Racism in Argentina - Racial Terms - Negro Y negra - Derivations

Derivations

• "Grone" ("ne-gro", backwards) is another racist term with widespread use in Argentina, especially in Buenos Aires. The word is a product of a type of slang used in the Río de la Plata region that consists of inverting the syllables of words.

• "Un grone" is not necessarily a black person or someone of dark skin color. Basically it refers to a person who is denigrated for their social situation; frequently someone who belongs to the working-class or who comes from a working-class family. A grone can also refer to a person with light skin, hair, and eyes if the individual belongs to the working class or shows a taste for popular culture. More recently grone or negro has come to be associated with criminal conduct.

• "Groncho" is an openly racist or classist term, an equivalent to the English word "bum".

This word entered the lexicon in the second half of the 1970s. In the 1980s a famous television sketch called El groncho y la dama was made as part of the show Matrimonios y algo más featuring Cristina del Valle and Hugo Arana. The sketch was a satirical look at a marriage between a working-class mechanic and an upper-class lady who referred to her husband as the groncho (in the sense of "vulgar person", not properly a racist slur) while seduced by his sexual skills.

The rock group Babasónicos recorded an album entitled Groncho in 2000.

• "Negrada" is a term used with regularity in Argentina and Uruguay and one of its meanings is identical to gronchada. It is also used as a derogatory term to refer to a group of persons described as negros, even though they are not. An example of this use is provided by the pianist Miguel Ángel Estrella when recalling the interrogations he endured in Uruguay when he was detained by the last military dictatorship during Operation Condor: He ran the interrogations. He would say to me: You are never going to play piano again. Because you are not a rebel, you are something worse: with your piano and your smile you've got the negrada in the palm of your hand and make them believe they can hear Beethoven.