hated for the color of the skin.
Here a mestizo of Creole origin can be the bricklayer who is looked at suspiciously because he is poor or the soccer idol that fills stadiums and pockets millions. The Argentinean of Italian or Spanish origin will be, depending on the occasion, a true and valuable local product or a “tano brute” or a “Galician mooring”.
And that of Hebrew religion will be the affectionate “Rusito” or a “lousy Jew.”
President Fernández, like the vast majority of the political class and the economic elite, does not rise above this Argentine tare.
For this reason, dear Mexican and Brazilian friends and friends, many Argentines apologize to you: for too long we thought we were white and we ended up becoming the poor neighbor who does not realize that he is poor and lives on his past splendor, condescending and deceiving himself. itself.
