ISSN:
0002-7294
Language:
English
Titel der Quelle:
American anthropologist : journal of the American Anthropological Association
Publ. der Quelle:
Malden, Mass. [u.a.] : Wiley-Blackwell
Angaben zur Quelle:
Vol. 119, No. 3 (2017), p. 532-534
DDC:
100
Abstract:
White Argentina” is a powerful ideal—and myth—that, for large sectors of the country’s population, generates practices and discourses of exclusion and serves as a way of distinguishing themselves from “Others.” Another mythical trope is that Argentinians “descend from the ships,” meaning that the nation was constructed by migrants and not Indigenous peoples—especially migrants from Europe. There is a long tradition of anthropologists (and other social scientists) who have tried to intervene in these discourses, both academically and publicly. They—too many to name in this short essay—have shown the silencing (Troulliot 1995) as well as the murders and massacres behind the myths. In public,some works have sought to intervene in order to denaturalize the idea that there are no “Indians” or “blacks” (the latter being a category that, in Argentina, focuses on skin color and does not communicate the same things as it does in other countries where “black” tends to be associated with African ancestry). Paradoxically, the denial of the existence of Others within Argentina requires a recognition of the presence of Others, including through powerful practices that manifest differently through different historical periods to attempt to negate the actual population of Indigenous and Afro-descendants. At the same time, and somewhat ironically, people from neighboring countries, such as Bolivia, Paraguay, and Peru, are referred to as los negros and los indios.This instantiates a geography of whiteness at the center of which is Argentina’s capital city, Buenos Aires, nicknamed la ciudad blanca (the white city). Currently, there is a pervasive discourse that Argentina has no racism—a myth that depends on the idea that it is a white society. Gordillo (2016, 242) is right when he writes that:In Argentina this self-congratulatory narrative about a racism-free society has long coexisted with the everyday use of a heavily racialized language to name, with disdain, esos negros de mierda:the millions of Argentines who are explicitly marked as the despised nonwhite part of the nation. This racialization is part of a hierarchical class formation, for “los negros” also names the poor. However, that the poor are called “los negros” and not something else actually reveals how racial sensibilities inform perceptions about class in Argentina. Academics in Argentina have begun to discuss the race-class relation more forcefully in recent years. Many of these studies offer an alternative to the idea that Argentina is a white society.
Note:
Copyright: © 2017 by the American Anthropological Association
URL:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/aman.12919/abstract
URL:
https://search.proquest.com/docview/1928299991
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