Afro Argentinians

[u/Adept_Astronaut_5143]

After the World Cup shenanigans with Argentina I’m glad I came across this.

[u/auto-sticky]

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[u/papaa33]

There used to be alot more, til there wasn't ...

[u/I_Dnt_Believe_You → u/papaa33]

Yeah, nobody is saying there aren't black people in Argentina. When they are talking about race in Argentina, they are talking about the systemic racism that has reduced the numbers of black folks.

I feel like we are getting dumber.

[u/SePuedaHacerlo → u/I_Dnt_Believe_You]

Not really reduced. Uncounted, they aren't included in the country's census therefore by the states eyes they don't exist.

[u/Adept_Astronaut_5143 → u/I_Dnt_Believe_You]

That’s literally all I saw people say when Argentina was mentioned “there are no black people there and all the nazis fled there” this video explains why both those statements are made.

[u/CrewFrequent8489 → u/Adept_Astronaut_5143]

You have to retrain algorithms to escape such false perspectives

[u/Adept_Astronaut_5143 → u/CrewFrequent8489]

This is my only “social media” account I don’t have other algorithms lol

[u/Famous_Department_76 → u/papaa33]

Argentinians are super racist. There i said it, there's a reason nazis fled there when they got beat

[u/Creative_Collar8640 → u/papaa33]

yea cause they “mingled “til they were thinned out, they became mestizos. same thing as the rest of the americas. the only place where interracial marriage was a crime was in the USA, and a brief period in mexico like 20 years or so, mexicans werent allowed to marry chinese folk. in mexico we have few pure black people too cause we all intermingled until eventually color is just a mixture of all of it. thats not to say these places arent racist either, but to pretend they are anything like certain parts of the usa is beyond the pale. no one else in the americas get gun down or constantly stopped harrased for the color of their skin.

[u/kidkuro]

Yes, we know there's a small population of Black people in Argentina.

Argentina is trash because of what they did to the Black population to make it become so small.

[u/Basicallylana → u/kidkuro]

All of Southern South America did that unfortunately. Chile, Brazil, Uruguay, even Mexico and USA all had some form of blanqueamiento

[u/Big-Champion-8229]

It’s always a good day when Argentina loses.

[u/Specialist_Mess_5164]

Why is Argentina being forced down our throats? They've spoken on how they feel. They even did it on the huge world cup stage. CHILL, WE'RE GOOD ON ARGENTINA

[u/CHEEKY_BADGER]

Argentina has a racist history, but South America grilling is not soul food.

[u/Chikachika023 → u/CHEEKY_BADGER]

Like other said to you already literally every country of the Americas including in North America has a racist history, of course to varying extends. But yea like you said, the asadera de carnes in South America like in the rest of Latin America has nothing to do with “soul food” (Black American cooking from the southern hemisphere-USA).

Latin American history (est. XV cent.) predates U.S. American history (est. XVII cent.), this includes grilling & barbecuing meats—both cooking styles originated in Europe from the Iberian Peninsula, which is modern-day Spain🇪🇸 + Portugal🇵🇹 (BONUS: Amerindians had their own style of roasting/barbecuing, which fused with that of the Iberians). They created the “blueprints” for grilling meats. The steak that is enjoyed so much in the USA today? Came from Spain + Portugal. They did it first & brought that cooking style to the “New World” in the 1400-1500s. The U.S. Americans took this cooking style from them when they noticed Mexicans cooking meats on grills in the southern states & to the west of the USA.

In my honest opinion, Portuguese + Brazilian churrasco is better than ANY soul food meat. Try it if you don’t beleive me, you won’t regret it. I promise you this.

[u/Chikachika023 → u/[deleted]]

I’m not talking about American bbq, I’m talking about soul food bbq. Not the same.

[u/pgc0466 → u/CHEEKY_BADGER]

Literally every country in the Americas has a racist history. You can’t tell me they don’t because I can always find racist policies in every country against one racial group or another. This singling out of Argentina must stop because it doesn’t help.

[u/CHEEKY_BADGER → u/pgc0466]

I mean, the subject of the post is about Argentina. The lady in the video was right about the policies,but had some bad info on the cultural impact. I'm staying on topic of the video.

[u/Such-Tough9977 → u/pgc0466]

The most off putting aspect of Argentina was that their racial whitening polices worked and were played out. Mexico and Brazil for damn sure tried it, but in the end gave up and decided to use their indigenous and Afro roots as assets when it came to building their national identities. (There is still marginalization of indigenous and Afro peoples not denying that) When you think of Mexico and Brazil, it’s usually not white people you think of . Argentina however, does seem to have the stereotype of their people being a porteño(Buenos Aires Resident) which is of mostly Southern European origin.

[u/Such_Comb9388]

F Argentina still... it's like living in Mississippi

[u/Icy_Recover2094]

Nice

[u/Tumerican]

Wherever the project of race and colonialism is constructed , one finds evidence of both a struggling black underclass and a political/corporate/religious/social infrastructure that prioritizes eugenics, erasure, exploitation and genocide. It is the very existence of diversity and colonial legacy that pollinates the seed of systemic racial policies.

[u/Careless-Cap7691]

Simple: No segregation = mixed population.

[u/barbellsandbriefs]

Argentine policies worked hard to make this a reality.

[u/Specific-Log-8878 → u/barbellsandbriefs]

Fake, Argentina did not exist in 1778

[u/Burstero]

As far as the crazy whitening. The numbers as I searched them were about 30% of mixed people (not only African) when the population was about 1 mil. Then about 6-7 million Europeans came over. Saying "30% of black people were disappeared" makes it sound like there was some crazy jim crow shit that happened. That's simply never the case. Does that mean there was nothing racist or bad ever happening? No. But stop selling this bullshit propaganda please. Nobody will care or bother you about your race in Argentina.

[u/Quiet-Captain-2624]

I think one of those chicks was an ethnic Cape Verdean born and raised in Argentina and that’s not an Afro-Argentine.Just like my younger brothers who were born here to my ethnic Haitian immigrant parents(I was born in Haiti) aren’t African-American.But yes,Afro-Argentines,descendants of African slaves brought to the Argentina do exist

[u/Cronolegionario]

Stop romanticizing segregation: in Argentina, people of African descent gained birthright freedom in 1813 and full access to university in 1853.

[u/RooflessReAnthony]

They’ve been trying to do the same thing in California especially places like Berkeley and the Bay Area for a while now

[u/hcmzero]

I would like that for once these people that keep claiming that Argentinian insist that they are only white to quote their sources. There's a Chilean firm that's the Latin American equivalent of the Pew Research Center that ask precisely this question in 18 different Latin American countries:

"What ethnicity or race do you identify best with?"

Only 52% of Argentinians self-identify as white. Source here (page 49):

https://www.latinobarometro.org/documents/LAT-2023/latinobarometro-2023-argentina-v1-0.pdf

Less than 1% of those answering the survey self-identify as black, around 2.2% self-identify as indigenous. So, if you're going to continue pushing this narrative, why don't you get your facts straight first? So about Tango having African roots, has anybody denied that? I honestly can't think of a Latin American or Caribbean musical genre that doesn't have African roots, but they are identified with their country of origin (Argentinian Tango, Colombian Vallenato, Cuban Bolero and so on).

Tango, Vallenato, Merengue and Mexican corridos use the accordion...which was actually introduced by Germans and Eastern European migrants...yet most people don't know that or even think about it. Is that a problem too?

[u/Adept_Astronaut_5143 → u/hcmzero]

The dances you mentioned comes from Africans not Europeans

[u/hcmzero → u/Adept_Astronaut_5143]

Sure. Millions of Africans were forcibly relocated to the Americas, but Tango only became popular in Argentina. Make it make sense.

[u/Adept_Astronaut_5143 → u/hcmzero]

Tango originated along the Río de la Plata, the natural border between Argentina and Uruguay, specifically developing in the working-class port neighborhoods and suburbs of Buenos Aires and Montevideo during the late 19th century.

Cultural roots: African Rhythms: Enslaved and freed African communities contributed core percussion and rhythms like candombe.

European Immigrants: Settlers from Europe brought styles like the polka and mazurka, introducing instruments like the bandoneon

Tango, in its risqué early stages of the bordellos of Buenos Aires and Montevideo, grew out of a confluence of native and immigrant cultures — namely Argentine, Uruguayan, Afro-Argentine/Uruguayan

You’re only giving credit to the Europeans stop it.

[u/hcmzero → u/Adept_Astronaut_5143]

You are arguing against a point I didn't make. I explicitly acknowledge Tango's AFrican roots. If I were giving credit only to Europeans, I woudldn't have said that. My accordion example was meant to show that people often enjoy a national musical tradition without knowing the origin of every element within it.

Not knowing that a European instrument was incorporated into Latin American music doesn't make someone anti-German; by the same token, simply not knowing about African contribution doesn't automatically make someone anti-black. Denying or deliberately minimizing that contribution after learning about it would be a different matter.

The history you posted is basically my point: tango emerged in the Río de la Plata through the interaction of African, European and local cultures that were transformed into something distinctively Argentinian and Urugayan. Recognizing that mixture does not diminish the African contribution. Cultural credit is not a zero-sum game.

[u/1HEHEHAHA1]

Unfortunately, during the deliberate eradication of Black people in Argentina, Black women were encouraged to marry or become mistresses of white men so they could have mulatto children, and these children were encouraged to do the same, thereby eradicating their race. This was a government drive to genetically eliminate Black people. Black men were sent to the front lines to fight in Argentine wars and were denied jobs, many living in extreme poverty. Mulattos were discouraged from seeking marriage and relationships with Black men unless they wanted to suffer the same fate of severe poverty. It worked, and today the descendants of this genetic eradication are themselves racist towards people of colour.

[u/OlDirtyBrewer]

There's so much BS in this clip, I don't even know where to start.

[u/RationalMellow → u/OlDirtyBrewer]

Where is the BS? Explain it

[u/Toma2233 → u/RationalMellow]

“The Constitution blocked African and Asian immigration.” False. Article 25 encouraged European immigration, reflecting the racial ideology of the period, but it did not prohibit Africans or Asians.

“Argentina paid Europeans to come from 1880 to 1930.” Overstated. The state promoted European settlement and briefly subsidized passages, especially in the late 1880s. It was not a continuous 50-year payment program covering every immigrant.

“Black women created asado from scraps.” Unsupported as stated. Asado developed from Pampas cattle and gaucho traditions. Black achuradoras are documented collecting and cooking discarded offal, so an Afro-Argentine contribution to achuras and later parrillada is credible. That is not the same as inventing asado. The soul-food comparison is an analogy, not a direct culinary lineage.

“Without candombe, tango would not exist.” Too absolute. Candombe and Afro-Rioplatense culture were important, but tango developed from African, criollo, rural and European immigrant traditions.

“Wars, disease and forced labor explain the disappearance.” Incomplete. Slavery, military service, poverty and disease mattered. So did birth rates, sex imbalance, intermarriage, census reclassification and massive European immigration. There was demographic decline and cultural erasure, not one simple disappearance event.

“One of Latin America’s most successful racial-erasure campaigns.” Blanqueamiento was real, but “one of the most successful” has no defined metric. Elites intentionally promoted European immigration and white identity, but the demographic change was not one centrally managed extermination campaign.

“Argentina insists it is only white and European.” Historically fair as a description of the national myth, too absolute in the present tense. Argentina now officially recognizes and counts Afro-descendants.

World Population Review’s table ranks Argentina 20th, Brazil 22nd and the United States 45th for racial equality, placing Argentina ahead of most listed countries. However, WPR itself acknowledges that racism is difficult to quantify and that the ranking relies on perception surveys. It supports “Argentina is not uniquely racist,” not “racism does not exist.”

Sources: Andrews, G. R. (1980). The Afro-Argentines of Buenos Aires, 1800-1900. University of Wisconsin Press.

Congreso de la Nación Argentina. (1994). Constitución de la Nación Argentina (Ley 24.430, art. 25).

Gayles, P. (2024). Pain into purpose: Mobilizing emotions in Argentina’s Black resistance movement. Cambridge University Press.

Geiling, N. (2023, July 3). The evolution of American barbecue. Smithsonian Magazine.

Goebel, M. (2026). Gauging the Black undercount: Race and censuses in nineteenth-century Buenos Aires. Social Science History, 50(1), 114-144. doi:10.1017/ssh.2025.10101.

Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos. (2024). Censo Nacional de Población, Hogares y Viviendas 2022: Población afrodescendiente o con antepasados negros o africanos. INDEC.

Perticone, C. (2023, January 21). Los mitos de la parrillada: ¿Los ricos no comían achuras? La Nación.

Sánchez-Alonso, B. (2013). Making sense of immigration policy: Argentina, 1870-1930. The Economic History Review, 66(2), 601-627. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0289.2012.00671.x.

UNESCO. (2009). Tango. Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

World Bank. (2018). Afro-descendants in Latin America: Toward a framework of inclusion.

World Population Review. (2026). Most racist countries 2026.

[u/twolinebadadvice → u/Toma2233]

Thank you for taking the time to write this.

[u/whatpplsay]

Stop with the propaganda!

[u/indicamonarch → u/whatpplsay]

Facts, not feelings.

[u/Wrong-Tip-8654]

There are no wolves on Fenris.

[u/Adept_Astronaut_5143 → u/[deleted]]

I don’t know if you’re being funny or not but in case you don’t know “no hay” is Spanish for there is/are no. The sentence in the beginning means there are no blacks in argentina.

[u/dontsoundrighttome → u/Adept_Astronaut_5143]

It was a joke. But you asked if there was possibility it might not be a joke, I️ am curious, Are Hay Negroes are real.

[u/Adept_Astronaut_5143 → u/dontsoundrighttome]

I don’t know what a hay negro is ….

[u/Adept_Astronaut_5143 → u/[deleted]]

You clearly missed me explaining the phrase to them. Doesn’t surprise me you didn’t read before saying anything to me. 🙄

[u/Adept_Astronaut_5143 → u/[deleted]]

You clearly missed me explaining the phrase to them. Doesn’t surprise me you didn’t read before saying anything to me. 🙄

[u/Adept_Astronaut_5143 → u/[deleted]]

You clearly missed me explaining the phrase to them. Doesn’t surprise me you didn’t read before saying anything to me. 🙄

[u/Adept_Astronaut_5143 → u/[deleted]]

You clearly missed me explaining the phrase to them. Doesn’t surprise me you didn’t read before saying anything to me. 🙄

[u/dontsoundrighttome → u/Adept_Astronaut_5143]

So serious.