BOOK REVIEWS
Ask the typical Argentine about what he or she knows of Argentina's black population or that country's African heritage and one is likely to receive one of two responses. The first and perhaps most common response, at least according to George Reid Andrews, is the categorical denial on the part of most Argentines of the existence, past or present, of Afro-Argentines. This opinion is especially common among residents of Buenos Aires; ironically, it was the port of Buenos Aires which served as an entry point for African slaves destined for the mines and estates of the Viceroyalties of first Peru and then of the Río de la Plata and eventually the Argentine confederation from the sixteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries. Moreover, Africans were especially visible in and around the city of Buenos Aires, whether as domestic servants, day laborers, urban slaves, militia members, or as gauchos (cowboys), field slaves, and peons in the countryside. Despite this history, porteños (natives of the city) insist on telling themselves and their visitors that "There are no Negros in Buenos Aires" (see George Reid Andrews, The Afro-Argentines of Buenos Aires, 1800-1900 [Madison, 1980], 3).
The second response, while acknowledging the historical presence of Argentines of color, often denies an African component in Argentina's culture. Concomitant with this opinion are questions about the fate of Afro-Argentines. What happened to them? How did they disappear from the population and the national consciousness?
Despite the opinions illustrated above regarding the presence (or lack thereof) of Afro-Argentines, a considerable bibliography nonetheless exists on the experiences of blacks in the Río de la Plata. This rich (if largely unexplored) bibliography has a new addition, albeit on an old theme: the riddle of the disappearance of Afro-Argentines. Essentially, Francisco Morrone's study attempts to not only explain the disappearance of blacks in Argentina, but also provide a history of black participation in the military. Based on published primary documents and standard secondary sources, this work revisits themes treated elsewhere in the Afro-Argentine historiography. For example, Morrone begins with an analysis of the slave trade and slavery in the Río de la Plata. These themes have been previously well-covered by, among others, Elena F. Scheuss de Studer, Diego L. Molinari, and more recently Marta B. Goldberg and Carlos A. Mayo. Morrone's purpose is to establish that both in the colonial and post-colonial periods blacks in Argentina were present in numbers much higher than generally reported (en un número mucho más elevado al que se le asigna [11]).
Despite the demographic significance of black Argentines even into the nineteenth century (they represented about 30% of Buenos Aires's population in 1810 ), Morrone suggests that they were reduced to almost invisibility as a result of miscegenation, disease, and warfare (13-18). It is well-known that throughout the Americas blacks intermarried and "passed" for white. Moreover, nineteenth-century nation-builders favored the whitening of their populations . Thus, positivist politicians and social theorists supported massive European immigration as means to not only add laborers to nascent industrializing economies but also to whiten ("improve") the Creole populations of Latin America republics. Unfortunately, Morrone does not address these issues at all; instead, he dwells on the colonial practice of buying legal "whiteness" (gracias al sacar) and miscegenation during slavery (15-17). There are many fine studies in the Afro-Argentine literature on miscegenation, especially those of Marta Goldberg, Emiliano Endrek, and Lowell Gudmunson; however, Morrone borrows very little from this research to enhance his work (although Endrek and Goldberg appear in the book's bibliography).
Morrone does, however, provide an important observation on the use of the term mulatto as a political insult (15). If in fact mulatto was, as the author intimates, an epithet employed to politically slander a rival, and not strictly a racial designation, this would put into question Reid Andrews's implication that Bernardino Rivadavia was in fact of African descent ("Dr. Chocolate" to his federalist enemies [see Andrews, 81-2]). If even blonde, blue-eyed Juan Manuel de Rosas could be called a "mulatto," then the term is polemical as a racial designation (especially in the case of elites) in nineteenth-century Argentina (15).
According to Morrone, disease was a second major factor in the disappearance of Afro-Argentines. This point has been previously articulated by, among others, Ricardo Rodríguez Molas and Nicolás Besio Moreno. More recently, José M. Massini Ezcurra and Miguel A. Rosal have also researched slave health, sickness, and mortality. Again, much of this scholarship is not evident in this work. Morrone correctly observes that the lack of medical care severely reduced the numbers of blacks in Argentina. Blacks were especially decimated by frequent plagues throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, especially yellow fever (1871). Ironically, the health and well-being of Afro-Argentines worsened after emancipation, a phenomenon common throughout the Americas (18).
The most devastating factor accounting for the disappearance of blacks in the Río de la Plata, however, was the endemic warfare of the nineteenth century. Beginning with the English and French invasions of Buenos Aires in the century's first decade and continuing through the wars of independence, the civil wars, and culminating with the war against Paraguay (1865-1870), Afro-Argentines volunteered for and were conscripted into the military. Domingo F. Sarmiento (favorably) commented on the way war diminished Argentina's black population (see Conflicto y armonía de las razas en América, 2 vols. [Buenos Aires, 1900]). Morrone also documents the role of blacks in the military: in the defense of Buenos Aires, as members of the militia (e.g., Compañía de pardos y morenos), during the wars of independence (e.g., San Martín's Ejército de los Andes) and at the siege of Montevideo, as combatants on both sides of the federalist-unitarist civil war, and finally as shock troops in the campaigns against the Indians and in the Paraguayan War (19-76). Moreover, any discussion of blacks in the Argentine military would be incomplete without references to the unitarist Colonel Lorenzo Barcala (65-67) and the semi-mythical "Falucho" (58-59). Much of the data provided by Morrone (e.g., about 40% of San Martín's army that crossed the Andes was Afro-Argentine [56]) has been published elsewhere (see, e.g., Andrews). Curiously, Morrone at no time refers to Nuria Sales de Bohigas's important study of slave recruits in South America (see Sobre esclavos, reclutas y mercaderes de quintos[Barcelona, 1974]). Morrone provides statistics on slave recruits, black troops, and casualty rates. He notes that Afro-Argentines were disproportionately killed or wounded in battle (31), perhaps suggesting that they were used as cannon fodder (carne de cañón). This point has been questioned by Andrews.
Morrone's treatment of blacks and Rosas is cursory. He lists Afro-Argentine troops loyal to Rosas: Defensores de Buenos Aires, Libertos de Buenos Aires, Batallón restaurador de las leyes, Cuarto batallón, Batallón de libertos veteranos (68). Surprisingly, the author does not include a discussion of Rosas's death-squad, La Mazorca. Composed of poor whites and people of color from the slums of Buenos Aires, this group terrorized Rosas's unitarist foes. This study does depict Rosas's attempts to win the support of blacks. It is true that Rosas and his family were regulars at Afro-Argentinecandombes (dances). While Morrone shows how Rosas used his wife, Doña Encarnación, as a liaison between himself and Buenos Aires's blacks, he fails to point out that it was his daughter, Doña Manuelita, who in fact was the favorite of Afro-Argentines. Here, Morrone misses the opportunity to use several illuminating collections of popular verses (cancioneros ) from the period which highlight Rosas's connection to Afro-Argentines (see, e.g., José L. Lanuza, ed., Cancionero del tiempo de Rosas, 2nd ed. [Buenos Aires, 1945]).
This study synthesizes a great deal of information about blacks in Argentina. Morrone correctly emphasizes the triple effects of miscegenation, disease, and war as factors in the decline of Afro-Argentines. Unfortunately, he often does not relate one to the other. For instance, when discussing miscegenation he only briefly relates it to the absence of black males killed in war (97). Afro-Argentine battle casualties indeed encouraged miscegenation between black women and immigrant males, since black male-to-female ratios were skewed. Nineteenth and early-twentieth-century European (read white) immigration to Argentina is not even discussed in this study.
Perhaps one of the most important points raised by Morrone deals with the confused racial terminology of nineteenth-century Argentina. Like Andrews, Morrone introduces the wordtrigueño and assumes that it is synonymous with black (103-104). However, even he admits that the term is vague and imprecise (103). Trigueño could apply to mulattoes or dark-skinned Europeans. Morrone writes that "many black men or castas could have 'hidden' among the trigueños listed in the enlistment rosters" (104). Since his data shows both mulatto and trigueño recruits, this raises the question of who was considered trigueño and who was considered mulatto? Who decided the racial classifications? Could one be both trigueño and mulatto simultaneously? How did the trigueños consider themselves, white or black? In short, is trigueño, like mulatto, a problematic racial category? Certainly, Bernardino Rivadavia, a liberal member of the porteño elite, did not regard himself to be or associated with Afro-Argentines (despite his appearance and "Dr. Chocolate" epithet).
Although Francisco Morrone draws from Reid Andrews many ideas and data, he nonetheless misses the point of the former's overarching thesis: namely, that the main cause for the disappearance of Afro-Argentines had to do more with cultural prejudices and the reclassification of many blacks as trigueños than did miscegenation, disease, or war. However, both share certain essentialist or anti-assimilationist biases. Both scholars believe that blacks in Argentina were totally marginalized. Afro-Argentines were not citizens; Argentina was a racist, color-conscious nation that excluded blacks. Furthermore, the nation's intellectual founders consciously "whitewashed" Argentina's history (what Paul Gilroy has called "strategic silences"). Recently, Marvin A. Lewis has authored a book entitled Afro-Argentine Discourse: Another Dimension of the Black Diaspora (Columbia, 1996) which argues along similar lines. However, as the Afro-Argentine patriotic poetry cited by Lewis illustrates, the discourse of race and nation is complex; blacks expressed a pride of place and country in their writings. Afro-Argentines maintained their own institutions and periodicals, even as they were being assimilated. Their discourse often addressed themes of interest to Argentines generally.
Another essentialist bias shared by Morrone and Andrews is their insistence on using trigueño to mean mulatto. The "mulatto escape hatch" certainly allowed many Afro-Argentines to "pass" for white. There is, however, an inherent contradiction in this argument. How is it possible for large numbers of Afro-Argentines to socially ascend in a racist, hegemonic society? At what point did an Afro-Argentine cease to be considered (or, for that matter, considered him or herself to be) black and became trigueño or even white? Andrews has characterized black ancestry in nineteenth-century Argentina as a "heavy cross to bear." Thus, only a rare person of color would have failed to take advantage of "passing." However, as a perceptive early reviewer of Andrews's study--Malcolm Deas of St. Anthony's College, Oxford--has noted, "only a rare heavy cross can quite so easily be shrugged off" (see Journal of Latin American Studies13, 2[1981]: 419]). If "passing" was as common in nineteenth-century Argentina as Andrews suggests, then one has to question his characterization of the dynamic of race relations in that society.
In reality, Morrone is correct when he documents the demographic decline of Afro-Argentines by the end of the nineteenth century. The interplay of long-term miscegenation, disease, and war (rather than "passing") accounts for the disappearance (i.e., assimilation and acculturation) of Afro-Argentines.