"As I watched the Argentina and Iceland match today and wondered why there were no black

players in the Argentinean team when other South American teams had black or biracial
players, I remembered a conversation I had last year.

It was while I was on a cruise from Florida to the Grand Cayman Islands in the Caribbean.

Between an Argentinean doctor and myself, who had walked up to me during lunch one day
and struck up a conversation with me.

There was no hiding the attraction.

We had bonded much to the chagrin of her three Argentinean friends.

On the deck of the ship that day, she kept going on about how she loves black men and looks
forward to traveling so she can meet them.

I asked her.

"Don't you have black people in Argentina?"

She said with a matter of fact candour.

"No. Long time ago, after slavery, we killed them all."

I was taken aback.

She smiled.

And continued.

"Very bad. I am ashamed of my people. It was very systematic though. Very well thought out.
First they forced most of the men to fight for Argentina against Paraguay. They knowingly sent
them into battles that were poorly planned so that the Paraguay army will do for them what
they couldn't themselves do. Kill the blacks. Most of them died there. The remaining of them
they forced to live in this province were there was a plague. A disease that the government
refused to curb so that it can also do for them what they couldn't do. Kill the blacks. The
refused to set up hospitals, clinics, adequate shelter, food outlets, nothing. They created the
best environment for the disease to thrive. It killed the rest of the men that had survived the
war. The darker you are, the higher the chance they will send you to that place to live or to the
war to die. The lighter skinned women they forced them to sleep with the white men, so that
their children are biracial, then they forced the children when they grew older to sleep with
white men, so that the blackness of the skin of the children became whiter and whiter until
there was no longer any visibly black people seen. It was so bad that blacks fled to Chile, Peru,
Bolivia, Brazil and even Paraquay where they were better treated even though not as well as
they should be treated as human beings deserving full equality. Atleast those ones did not
want to kill them and accepted to give them protection and a means of livelihood. As a matter
of fact in Chile, there was a city called Arica where Black people were so accepted and
respected that in the 1700s two black free man, one called Anzuréz were elected mayors. But
the white colonial masters from Spain came six months later and nullified the elections, they
were afraid of other cities giving black people too many rights. But the blacks who had found
succour did not complain, they sent word for others to flee Argentina and come join them.
Afterall what was cancelled elections compared to certain death?"

Then she went silent as though trying to replay the magnitude of the crime in her mind again.
Then she said it in a sombre tone in order to drive it home to me.

"The ones the Argentineans did not kill through war or disease, and rape and impregnate, fled
the country and ultimately we got rid of the blacks."

I listened in rising sorrow.

She continued academically.

"So although they abolished slavery in 1815 in Argentina, it continued until 1853, after that the
main preoccupation of the leaders was how to get rid of the black slaves and their
descendants. Our president who ruled us from 1868 to 1874, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento,
wrote in his diary in 1848, this was long before he became president and slavery ended that -
'In the United States… 4 million are black, and within 20 years will be 8 million…. What is to be
done with such blacks, hated by the white race?' - It shows that he was already thinking of how
to eliminate black people before he became President and when he became President, he
succeeded."

"Didn't the world say anything?"

"No. They ignored it. I am sure most of them wanted to do the same thing but failed. At that
time, they admired them. I remember when I will go to Brazil as a child, my father's friend will
say in disgust as he looked at the black Brazilians - we should have had your guts and finished
them off. All of them. Make Brazil white just like Argentina."

"And the Europeans?"

She laughed.

"It is an open secret, just like King Leopold and his genocide in Congo. No one talks about it,
but they know about it. Atleast the older ones do. The younger ones not so much. Why do you
think all the Nazis ran to Argentina after World War 2?"

I was silent.

She continued.

"Because it was the perfect place for the most evil racists in history to live."

Then she looked out to the infinitely blue sea around the ship and sighed audibly before she
continued.

" Sadly, to some extent, it still is welcoming and accomodating of racial hatred. We took the
Tango from the African slaves and made it our own. In Argentina, not one person will tell you
the true history of that dance. They don't want to associate it with Africa. In fact if you ask
them about black people in Argentina they will tell you that there has never been black people
in Argentina. They teach them in schools. They rewrite the history. They make it all white. And
as I said it is all underneath the surface. They never come out and say we hate black people.
Argentina is only for whites or anything like that. They have just fixed the country to only be
for white people."

I looked at her friends, Argentineans like her, who were lounging on the chairs on the deck,
clad in their tiny bikinis, drinking pina coladas and smiling.

She followed my gaze and then turned to me.

"Don't be fooled by all those smiles, scratch the surface and you will see that all they want is
for you to disappear."

Jude Idada

Toronto.

=========================

OFFICIAL VERSION

Decline of the Afro-Argentine population

The bloody Paraguayan War(1865–70) and the Yellow Fever epidemic have been considered
causes of the drastic diminution of the Afro-Argentine population.

Causes of reduction

Heavy casualties caused by constant civil wars and foreign wars: Blacks formed a
disproportionate part of the Argentine army in the long and bloody War of Paraguay (1865–
1870), in which the loss of lives on both sides were high. Heavy casualties among blacks led to
a large gender gap among the black population which led to black women increasingly forming
relationships with white people.

It has been alleged that Argentine President Domingo Sarmiento sought to eliminate blacks
from the country in a policy of covert genocide through oppressive policies. These possibly
included the forced employment of Black people into the armed forces and by forcing them to
stay in neighbourhoods, where in the absence of decent health care, they would be devastated
by disease, and possibly mass executions may have also contributed to the rapid population
disappearance in the last two decades of the 19th century. Such mass killings may have gone
generally unreported, as similar to the ethnic cleansing of native populations in Patagonia
sanctioned by the Argentine government.

Epidemics, especially of yellow fever in 1871: the traditional history holds that the epidemics
had greater impact in areas where the poorest people lived.

Emigration. Large numbers of Afro-Argentines emigrated particularly to Uruguay and Brazil,

where black populations had historically been larger and had a more favorable political
climate;
Massive immigration from Europe between 1880 and 1950, boosted by the Constitution of
1853, that quickly multiplied the country's population. Like White Australia policy in the 1900s
to 1970s, European immigrants were encouraged while non-Europeans were virtually
excluded.

All children born after 1813 were automatically free, but Afro-Argentines who were already
slaves were not freed, and were only granted their freedom as a condition of fighting in
Argentina's wars. For this reason, African males had disproportionate numbers in the
Argentine war of independence from Spain. A much larger proportion of men of African
descent were killed in the war than men of Spanish descent.

An Afro-Argentine had less chance of survival if free than if enslaved: slaves were seen as
investments and taken good care of, while free Afro-Argentines were left with menial jobs for
low pay, or forced to become beggars. This caused much poverty in the Afro-Argentine
community; many succumbed to disease because they could not afford proper medical care, in
many cases during frequent plagues of diseases such as yellow fever.

Present

Today in Argentina, the Afro-Argentine community is beginning to emerge from the shadows.
There have been black organizations such as "Grupo Cultural Afro," "SOS Racismo," and
perhaps the most important group "Africa Vive" that help to rekindle interest into the African
heritage of Argentina. There are also Afro-Uruguayan and Afro-Brazilian migrants who have
helped to expand the African culture. Afro-Uruguayan migrants have brought candomble to
Argentina, while Afro-Brazilians teach capoeira, orisha, and other African derived secula. It has
been well over a century since Argentina has reflected the African racial ancestry in its census
count. Therefore, calculating the exact number of Afro-descendants is very difficult; however,
Africa Vive calculates that there are about 1,000,000 Afro-descendents in Argentina. The last
census, carried on 27 October 2010, introduced the African ancestry survey.

See More: Afro-Argentines - Wikipedia

Credit; FFK