Argentina has a reputation among some Latin Americans of being the most racist country in the region. The election of President Donald Trump has emboldened politicians like Argentinean President Mauricio Macri to parrot his USAmerican counterpart’s racist worldview.
Argentina, like Canada, Australia and the United States, is a nation built on immigration. When we speak of immigration, however, we have to stress that we mean white European immigration.
Between 1881 and 1914, over 4.2 million immigrants moved to Argentina from Europe.[1] By 1914, 30.3% (2.358 million) of the country’s total population was foreign born with as many as 49.4% of the inhabitants of the capital Buenos Aires being born elsewhere. [2]
When you ask Argentineans about what happened to the Amerindians, which were wiped out of their lands in the nineteenth century, some of their answers justify genocide. “There were so few of them,” is one response you may hear, which means that they were near-non-existent and therefore it was acceptable to commit genocide.
Few Argentineans know that at the beginning of the nineteenth century, when Argentina was a Spanish colony until 1816, that 38% of the population of about 400,000 people were whites with 32% being blacks and of mixed black ethnicity. [3]
European immigration during the second half of the nineteenth century and in the following century effectively whitewashed Argentina of other visible ethnicities such as blacks and Amerindians.
While Argentineans proudly claim that they are a tolerant and understanding country because they took in so many immigrants, we must ask to which immigrants and groups were accepted.
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Racist comments by some white Argentineans reinforce how racism and bigotry are still alive and kicking in the country. “White” in Argentina means anyone who has a European background. Those of mixed mestizo ethnicity, Europeans mixed with Amerindians, are called disrespectfully cabecita negra, or little black head.
