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African and Black Diaspora: An

International Journal
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‘Black letters’: problems and issues

in the research, dissemination and
reception of literature by Afro-
Argentines and on Afro-Argentines
a b
Norberto Pablo Cirio & Dulcinea Tomás Cámara
a
Cátedra Libre de Estudios Afroamericanos y Afroargentinos,
Universidad Nacional de La Plata Comisión Permanente de
Estudios, Afroargentinos, Argentina
b
Comisión Permanente de Estudios Afroargentinos, Universidad
de Alicante, Alicante, España
Published online: 23 Apr 2014.

To cite this article: Norberto Pablo Cirio & Dulcinea Tomás Cámara (2014): ‘Black letters’:
problems and issues in the research, dissemination and reception of literature by Afro-
Argentines and on Afro-Argentines, African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal, DOI:
10.1080/17528631.2014.908542

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 African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal, 2014
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17528631.2014.908542

‘Black letters’: problems and issues in the research, dissemination and

reception of literature by Afro-Argentines and on Afro-Argentines
Norberto Pablo Cirioa and Dulcinea Tomás Cámarab*
a
Cátedra Libre de Estudios Afroamericanos y Afroargentinos, Universidad Nacional de La Plata
Comisión Permanente de Estudios, Afroargentinos, Argentina; bComisión Permanente de Estudios
Afroargentinos, Universidad de Alicante, Alicante, España

Afro-Argentines of colonial descent constitute one of the lesser known minority groups
in the country. While scholarly research on this particular group is still scarce, recent
studies account for the diversity of its past and current cultural practices. Aside from
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some exceptions, Afro-Argentine literature is virtually unknown to academia and, as it

is usually the case regarding Minor Literatures, it has been excluded from the national
literary canon. Towards the end of the twentieth century there was a resurgence not
only of studies on Afro-Argentine literature, but also of the presence of Afro-
Argentines themselves in fictional writing. This paper will chart the process of
retrieval, analysis and dissemination of Afro-Argentine literature, examining some of
the issues that arise both at the epistemic and editorial policy levels. We will account
for the revival of a literature on Afro-Argentines, in order to explore whether they
reproduce a ‘master narrative’ that, through the historical novel, relegates Afro-
Argentines into oblivion and/or reduces the group to its stereotypes; or if, on the other
hand, these voices can subvert Argentine historiography by positioning this group in a
leading role that mirrors the vitality of their present-day social movements.
Keywords: Afro-Argentine literature; Afro-Argentines of colonial descent; minor
literatures; national literature; reception; canon formation

Preliminary remarks
Afro-Argentines of colonial descent (descendants of African slaves brought to the
American continent) are one of the oldest and less acknowledged minorities in
Argentina.1 Recent studies on this particular group attest to the diversity and vitality of
its past and present cultural practices. This includes current literary production, often
unacknowledged by academics and thus excluded from the national canon. The work of
researching and writing critical editions has been essential to the development of this new
field of study, with important contributions regarding both written and oral traditions
(Rodríguez Molas 1958; González Arrili 1964; Ortiz Oderigo 1988; Frederick 1993;
Lewis [1996] 2010; Solomianski 2003; Fletcher 2003; Di Santo 2005; Poosson 2007;
Jackson 2010; Cirio 2007, 2012; Tomás Cámara 2010). Originally fostered by middle-
and high-middle-class porteños (inhabitants of Buenos Aires) in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries, Afro-Argentine literature has undergone a diversification of its

*Corresponding author. Email: dulcinea.tomas@ua.es; pcirio@fibertel.com.ar

Translation by Luis Herrán.
© 2014 Taylor & Francis
 2 N.P. Cirio and D.T. Cámara

authorship in more recent years, now including writers of lower-middle-class extraction,

women, as well as authors from other areas outside of Buenos Aires.
Ever since the rise of so-called ‘national literature’, literary production in Argentina
has alluded – even if only partially – to the lives of African slaves and their descendants.
More recently, despite the conscious de-Africanization of Argentine historiography, late
twentieth-century novels (especially Historical Novels) have incorporated Black characters –
sometimes as their protagonists. This has signalled a shift in the role that Afro-Argentines
play in national discourse while also reinforcing a more general tendency to deconstruct
Argentina’s foundational narratives. Existing studies on this literary production are neither
systematic nor all-encompassing (Solomianski 2003; Falasca 2010; Tomás Cámara 2010;
Matheus 2011; Geler 2011). While our research is still in its initial phase, emphasize the
non-exceptionality of the Afro-Argentine literary subject and the need to locate him/her as a
protagonist in contemporary narrative production.
With this in mind, we propose to examine the process of collection, analysis and
dissemination of Afro-Argentine literature, analysing some of its epistemic and editorial
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dilemmas, such as the conflicts within the reconfiguration of the national canon, and the
politics behind the discrimination and circulation of texts. Also, we account for the
emergence of literature about Afro-Argentines. We seek to investigate whether these
voices reproduce a master narrative that relegates them to the past through the historical
or romantic novel; or if, on the other hand, there are thematic interstices that subvert
Argentine historiography by giving this group a leading voice that mirrors the vitality of
their present-day social movement (Cirio 2010). In our conclusions, we explain the
present challenges for Afro-Argentine literature – such as its potential inclusion in the
national canon – and state the pressing need to situate negritude (Blackness) as a site of
local literary production.

Literature by Afro-Argentines: a closer look at counter-narratives to the

national Canon
In Afro-Argentine Discourse: Another Dimension of the Black Diaspora (1996), Marvin
Lewis noted the challenges of Afro-Argentine literary studies: it is an incipient field of
research in which even the most dedicated scholars have difficulty tracking down
documents and sources, making this their primary research task, and only then the
revision, analysis and compilation of their findings. While Lewis’s work became an
important contribution to the field, in Argentina it remained largely unknown outside of a
small group of specialists. In 2010 the National University of Córdoba translated the book
into Spanish, with a brief preface by the author titled ‘Genesis of a book’, and an
introduction by Pablo Cirio.
Following Lewis’s cue, Cirio compiled an inventory of 92 published and unpublished
Afro-Argentine books, brochures and leaflets. In the second edition of his Antología de la
literatura oral y escrita afroargentina (2012), Cirio accounted for 102 documents; today,
there are 107, a figure that will continue to grow as a result of the unearthing of unknown
volumes and the ongoing literary production by Afro-Argentines. In this regard, we
provide a broad overview of this production and address its symptomatic exclusion from
the national canon through a case study of the payadores [popular troubadours] literature.
Out of the 107 items, 49 date back to the nineteenth century (the earliest is from
Davis: 1834; see Sources), 48 are from the twentieth century, and 10 from the twenty-first
century, 4 of which are unpublished. Interestingly, a few of these items were edited
 African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal 3

abroad, in Montevideo, New York and Florence. For example, the poet Horacio
Mendizábal (1847–1871) had his third and last book, Himnos sagrados (1870)
published by the American Tract Society in New York. This raises an obvious question:
how was he able to publish there? The book was a compilation of evangelical hymns, a
few of them of Mendizábal’s own writing, and the rest were translations from Italian
and Portuguese originals made ‘expressly for the Evangelical Church of this city’ (2).
Was Mendizábal a practicing evangelical (something rather unusual in the context of
afroporteño2 Catholicism)? Also, a small note attached to the beginning of the book
announced a second edition and requested the submission of hymns to three reverends
in Buenos Aires, Rosario and Montevideo. Was the author, then, involved in an
international editorial project? Mendizábal’s Himnos is a paradigmatic case that reveals
the difficulties of elucidating these histories in light of the limited evidence at hand.
The majority of these publications remained neglected and, except for some brochures
on payadores, they seldom reached a second edition. Quantitatively speaking, we account
for 37 books, 44 brochures, 18 leaflets, and 7 items of unknown format that are yet to be
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located. While most authors are male, there are two individual female writers: the poet
Edelvira Rodríguez (1887), and the payada writer Matilde Ezeiza (1919). Also included
is Rita Montero, who co-authored her autobiography (Montero 2011; Cirio 2011).
Regarding collective publications, we know of two poems by Rosario Iglesias that
appeared in the almanac by Luis Garzón (1880); and the leaflet published by the Choral
and Music Society ‘Los Harapientos’ [The Raggedy Ones], which contains a song with
lyrics credited to one ‘Mrs. J.C.’ whose identity remains unknown. The quality of print
for these materials varies: from inexpensive paperback editions in newsprint (as it is the
case with the payadores literature) to hardbound tomes featuring the author’s photograph
or engraving, and sometimes even a signature and an item number for early issues. Worth
noting for their rare features are the abovementioned leaflet by ‘Los Harapientos’, printed
in cloth and Horacio Mendizábal’s book, gilt-edged in gold. In terms of their circulation,
the readership of these volumes is difficult to determine. The typical approach is to
infer the scope of circulation of this literature from the relatively ‘marginal’ status of its
readers – themselves a minority amongst Afro-Argentines because of their literacy.
This hypothesis can be put into question by considering the state of Afro-Argentine
society at that time. Afro-Argentine authors often included printed or handwritten
dedications of their work to important figures of the intellectual or political elite. For
example, Horacio Mendizábal dedicated his second book Horas de meditación (1869) to
Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, then President of Argentina. A simple explanation would
be to deem these authors as professional writers belonging to the higher ranks of
afroporteño society, with ample knowledge of European cultural norms and an ability to
circumvent racial difference by inserting themselves in the spheres of power. However,
the issue is more complex, as revealed by the presence of members of the White elite in
lower class afroporteño organizations, as was the case of Gral. Julio Argentino Roca’s
brother, Ataliva Roca, who partook in the Honorary Commission of ‘Los Harapientos’ as
second vice-president.
Print runs for these publications are difficult to determine, for this information seldom
appeared in print. In general, they did not reach a few hundred copies, although those
meant to be sold in the street – such as the payadores literature – were printed in the
thousands and reached up to six editions, as was the case for Contrapunto entre los
famosos payadores Gabino Ezeiza y Pablo Vázquez (1913). In sharp contrast we have
Ernesto de Mendizábal’s book (1886) with only 23 copies, as indicated by a note in
 4 N.P. Cirio and D.T. Cámara

French at the end of the volume (39–41). Most of these copies have dedications to
important international figures – such as Pedro II d’Alcántara, Emperor of Brazil, and
Jules Grévy, President of France – except for the very last volume, given to the Public
Library of Montevideo (41).
Studies about Afro-Latin American literature often focus on self-referential works that
address the question of Afro-descendants from a broad perspective: the real or imagined
ancestral Africa; the slave traffic; the condition of Black Africans – freed/enslaved – in
America in relation to culture, politics and religion; and the (re)creation of a culture of
their own. Kamau Brathwaite (1993, cited in Lewis 1995, 34) distinguishes four types of
African literature in the Americas: rhetorical; of African survival; of African expression;
and re-connection literature. From this perspective, studies about Afro-Argentine
discourse effectively disclosed the existence of a corpus of African matrix that reveals
an unknown (or neglected) tradition based on an aesthetics of difference with respect to
the broader landscape of Argentine literature. Without completely disregarding this thesis,
we argue, at least for the nineteenth and late twentieth centuries, that the issue needs to be
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reframed. The aesthetics of difference was not the norm, but rather an exception: within
the body of Afro-Argentine literary production the common denominator was the
ascription to both Western European values and the idea of ‘the nation’ defended by the
ruling classes, the elites, the press and White intellectuals. In this regard, Cirio (2011)
analysed songs from nineteenth century afroporteño carnival societies, and noticed a
conflict of meaning amongst their members – reflected also in the press at that time –
over which aesthetic forms should be favoured. This, according to Cirio, reveals a field of
tension regarding tradition (Africanity) versus modernity (Europeanism), which he
identifies as an aesthetics of (in)difference, a local reconfiguration of Homi Bhabha’s
strategies of mimicry (Bhabha [1994] 2002) that advocates for an equilibrium between
Afro and Eurocentric perspectives; or, in other words, between the predominance of what
is ‘Afro’ and what appears as strictly ‘Argentine’ (Lewis [1996] 2010, 42).
Bhabha’s post-colonial theory allows us to analyse these issues by positioning our
study in a periphery where a group – in itself peripheral – creates literary expressions
from the time of slavery and into the present, in a country that has shown little interest in
incorporating Africa – another periphery – into its own identity-building process.
Moreover, post-colonial theory incites an epistemological examination that takes into
account power and ideology as variables in the construction and structuration of scientific
thought, especially if we locate Argentina in the periphery of the contemporary world-
system and, thus, of the geopolitics of knowledge (Wallerstein 2001). The intellectual
subalternity of local researchers is the result of cultural imperialismas in any postcolonial
situation, of relying on Eurocentric thinking for knowledge production. This has moved
us away from a critical understanding of our Latin American reality, in which we include
Africa as an ‘involuntary protagonist’ (Dussel 2001; Segato 2007). In the long run, this
perspective should yield a more integrated narrative about (Afro) Argentine literature
built from our own criollo and mestizo context (Gruzinski 2007).
Afro-Argentine literature comprises seven different genres: Historical Novel; music
(in its textual dimension); poetry; short stories; essays; (auto)biographies; and plays. This
classification adds more complexity to the one proposed by Lewis in an article about
Afro-Hispanic literature (1995): poetry, drama, essay and fictional prose. Taking into
account local differentiations and the overwhelming thematic absence of the Afro-
Argentines as a group: how do we account for what constitutes the norm and not the
exception? Moreover is the African ancestry of an author enough to categorize him/her as
 African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal 5

Afro-Argentine? This forces us to raise a broader question: what is Afro-Argentine

literature? In order to provide some answers, we focus on a case study, the payadores
literature, situated in the context of the so-called criollista movement.
The criollista movement has been the subject of numerous studies, with Adolfo Prieto’s
El discurso criollista en la formación de la Argentina moderna (1988) as the most notable
and rigorous contribution to the field. Our topic of analysis appears, however, treated almost
as a mere anecdote, with few mentions in passing or in footnotes, thus rendering the question
of Afro-Argentine literary production as practically irrelevant. And although he analyses a
number of Afro-Argentine payadores, Prieto completely overlooked the Afro-Argentine
dimension of their artistic creations. Similarly, one of the pioneering contributions to this field
(Quesada 1902) reflects an author morally and academically tormented by the ‘bastardiza-
tion’ of the Spanish language (‘the only national language’) and the remnants of ‘native
ignorance’ in criollo popular literature. Moreover, Quesada only refers to Afro-Argentines in
so far as they are participants in this malaise, an issue that he addresses in merely half a page
only to effectively exclude this group from any notion of criollismo. Quesada’s reflections
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were not the product of ignorance. Rather, they were informed by prejudice, disguised as
scientific racism, itself the result of an intellectual battle waged by Europeans against all non-
European civilizations based on a simplistic reading of evolutionism and social Darwinism,
and under the shadow of colonialism (Andrews 2007, 197).
As in most of Latin America, the strategy of the Argentine elites for transforming the
country into a White republic relied on a twofold process: the ‘regeneration of the
Argentine race’ through European immigration and the silencing of the Afro-Argentine
population. Quesada, for instance, was well aware of the works by Afro-Argentine
payadores but granted them no literary value and visibly disregarded the authors’ African
background. Interestingly, the payadores themselves seem to have shared this attitude. It
is us, the scholars on the Afro-Argentines question who make a constant attempt to
portray these actors as Afro-Argentines, even though they did not conceive themselves as
such, except for a few rare instances. This is a controversial idea that destabilizes the
premises of Afro-Argentine culture as it has been constructed both academically and
through the militant discourse of contemporary Afro-Argentines.
In his El pensamiento mestizo (2007) [The mestizo mind, 2002] Serge Gruzinski begins
the first chapter with an evocative epigraph by Brazilian author Mário de Andrade, ‘Sou um
topi tangendo um alaúde…’ [I am a tupí strumming a lute] (27). Gruzinski returns to this
phrase constantly throughout the book, as a platform towards a theory of the mestizo mind as
the core of el ser americano [being americano] in contrast to other perspectives that see
post-Columbian society as either an uninterrupted continuation of the pre-Hispanic world or
as a mere European transplant. Interestingly, since his study is based on the first century of
Spanish domination in Mexico, Gruzinski neglects Afro-descendants, who were still of
limited relevance to the colonial society of the time. As way of introducing our topic, we
should contrast Andrade’s phrase with a verse from the autobiographical canto Así soy by
Juan José García, the last Afro-Argentine payador (Cirio 2012, 142–143)3:

soy de estirpe de indio puro

por varias generaciones
[I am of pure Indian lineage
for several generations].
 6 N.P. Cirio and D.T. Cámara

From photographs, we know that García had an Afro-descendant phenotype. How do we

reconcile this with the stanzas above? If García had written ‘I am o’ pure Black lineage’
our thesis about the ‘Afro-Argentine voice’ would be pertinent. We should, then,
investigate why, in which context and for which public he expressed himself in this way.
García’s death and the fact that he performed as a singer for the recording lead us to
interpret his work, from a post-colonial perspective, in the historical context of the
criollista movement and the payada.
Between 1880 and 1910, during the process of massive immigration (mostly from
Europe), the country underwent a deep structural transformation that also implied a push
towards the reformulation of national identity. Amongst its effort to create a more
homogeneous population, the Argentine state carried out a literacy campaign on two
fronts. First, the promotion of free of charge and compulsory public schooling with a
clear nationalist bias through the teaching of the Spanish language and Argentine history.
And second, the renewal of the printing and editorial industry and the creation of public
libraries to promote readership. Thus, the diversity of immigrants blended in a rendering
of the ‘melting pot’, from which the new culturally Argentine citizenry would rise. That
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context produced a new kind of reader captivated by the emerging criollo literature,
founded on the vestiges of the declining lifestyle of the peasants and the gaucho
cowboys. This neo-criollo identity also allowed the ruling classes to recognize
themselves as bearers of an ageless and noble argentinidad, in contrast to the
overwhelming presence of foreigners (Prieto [1988] 2006).
The criollista movement capitalized on all available media for its diffusion: the press,
pamphlets and booklets, books, records, theatre, the circus, cinema; and later on, both
radio and television. Payadores became protagonists of one of the most emblematic
expressions of national culture, la payada. Payar consists of an improvised vocalization
of verses accompanied by a guitar often as the only instrument. These verses are recited
individually or collectively and mostly by men, following a ‘call’ and ‘response’ structure
(counterpoint). With origins in the mid-eighteenth-century rural culture, payada spread
throughout urban settings by the late nineteenth century (Di Santo 1987). Afro-
Argentines took part in the payada movement and introduced substantial changes such
as payar por milonga, an urbanized form of the earlier rural payada cultivated by the
emblematic Gabino Ezeiza (1858–1916). What motivated the involvement of Afro-
Argentines like Ezeiza in a criollista movement marked by nationalism and fostered by a
state that promoted the exclusion of Afro-descendant culture from the national
imaginary? We hypothesize that Afro-Argentines shared a differentiated sense of being
criollos. Criollo was, for the rest of the population, the cultural and biological outcome of
miscegenation of Indian and Spaniard. Afro-Argentines perceived themselves as part of
that identity in so far as their presence in the continent dated back to the Spanish
colonization. This was, and still is, a common understanding throughout Latin America of
miscegenation as a process involving three groups that coexisted since colonization, and
not just two, as held by the hegemonic Argentine discourse. This hypothesis allows a
better understanding of why Afro-Argentine payadores did not concern themselves, if
only tangentially, with Afro-descendant themes, thus rendering their artistic production
virtually identical to that of White payadores. Thus, to frame this literature from an
exclusively Afro-descendant perspective would alter its broader significance by reducing
‘the whole’ to one of its distinctive and yet secondary dimensions. In this regard, we
agree with the observation put forward by Lewis ([1996] 2010, 109) about the deep-
rooted notion of patria [Fatherland] held by these Afro-Argentines: not only did their
 African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal 7

ancestors fight in the wars of independence, but also national history has shaped their
sense of belonging. Hence the criollista movement appeared as an aesthetic opportunity
to channel pre-existing sentiments and not simply as an externally imposed identity. In
1878, an editorial published in the afroporteño newspaper La Juventud and signed by its
Board of Directors (amongst them Ezeiza) declared:

We are Argentines; and we belong to a class dispossessed of all rights and prerogatives
guaranteed by our Constitution; but this will not prevent us from loving, serving, and aiding
in the prospering of our Patria.
We are Argentines; and although we are not born under the protection of the law, we know
how to set aside our grievances and hatred, in the days of glory and emancipation of all
peoples’. (Arrieta, Ramos, and Ezeiza 1878)4

While we agree with Lewis’s assessment of the sense of patria upheld by Afro-
Argentines, we dispute what he deems a ‘sustained erosion of Afro-Argentine influence’
in the formation of national identity. On the contrary, this influence continued and Afro-
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Argentines skilfully inserted themselves in the aesthetic coordinates of the new criollo
identity. They upheld their Argentineness when the wave of immigration threatened the
integrity of criollo identity, but also when the hegemonic national identity condemned
Afro-Argentines to silence and oblivion, or, as Halbwachs ([1950] 2011) put it, to cut the
social bonds of memory. Following Bhabha, we understand this afroporteño strategy as a
mimetic enterprise with deep de-stabilizing effects on the hegemonic identity. For, if the
latter set forth an idea of criollidad based on Whiteness while banishing the non-White
elements, Afro-Argentines presented themselves socially on the same field as ‘profes-
sional’ criollos but also ironically as African.
A larger question about this essentialist scepticism looms over these issues: is it
enough to be Argentine to produce Argentine literature; is it enough to be a woman to
produce feminist literature, or African to produce African literature? There seem to be
two paths to follow. First, if as humans we are essentially cultural beings and if culture is
fundamentally a construct, the act of affirming or embracing Afro-Argentineness must be
taken as a valid object of study beyond its biological dimensions (for example,
phenotype). A second perspective would follow the ‘evidential paradigm’ put forward
by Carlo Ginzburg (2000), thus modifying our hypotheses in the following manner: if we
did not know that subject X is – or recognizes him/herself as – Afro-Argentine, we could
not fully understand him/her by excluding that variable. Given the deep-rooted
irrelevance of Afro-Argentineness in the broader social imaginary (in Argentina
‘everyone is White until proven otherwise’) we deem the affirmation of an author’s
Afro-Argentine background, at least in this preliminary phase of our study, as a
significant step towards rescuing this literature from academic neglect.

Literature about Afro-Argentines: emerging themes and neo-slave narratives in the

contemporary novel
Overview and current research
Texts that dwell, even if only tangentially, on the lives of African slaves and their
descendants have been around since the dawn of national Argentine literature in the
nineteenth century. Despite the intentional ‘Whitening’ of Argentine historiography,
Alejandro Solomianski notes that what are considered the ‘foundational fictions’, such as
 8 N.P. Cirio and D.T. Cámara

José Mármol’s Amalia (1851–1852); El Matadero, by Esteban Echeverría; and Martín

Fierro (1872–1879), by José Hernández, portrayed Afro-Argentines playing decisive
roles regarding narrative development (2003, 18). According to this author, neither
historians nor literary critics acknowledged this presence despite the ‘undisputed
relevance that these characters had in the configuration of Argentine national identity’
(Solomianski 2003, 17–18).
Although there are systematic case studies on the literary significance and function of
Afro-Latin American characters that have allowed important theorization of the relevant
categories (africanía, negrismo, socionegrismo), in Argentina, the scope of these works
remains limited to isolated and partial analyses of this literary production (Sommer
[1993] 2004; Falasca 2010; Tomás Cámara 2010; Matheus 2011; Geler 2011). This is
why, for this study, we compiled a list of 82 references showing that most existing
contributions – except for Sylvain Poosson’s (2007) – limit themselves to the
abovementioned trilogy of texts, Amalia, El Matadero and Martín Fierro. Thus, in this
section we provide an overview of the process of compilation of these sources5 and of the
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creation of a database-in-progress on literary works with Afro-Argentine presence, noting

their influence, role and meaning within the broader spectrum of Argentine literature.
We provide a synoptic table that compiles the abovementioned research. The table6 is
presented chronologically (following the process of visibility/invisibility effected upon
Afro-descendants by the Argentine historical, political and ideological context) but could
well be organized alternatively through different criteria. Using the theoretical – but also
methodological – concept of interdiscourse as ‘the interaction and reciprocal influence of
the various discourses that circulate in a particular social setting, including those that are
selected to be reproduced in a particular text’ (Malcuzynski 1991, 23), this inventory will
be used as the basis for a detailed study of the different ‘visions’ of Afro-Argentines, by
linking the texts (artistic-textual discourse) with the surrounding ideological discourses
(Table 1).
In projecting the construction of a typological study of the characters, we can
determine their qualitative and quantitative relevance in the narrative. For each time
period and taking into account both the context and the politico-ideological allegiance of
the author, we intend to determine the roles taken on by these characters (if they acquire
throughout the text a leading, assisting, subaltern, collective role, if they appear as flat
and one dimensional characters, or on the contrary as fully developed ones), their value in
the socio-textual network of the narrative and their degree of co(n)textual adequacy. In
going beyond a purely formal analysis, we also seek to determine whether these
characters are fully constructed as such, as well as discern the tone of their discourse and
actions. The preliminary character of the table above, along with its analytical complexity
and chronology should limit our observations to two divergent aspects present in the
compilation.
Following anthropologist Lorand Matory (conversation with author, cited in Gates,
2011, 3), the African-American critic Henry Louis Gates Jr. has noted in his Black in
Latin America (2011) that debates about race in the United States are often also about
class. In Latin America, says Gates, the centrality of the notion of class tends to
overshadow the ethnic dimension. In our analysis we include texts that present ‘Black’
characters that are not necessarily African or Afro-descendant; instead, ‘Black’ appears as
a marker for their condition as subalterns in terms of class. While the process of mestizaje
(racial mixing) began with European conquest and colonization, this re-signification is
 African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal 9

Table 1. 1807–2010.

Work Genre Author Year Place Editor

Romance de la Poetry Pantaleón 1807 Buenos Real Imprenta

gloriosa defensa Rivarola Aires de los Niños
de la ciudad de Expósitos
Buenos Ayres
El triunfo argentino Poetry Vicente 1808 Buenos Real Imprenta
López y Aires de los Niños
Planes Expósitos
El corro Gauchesco Juan 1820 Imprenta de
Poetry Guadalberto Mendoza
Godoy
La quena Short story Juana 1845 Lima Newspaper El
Manuela Comercio
Gorriti
Amalia Semi- José Mármol 1851–1852 Buenos Newspaper La
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autobiographical Aires Semana

novel
Boda de una negra Short story Anonymous 1854 Corrientes Newspaper El
Comercio
Atar-Gull ó una Drama Lucio 1864 Buenos Bernheim y
venganza Victorino Aires Boneo
africana Mansilla
Entre dos Short story Juana 1877 Buenos Newspaper La
cataclismos Manuela Aires Alborada del
Gorriti Plata
Pablo au la vie dans Novel Eduarda 1869 Paris Lachaud
les pampas Pablo Mansilla 1870 Buenos Newspaper La
o la vida en las Aires Tribuna
pampas
Una excursión a los Novel, essay and Lucio 1870 Buenos Newspaper La
indios ranqueles historical Victorino Aires Tribuna
document Mansilla
El matadero Nouvelle Esteban 1871 Buenos Revista del Río
Echeverría Aires de la Plata
Martín Fierro Narrative poem José 1872 (El Buenos La Pampa
Hernández Gaucho Aires Librería del
Martín Plata
Fierro) 1879
(La vuelta de
Martín
Fierro)
Tío Antonio. In Short story Eduarda 1880 Buenos Imprenta de la
Cuentos Mansilla de Aires República
García
Solané National lyrical Francisco 1881 Buenos Imprenta y
drama Fernández Aires librería de mayo
La gran aldea Novel Lucio 1884 Buenos Sur América
Vicente Aires
López
 10 N.P. Cirio and D.T. Cámara
Table 1 (Continued)

Work Genre Author Year Place Editor

Juvenilia Novel Miguel Cané 1884 Viena Carlos Gerold

Astucia de una Short story Eduardo 1893 Buenos Luis Maucci
negra Gutiérrez Aires
Justicia criolla. In Zarzuela Enrique 1897 Buenos Padró y Ros
Zarzuelas criollas Soria (premiere) Aires
1899
Ensalada criolla Drama Enrique de 1898 Buenos La Moderna
María Aires
La negra Narrative poem Anonymous 1900 Buenos Franceso Il
Florentina: O sea Aires Napoletano
la hija natural de
muchos padres
A una aislada Poetry Luis García 1900 Buenos Magazine Caras
Aires y Caretas
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El negro del Short story L. Doello 1905 Buenos Magazine Caras

alambre Jurado Aires y Caretas
Alegre Novel Hugo Wast 1905 Madrid Fernando Fe
(Pen-name of
Gustavo
Adolfo
Martínez
Zuviría)
Memorias de un Historical novel Juan Agustín 1908 Buenos A. Moen y
sacristán García Aires Hermano
Sinfonía Short story Carlos 1912 Buenos Magazine Fray
Correa Luna Aires Mocho
Pequeños motivos, Short story Manuel 1913 Buenos Magazine Fray
gran alboroto María Oliver Aires Mocho
La vuelta al mundo Short story Anonymous 1914 Buenos Magazine Fray
en ochenta días Aires Mocho
La mazorca Drama Carlos María 1915 Buenos Magazine La
Pacheco (premiere) Aires Escena
1925
La paisana Drama Julio F. 1916 Buenos Escenas
Escobar Aires Porteñas
En lo de Murature Short story Félix Lima 1917 Buenos Magazine Fray
(De la vida Aires Mocho
parlamentaria)
El pardo Reyes Drama Ivo Pelay 1917 Buenos Magazine
(Pen-name of Aires Novela Cómica
Guillermo Porteña
Juan
Robustiano
Pichot)
Del Buenos Aires Poetry Enrique 1918 Buenos Magazine Fray
colonial Banchs Aires Mocho
Far Away and Long Autobiography Guillermo 1918 New York E. P. Dutton &
Ago Allá lejos y Enrique 1938 Buenos Company
hace tiempo Hudson Aires Jacobo Peuser
 African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal 11
Table 1 (Continued)

Work Genre Author Year Place Editor

Falucho Drama Antonio 1923 Buenos Magazine La

Botta y Aires Escena
Antonio De
Bassi
La divisa punzó Drama Paul 1923 Buenos Jesús Menéndez
Groussac Aires e hijo
Se casa el negro Drama Alberto 1924 Buenos Magazine La
Rancagua Novión Aires Escena
La negra de la calle Short story Héctor Pedro 1927 Buenos Magazine Caras
Victoria Blomberg Aires y Caretas
La fiesta de san Drama Juan B. 1927 Buenos Tor
Baltasar Gurrera Aires
El gaucho negro Drama Claudio 1927 Buenos Magazine La
Martínez (premiere) Aires Escena
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Payva 1929
El candombe ‘Sainete’ Carlos 1929 Buenos Magazine La
federal (Interlude) Schaefer (premiere) Aires Escena
Gallo 1930
El ‘cambarangá’ Short story Mateo Booz 1930 Buenos Newspaper La
Aires Nación
La mazorquera de Drama Carlos 1930 Buenos Newspaper La
Monserrat Schaefer (premiere) Aires Escena
Gallo 1932
La mulata del Drama Héctor Pedro 1932 Buenos Magazine
restaurador Blomberg y Aires Bambalinas
Viale Paz
Nuestro hermano Drama César 1934 Buenos Magazine El
negro Tiempo Aires Hogar
La parda Mariana Drama Pablo Suero 1935 Buenos Nuestro Teatro
Artigas (premiere) Aires
1936
La isla desierta Drama Roberto Arlt 1937 Buenos Futuro
(premiere) Aires
1950
Pájaro de barro Drama Samuel 1940 Buenos Sur
Eichelbaum Aires
Cuando aquí había Drama Rodolfo 1941 Buenos Eudeba
reyes González (premiere) Aires
Pacheco 1966
El negro de los Short story Anonymous 1946 Buenos Newspaper
prontuarios Aires Cometa
La negra Short story Juan García 1946 Buenos Magazine
Candelaria Orozco Aires Maribel
El muerto. In El Short story Jorge Luis 1949 Buenos Losada
Aleph Borges Aires
Las puertas del Short story Julio 1951 Buenos Sudamericana
cielo. In Bestiario Cortázar Aires
La pulsera de Short story Manuel 1951 Buenos Sudamericana
cascabeles; La Mujica Aires
mojiganga y La Láinez
hechizada. In
Misteriosa
Buenos Aires
 12 N.P. Cirio and D.T. Cámara
Table 1 (Continued)

Work Genre Author Year Place Editor

La libertad del Short story Juan Draghi 1953 Buenos Guillermo Kraft
negro. In Las mil Lucero Aires
y una noches
argentinas
Los esclavos no Novel Efraín 1953 Córdoba n/d
saben morir Urbano
Bischoff
Negro bufón Drama Enzo Aloisi 1958 Buenos Ediciones del
Aires Carro de Tespis
Romances del pago Poetry Elías 1958 La Plata Personal Edition
de La Matanza Cárpena
Cambá Cuá Poetry Jesús 1960 Corrientes Revista del
Salvador Sesquicentenario
Cabral
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Cabecita negra. In Short story Germán 1961 Buenos Personal Edition

Cabecita negra Rozenmacher Aires
Improvisación de Short story Elías 1961 Buenos Del Atlántico
Gabino Ezeiza en Cárpena Aires
la casa vieja. In
Barrios vírgenes:
Escenas de
Floresta y Villa
Lugano
1911–1914
Milonga de los Poetry Jorge Luis 1965 Buenos Emecé
morenos. In Para Borges Aires
las seis cuerdas
Celeste rondó. In Short story Rubén 1965 Buenos Jorge Álvarez
Crónicas del Benítez Aires
pasado
(AA. VV.)
La fiesta del Short story Jorge Luis 1967 Buenos Losada
monstruo. In Borges y Aires
Crónicas de Adolfo Bioy
Bustos Domecq Casares
Ese negro es un Short story Elías 1967 Buenos Troquel
hombre Cárpena Aires
Boquitas pintadas Novel Manuel Puig 1969 Buenos Sudamericana
Aires
El encuentro, La Short story Jorge Luis 1970 Buenos Emecé
Intrusa. In El Borges Aires
informe de Brodie
Bairestop Novel Bernardo 1975 Buenos Losada
Kordon Aires
La fiesta de doña Poetry Antonio R. 1978 Corrientes Newspaper El
Mercedes Aucar Litoral
El 6 de enero en Poetry Ernesto H. 1978 Corrientes Newspaper El
Corrientes (La González Litoral
procesión de san
Baltasar)
 African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal 13
Table 1 (Continued)

Work Genre Author Year Place Editor

La procesión de San Poetry Ernesto H. 1978 Corrientes Newspaper

Baltazar González Época
Autobiografía I: El Autobiography Victoria 1979 Buenos Sur
archipiélago Ocampo Aires
La revolución es un Novel Andrés 1987 Buenos Aguilar, Altea,
sueño eterno Rivera Aires Taurus,
Alfaguara
L’Internationale Novel Copi (pen- 1988 París Belfond
Argentine La name of Raúl 1989 Barcelona Anagrama
Internacional Damonte
Argentina Botana)
La charanda del Short story Luis Alberto 1989 Buenos Poder Ejecutivo
regreso. In El Durruty Aires de la Provincia
cura de Santa de Corrientes
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Clara
Salomé Drama Abelardo 1995 Buenos Emecé
Castillo Aires
Como vivido cien Historical novel Cristina Bajo 1995 Córdoba Ediciones del
veces Boulevard
Figuración de Poetry Oscar 1999 Buenos Sudamericana
Gabino a Steimberg Aires
Betinotti
El amante de rojo Historical novel Alejo 2000 Buenos Sudamericana
Brignole Aires
Sobremonte: Una Historical novel Miguel 2001 Buenos Sudamericana
historia de Wiñazki Aires
codicia argentina
El cuarto arcano. El Novel Florencia 2007 Buenos Suma de Letras
cuarto arcano 2 Bonelli 2007 Aires
(El puerto de las
tormentas)
1810: La Novel Washington 2008 Buenos Emecé
Revolución de Cucurto Aires
Mayo vivida por
los negros
Blanco nocturno Novel Ricardo 2010 Barcelona Anagrama
Piglia

recent (mid-twentieth century). The industrialization process of the 1930s gave way to a
large internal migration – mainly from the countryside – into Buenos Aires.
Conservative porteños – with their apprehension towards the ‘colouring’ of the city
and the emergence of villas de emergencia [‘temporary shantytowns’] which later became
permanent and known as villas miseria – began referring to these newcomers as negrada
peronista [‘Black’ Peronist crowds], cabecitas negras [literally, little black heads] and
aluvión zoológico [‘zoological flood’], along with other derogatory terms. Their
‘blackness’, blind loyalty to ‘the Tyrant’ (the nickname given to nineteenth century
dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas, also applied to then-president Juan Domingo Perón) and
 14 N.P. Cirio and D.T. Cámara

their definite ‘Latin American’ character, threatened to revive the ‘chaos’ of Buenos Aires
during the Rosas regime, incarnated by the imagery of the Afro-descendant candombe7
street performers. In the words of Frigerio (2008), ‘this system of racial classification
divides the population between Whites (all Argentines) and Blacks (all immigrants),
rendering racially mixed subjects as invisible and placing them in a supposedly socio-
economic category (negros or cabecitas negras)’ (118). This pseudo-negritud based on
class also finds its literary representations in Cabecita negra (1961) by Germán
Rozenmacher, Las puertas del cielo (1962) by Julio Cortázar, and La fiesta del monstruo,
by Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares. In this double-fictionalization of ethnic
and class-based negritud, we find a perhaps conscious generation of a genealogical
textual filiation between the two realms, giving way to an apocryphal connection between
the ethnicity-based los negros de Rosas [Rosas’s Blacks] and the class-based la negrada
peronista. This constituted a mythographical revival of negritude in the time of Rosas and
its association with the socio-political degradation in the time of Perón. This ‘de-
Africanized Black’ is equally a victim of a virulent racism reflected in the works we
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analyse.
The second divergence is illustrated by the Black character in L’internationale
Argentine (1988) by Copi [pseudonym for Raúl Damonte Botana, 1939–1987]. Unlike
other authors that build the image of the Afro-Argentine with a relatively normative
actantial stability (slave, soldier, freeman), this novel subverts, in the best Bakhtinian
sense, the chain of axiological presuppositions associated with/ Afro-Argentineness. This
unique novel introduces the implausible Nicanor Sigampa, the last descendant of one of
the few families of former slaves that gained access to the porteño aristocracy. He is also
a multi-millionaire that employs Paraguayan servants, a notable polo player and a patriot
(‘no doubt because of his color’, Copi 1989, 55) of the small locality of San Isidro – all of
the above, markers of the Argentine White-patrician universe. The project of re-
Africanization of a distinguished national genealogy and the reversal of criollo-Argentine
political life is depicted in a novel that executes an eccentric and revulsive contestation to
the idea of an invisible or inexistent Afro-Argentineness. In this sense, we could regard
Sigampa’s exile in Paris as both an ironic refuge in a city that Buenos Aires and its
aristocracy took as a model to emulate, and as the celebration of Paris as the haven for
the intellectuals of the Négritude movement of the 1930s.

Neo-slave Argentine narratives? (2005–2012)

In 2005, the interest generated by the slow but stable progression in the visibility of
Argentina’s ‘third root’, along with several institutional initiatives and their overall impact
in society (included Afro-Argentines of colonial descent themselves), lead to the
activation of a sui generis process of systematic inquiry of the question, taking into
account the historical as well as the contemporary dimensions. This impulse of
recuperation of Argentine history has had visible effects on the field of contemporary
Argentine literature. In fact, the literary device that places this investigative task directly
on the character (see Fiebre negra) can be read as an inter-discursive reference to the
academic and non-academic forms of inquiry cultivated since the late twentieth century.
In a notable and commendable attempt to achieve a pluriethnic and multicultural
polyphony, these narratives (mainly historical and/or romantic novels) have included
Afro-Argentine memories, cultural referents, characters and leading voices that contribute
 African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal 15

Table 2. 2005–2012.
Cielo de tambores Historical novel Ana Gloria 2005 Buenos Emecé
Moya Aires
Carimba: La marca de África Historical novel Pablo 2006 Buenos Luxemburg
en nuestra independencia Marrero Aires
Fiebre negra Historical novel Miguel 2008 Buenos Planeta
Rosenzvit Aires
Susurros negros Historical novel Mirta 2010 Córdoba Ediciones del
Fachini Boulevard
El relicarioa Historical novel Ernesto 2010 Buenos Planeta
Mallo Aires
El carro de la muerte Historical novel Mercedes 2011 Buenos Suma
(crime novel) Giuffré Aires
El negro Manuel Historical novel Tinco 2011 Buenos Parábola
Andrada Aires
José Francisco, esclavo Historical novel Daila Prado 2012 Córdoba Raíz de Dos
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El espíritu oculto Historical novel Mirta 2012 Córdoba Ediciones del

Fachini Boulevard
Herencia negada Historical novel Mirta 2014 Córdoba El Emporio
Fachini
a
This novel deserves to be set aside from the rest, at least from a formal aspect. Although the story deals with a
reliquary made in Italy in 1523 that changes hands several times, there is a rather large section (section III) titled
‘Negro’ (133–235), subdivided in shorter chapters such as ‘Guinea’, ‘São Jorge de Mina’, ‘Arribada’, Barrio del
Tambor’, etc., which altogether function as a neo-slave narrative within the context of the larger novel.

to the rewriting and re-inscription of a group that was systematically erased from national
history (Table 2).
Although still limited in number of works and with a potential for editorial success,
this corpus is clearly taking part in a process of socio-historical deconstruction and re-
construction based on the ideological premise – sometimes made explicit by the author(s)
and/or narrator(s) – of reflecting an Afrocentric view through its themes, characters and
perspectives. While there is still no clear category that encompasses all of these works,
we have decided to employ the concept of ‘Neo-slave Narrative’ as an heuristic floating
signifier that goes beyond its formal meaning and is adapted to the Argentine literary,
aesthetic, ethnic and political reality. In that sense, these works do not represent
a reactivation of ‘slave narratives’ but rather a socio-textual evolution that seeks to
intervene in the process achieving visibility for this group. This corpus is thus constituted
by texts that circulated as counter-narratives against official discourse. These texts share a
logic that poses a potential alteration both within the historiography of Argentine slavery,
and of historiography in general, thus situating them also as ‘text’ as a ‘commentary on
other texts’ (Jameson 1984, cited in Rushdy 1999, 7). These narratives reproduce
contesting fiction-statements or ‘acts of recovery’ in the context of an intra-history that
has been ignored, obscured, and rendered invisible.
From a methodological standpoint, rather than providing a synopsis and analysis for
each volume, we will focus on creating a catalogue of general traits and characteristics
that allows the study of these works as a unitary socio-political and narrative
phenomenon.
 16 N.P. Cirio and D.T. Cámara

Weight of the paratext

A tool to undergird the process of visibilization with documentary and ethnographic
material, such as historical documents, epigraphs of chapters making use of popular
phraseology (African/religious and criollo), as well as foundational texts, poetry and
travel chronicles. Prologues, footnotes, glossaries, list of characters, bibliography,
endnotes and even dedications (see, for instance, in El espíritu oculto: ‘To my friends
at Misibamba, Afro-Argentines of colonial descent, to whom I owe the enthusiasm to
render the occult visible’) that indicate a level of intellectual understanding and contact
with the group, thus making the volume in question a source of historical/ethnographic
interest. These components show an affirmative attitude that promotes knowledge about
Afro-Argentineness, also reflecting a commitment to its particular themes. Fiebre negra
embodies this critical outlook by introducing a character that takes on the task of
uncovering/discovering Afro-Argentineness – a present-day anthropologist that begins
her research on the alleged ‘disappearance’ of Afro-Argentines, and whose story ties into
that of a Black character of the nineteenth century.
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Text
Pre-active narration
A short-narrative account (racconto) of life in Africa before slavery, sometimes stylized/
idealized, but also denouncing the internal collaboration of African elites in the slave
trade (see Susurros negros; José Francisco, esclavo; El negro Manuel; Carimba; and El
relicario); the experience of the ‘Middle Passage’ always narrated as a radical, traumatic
and extremely violent event; and the conditions of arrival and sale in the mainland. For
the characters of second and third generation there is a strong African presence as
narrated by the elders in their re-elaboration of the mythical-cultural and genealogical
memory of the experience of the diaspora. We pose that framing this memory as being in
Africa – with concrete ethnographic references in some cases – aims to provide a certain
‘guarantee of the past’ (historical as well as personal, even if imagined) and avoids
granting the Black subject an existence based only in his/her condition as slave in the
New World.
With a clear rhetorical purpose, in most of these works the ancestors of the
protagonists – or the protagonists themselves – have native royal family or noble caste
ancestry. In both El Relicario and Carimba, we perceive an even sharper contrast: the
alternative between the ‘wretched royalty’ of the King and Queen of the Congo Nation,
and the festival of Saint Balthazar, respectively, as a pathetic emulation of a non-existent
grandeur. Conversely, the ascension of the Congo King, during the 1787 carnival is
remembered in El negro Manuel as a defiance and threat to criollo society, to the point of
forcing him to abjure his own ‘royalty’ before civil authorities.

Religion/religiosity
We observe a pervasive presence of animism (cult of ancestry; pantheons of various
African cultures, mainly the yoruba; criollización of the African Olympus); and of
syncretism in the use of para-Christian, Islamic and Afro-American religious and
medicinal practices (such as in rites of birth, death and illness).
 African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal 17

Topoi of Afro-Argentine culture

Guilds and cults (Saint Balthazar and Saint Benito); neighbourhoods [barrios] (El
Tambor, San Telmo, Montserrat, Mondongo); nations (Angolan, Nagó, Congo);
candombe and other ritual dances as ‘symbolic antidotes’ to the hardships of slavery;
the predominant use of the drum as metaphor, as an interethnic ‘common language’, and
of the carnival as temporary freedom and performative actualization of the lost African
matrix. Commentaries on their musical genres and instruments. Most authors invariably
include different interpretations and etymologies of tango/tangó/milongón as an event, as
musical expression or as a space associated with Afro-Argentineness.

Linguistic multiplicity
Characters use African languages – such as Swahili, Kimbundu, Kikongo, Zulu, Wolof,
amongst others – in dialogues, songs and spells; they also use an Africanized variant of
Spanish known as bozal. There is an abundance of bantuisms. Regarding onomastics,
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some characters keep their African names in secret despite the imposition of Christian
names. Nicknames such as negro, negrito, nanita and tía are common pejorative forms
that denote fake kinship, depersonalization, and humiliation as experienced by Afro-
Argentines. These authors strive to document the ethnic ascriptions of their characters in
order to construct a totalizing Pan-Africanist vision, and establish the basis for both an
identitarian specificity and a new social history.

Social and labour roles

Characters face the abuses of slavery (branding, torture, shackling, sexual abuse, physical
punishment). The descriptions of this violence and abuse expose the cruelties of slavery
and contest the alleged benevolence of Argentine slavery, still outrageously standing (an
idea that circulates not without irony throughout these works), as defended by
conservative historicist thought. There are references to various occupations: laundress,
seamstress, healer, cook, shoemaker, carpenter, street vendor, soldier (a remarkably
complex and polysemic role), freeman (references to manumission, its methods and
implicit sacrifices; emancipation raffles; the ‘Freedom of Wombs’ Law of 1813).
Runaway slaves (Maroons) appear as something alien and distant from civilization, and
none of these volumes explore their ideology of liberation and resistance. The society
negatively portrayed is now the White European/criollo (depicted as cruel, violent, racist,
‘savage’), except for those progressive characters that create quasi-egalitarian relation-
ships with the Blacks (lovers, friends, doctors). Alphabetization, when it occurs, takes
place clandestinely or as a gesture of extreme benevolence on behalf of a White character.
Fiebre negra stands out for its insistence in portraying Afro-Argentine intellectuals
(journalists, scribers, teachers, musicians, poets, pharmacists and lawyers) and their
participation in Argentine politics, education and culture.

Emotional universe
Given the ‘coexistence’ implied in the structure of domestic slavery (housekeepers,
coachmen), we find characters that establish interracial friendships marked by constant
discursive ‘reminders’ of the status quo. Interracial romance amongst adult characters
become rhetorical resources:
 18 N.P. Cirio and D.T. Cámara

And thus María Kumbá kept growing up, the product of two bloods converging in her veins
to give her the best of both: White and Black, Black and White, a perfect combination that
began to populate the nascent Viceroyalty, branded in fire by the legacy of Africa. (Moya
2005, 18)

Unlike other novels in which the child born out of a ‘forbidden’ romance is of White
father and Black mother (a lesser transgression enacted by the White male master), El
Negro Manuel portrays the opposite situation: a White high-class woman falls in love
with a Black army captain and becomes pregnant; an inconceivable offence that is
punished with extreme violence. In the absence of a romantic background story, the
mulatto offspring appears as a denunciation, the physical consequence of the master’s
abuse and his/her own illegitimate condition.
El carro de la muerte (2011) is an interesting case that displays many of these traits.
However, this novel naturalizes Argentine negritud to the point of using it as the
backdrop for a subaltern/colonial detective story. The novel is a murder mystery
involving Black victims whose bodies show up with scars with the shape of the African
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bakongo cross. Following a Holmesian structure, two characters – the Scottish doctor
Samuel Redhead (an incarnation of Sherlock Holmes) and Malik/Resurrecto (a freed
slave who works as Redhead’s assistant, an Afro-Argentine Watson of sorts) – attempt to
solve the case by investigating both the Afro-Argentine community and the criollo high
society. The author situates the novel in the context of the first British Invasion of
Argentina (1806), and describes how a group of slaves devise a plan to rebel against the
authorities of the Viceroyalty, following the Jacobin-inspired uprisings in Haiti.

Conclusions
In this article, we have examined the literature by and about (even if only partially) Afro-
Argentines of colonial descent. The study of these documents required the synthesis of a
vast and complex collection of rather unknown materials. Thus we provide conclusions
on specific aspects of these literary productions. In the works produced by Afro-
Argentines, we reflect on the politics underlying the configuration and transmission of the
canon, as well as on the need to subvert its official strategies with counter-hegemonic
tactics of ‘de-formation’. As Susana Zanetti suggests:

The notion of canon always maintains its original links to dogma; it wields its disciplining
wand through the dictates of elites and institutions […] It selects, and thus it excludes and
ignores, based on both artistic and politico-ideological criteria. Its malleability is reduced to
the simulation of being the result of complex decisions that reflect certain agreements about
the values and identity of a social group. (1998, 91)

Regarding canon formation, Jane Tompkins has questioned the concept of ‘literary value’
as a selection criterion in anthologies of national literature. In her study of this type of
anthologies in the context of the United States between 1919 and 1962, Tompkins noted
that this criterion has shifted along with the standards of literary excellence, given that the
latter are the result of contingencies: editorial policies shaped in turn by variable notions
of national identity, taste and (racial) prejudice. Thus, the function of these anthologies in
shaping the canon by privileging works considered ‘central/fundamental’ does not take
place in a vacuum, and pushes the reader to take for granted and accept that which is
considered to be (good) national literature. In this regard, we explore the existence of a
 African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal 19

dichotomy between national/Argentine canon (Rosa 1998) to elucidate whether

the national canon ideologically protects the texts and aesthetics that constitute the
foundational narratives of officially-sanctioned identity; or if, on the contrary, the
Argentine canon can/should incorporate works that contest that narrative. The inclusion
of Afro-Argentine literature into an Argentine canon – and thus into primary and
secondary school curricula – would constitute a first step towards a definite impact in
policies of historiographical, intellectual and artistic inclusion. We are aware of the
epistemological difficulties and controversies implied in this attempt to reform the canon.
More specifically, we seek to avoid the relapse into a deterministic over-racialization of
this literary corpus that, while bearing the mark of ethnicity, cannot be reduced to its
racial dimension. In turn, we believe that the location, analysis and publication of these
materials can result in the full incorporation of Afro-Argentine literature into national
literary discourse.
The presence of Afro-Argentine authors in the national literary canon – anthologies
and compilations dealing with a particular style, region, province, theme, historical period
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or even gender; aesthetic studies (see Quesada 1902); and historiographical (see Rojas
1922) treatises – is rather exceptional. This confirms the status of Afro-Argentine
literature and its ethnic character as non-existent or irrelevant from an academic point of
view. This is the case even for Gabino Ezeiza, a consecrated national payador whose
historic victory in a payada contest against his fellow Juan de Nava on 23 May 1884
gave way to the creation of the National Day of the Payador in 1992. Not even his most
famous song Heroico Paisandú, a long-standing anthem for payadores, has found its way
into the canon. Thus, although Ezeiza enjoyed great popular esteem, academic circles
have treated him as a rudimentary artist, the most widely-known of the ‘popular
troubadours’ (Giusti 1959, in Lewis [1996] 2010, 128). This general attitude is applicable
also not only for Afro-Argentine popular authors of brochures and leaflets, but also for
those with much more publishing success. For example, nationalist writer Ricardo Rojas
commented on afroporteño poet Horacio Mendizábal:

The ‘goodfella’ Horacio Mendizábal lacked personality and true poetic genius. His muse – if
I may use this expression – went from the satirical to the eulogical, from the epic to the
didactic, through a path of stumbling rhythms with plenty of poorly-measured verses.
Evidently, Mendizábal was not a poet. He suspected this […] and this is why I refer to his
book, for it is one of those dangerous places on which some myopic editors and
unscrupulous analysis have dwelt. (Rojas 1922, 435)

Given the complexity of the issues at stake, we stand by Lewis’s recommendation of

systematizing the analysis of this literary corpus. On the payadores literature, for
instance, we lack a proper quantitative study on both the number of authors (we estimate
around ten) and the number of volumes (we account for some 400, of which one third are
by Ezeiza). In a study conducted in the main public repositories in Buenos Aires, Cirio
discovered the staggering amount of 4 volumes in total. Thanks to a grant from the
Instituto Ibero-Americano (Berlin), Cirio carried out his research at the Biblioteca
Criolla, the most comprehensive collection on the topic, compiled by the German
anthropologist Robert Lehmann-Nitsche. This Biblioteca comprises 643 brochures and
pamphlets, most of them by Afro-Argentine payadores. This study uncovered data
previously unknown to academics, such as the existence of one payadora – a pioneer in
that field – Matilde Ezeiza, no less than the daughter of Gabino Ezeiza.
 20 N.P. Cirio and D.T. Cámara

We deem the task of locating and studying Afro-Argentine literary sources as

indispensable to facilitate access to a literary production that is integral to the history of
the country. In the process of incorporating new works into anthologies and compilations,
aesthetic standards should give way to other considerations, that allow for the inclusion of
a literature that is valuable in its own right and historical trajectory. Present-day discourse
on political correctness resorts to notions like ‘pluri-ethnic’ or ‘multicultural’ to account
for the diversity within notions of Argentine national identity. And if there is no doubt
that the Argentine state has an ‘outstanding debt’ with the descendants of slaves, how do
we translate such discourse into concrete initiatives? Our research agenda could be a good
starting point.
We are also concerned with the meaning of narratives about Afro-Argentines, which
forces us to confront the slippery notion of authenticity. We approach these authors as
attempting to create their own process of ‘authentication’ (independent of their
knowledge of Afro-Argentineness). We should not, therefore, disregard a particular piece
that is not written by Afro-Argentines. Artistic creation cannot harbour moral or ethnic
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‘guardians’ of a tradition or an experience; there cannot be ultimate authorities over the

legitimacy (or lack thereof) of the process of imagination, nor can a novel be valued only
in racial terms. Thus, we argue for the significance of this literary production as a series
of representative statements that, through fiction, make ‘evident’ or ‘visible’ that which
Argentine hegemonic discourse has rendered invisible.
We acknowledge that several other lines of inquiry could not be developed in depth,
given both the limitations in space and the rather incipient state of the field. We are also
aware of the difficulties of an exhaustive analysis of the authors, volumes, chronologies
and identities here discussed. Amongst these ‘loose ends’ we find the study of cases that
introduce important epistemological problems, such as those posed by the writings of
Pedro Orgambide (1929–2003) and Griselda Gambaro (1928). According to available
evidence, these two authors could be incorporated into the category of Afro-Argentine
authors (Frigerio 2006). The question lingers about whether this should be done despite
the fact that they do not identify themselves as Afro-Argentines, which also raises
questions about the adequacy and sufficiency of this evidence as such. Lastly, the analysis
of Afro-Argentine oral literature; the presence of Afro-Argentine authors in literary
anthologies; and the vast political literature destined to (and probably produced by) Afro-
Argentines during the regime of Juan Manuel de Rosas (mid-nineteenth-century)
represent a part of the several themes and topics that are left pending for a future
research agenda.

Notes
1. Present-day Argentina displays a variety of superimposed Afro-diasporic identities originated by
colonial slavery and several migration waves during the twentieth century. Consequently, the
Afro-descendant organization Asociación Misibamba has been pushing, since 2008, for the use
of the category ‘Afro-Argentines of Colonial Descent’ (afroargentinos del tronco colonial) as an
identity marker that distinguishes them from other Afro-descendants and African immigrants.
The category has been widely adopted to avoid the misidentification of the group in question
(Cirio 2010).
2. Translator’s Note (TN): the term afroporteño refers to the population of African descent that
until today resides in Buenos Aires and its surrounding areas. It is a variation of porteño, the
common demonym for residents of Buenos Aires.
 African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal 21

3. Although García did not publish his works nor recorded commercially, Inés Cuello of the
Instituto Nacional de Musicología ‘Carlos Vega’, made a documental recording of this piece in
1967 (Archive of Associated Materials, document 3).
4. With the exception of works originally written in English, all translations are ours, unless
otherwise noted.
5. In collaboration with Argentine writer Mercedes Rubio.
6. In these works, the presence and relevance the Afro-Argentine character is not homogeneous and
varies significantly. To avoid the duplication of references, the works mentioned in the table will
not be included in the references. Finally, given the level of complexity resulting from sifting
through the Afro-Argentine literature taking the Afro element as core analytical feature, this
table will require a sine die construction.
7. TN: a musical genre, proper of Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil, with roots in the African Bantu.

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