Afro Argentine - Africans in The Formation of Argentina

Africans in The Formation of Argentina

Despite widespread slavery, testimonies of the time argued that in Buenos Aires and in Montevideo slaves were treated with less cruelty than elsewhere. José Antonio Wilde, in Buenos Aires during Argentina's early independence period (1810–1880) said that:

This was not prevented from acknowledging however that:

The testimony on the relatively good treatment of African slaves in Argentina is most likely that of foreigners. For example, Alexander Gillespie, skipper of the British army during the British invasion of 1806, wrote in his memoirs that he was surprised how well black people were treated in contrast with those enslaved by British planters in the Caribbean and in Guyana, and continued:

In 1801 the first black militias were organized and regulated in the Company of the Grenadier Brown and Brown as a military corps segregated from the rest.

The British Invasion of 1806 originated with an uprising of black slaves in Buenos Aires encouraged by the rise of abolitionism of slavery in England. Afro-Argentines believed that the British expedition came mainly to give them their independence. But the British General William Carr Beresford, had no sympathy with this movement. The spokesman for the Creoles in Buenos Aires, Juan Martín de Pueyrredón argued that the country's economic base would be ruined if slavery were quickly eliminated. He demanded action on behalf of their estates, and thus General Beresford issued a directive in which he ordered that it be announced to make the slaves understand that the British were not there to change the current situation. "It is the shortcut to time," wrote Pueyrredón in July 1806, in a letter to his stepfather in Cadiz. This measure would contribute to the defeat of the British occupation, because it drove the slaves to fight against them.

Following the defeat of the British, the Cabildo de Buenos Aires declared its main objective to "see how to banish slavery from our soil." In 1812, Bernardo de Monteagudo was prevented from assuming membership of the First Triumvirate, due to his "questionable mother," referring to his African ancestors. Paradoxically, Bernardino Rivadavia was one of the objectors. He was also a descendant of Africans. The Assembly of the Year XIII, the first constituent body of Argentina, ordered the release of slave children, but did not recognize the existing right to the emancipation of the slaves. Many blacks were part of militias and irregular troops that eventually would shape the Argentine Army, but always in segregated squadrons. Blacks could however, if they were not complying with their masters, ask to be sold and even find themselves a buyer.

Until the abolition of slavery in 1853, the Rescue Law forced slave owners to cede 40-percent of their slaves to military service. Those who had completed five years of service would obtain manumission, but that was rarely the case. The Northern Army commanded by José de San Martín and Manuel Belgrano, freed blacks made up to 65-percent of the troops. San Martin came to the conclusion that there were 400,000 Afro-Argentines who could be recruited into the homeland armies. The armies of Independence recruited large numbers of slaves who lived in conquered territories, offering them freedom in exchange. Many of them included the Battalion Number Eight, which was part of the front line at the Battle of Chacabuco that recorded large numbers of casualties.

During the government of Juan Manuel de Rosas the black population of Buenos Aires rose to 30-percent. This period saw the introduction of the Argentine Carnival (similar to that of the Rio de Janeiro Carnival and Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and the development of rhythms such as Candomblé and milonga that would become an integral part of Argentinian folklore. Rosas was known for his great appreciation of the black population, and his frequent attendance at the Candomblés. Many of the gauchos who developed tasks in the field at the time were Afro-Argentinians. In 1837, Roses passed a law expressly prohibiting the purchase and sale of slaves in Argentina, and in 1840 issued a decree for the total abolition of the slave trade in Rio de la Plata in all forms. The National Constitution of 1853 abolished slavery, but legally only with the reform of the Constitution of 1860 was complete freedom granted to all slaves brought by their foreign masters to Argentine territory.

Domingo F. Sarmiento's term as President of Argentina from 1868 to 1874 happens to be one of the two factors that traditional history assigns to have attributed to the cause of the mass death of Afro-Argentinians: the Paraguayan War (1865–1870) and the yellow fever epidemic in Buenos Aires of 1871. Sarmiento expressed strong racist ideas and a clear position on the need to eliminate Afro-Argentine component of the population. One of the key passages of Martín Fierro, written in 1872 and considered the national book of Argentina, consists of two encounters of the protagonist with black gauchos: the first is murdered with apparent disdain in the first part of the book, and with the other (who happens to be son of the former, several years later) argues a famous payada.

After the abolition of slavery Afro-Argentines lived in miserable conditions and faced widespread discrimination. The proof is that of the fourteen schools in Buenos Aires in 1857, only two black children were admitted, despite the fact that 15-percent of students that year were of color. Similarly, in 1829, in Cordoba only those Afro-Argentines entering secondary school could be there for two years instead of the four years for white Argentines. Universities did not allow Blacks into their alumni until 1853.

Afro-Argentines began to publish newspapers and to organize for the common defense. One of the newspapers, "The Unionist", published in 1877 a statement of equal rights and justice for all people regardless of skin color was published. In one of its statements read:

Other newspapers were "The African Race", the "Black Democrat" and "The Proletarian", all published in 1858. By the 1880s there were about twenty such Afro-Argentine-published newspapers in Buenos Aires; and some researchers consider these social movements integral to the introduction of socialism and the idea of social justice in Argentine culture.

Some Afro-Argentines entered politics. For example, José María Morales, an active colonel in the militias, became a deputy provincial constituent and then provincial senator in 1880, while Lieutenant Colonel Domingo Sosa became deputy twice and a constituent in 1853.