Paulina Alberto

Race and class through the visual culture of Peronism

The elites who built Argentina claimed that their nation was embodied in a white-European people. At the end of the nineteenth century, members of distinct African or indigenous groups were declared extinct or were acknowledged only as the last few historical remnants of their communities, rapidly dissolving in the massive torrent of European immigrants. Although a few dissident voices made themselves heard, the master narrative of the nation revolved around the idea of a “melting pot [ crisol de razas ]” out of which one unified and homogeneous new ethnos emerged. This new Argentine ethnos was almost exclusively connected (both culturally and biologically) to its European cradle, and the “Argentine race” was proclaimed to be “white.” This, of course, was a kind of fantasy, as the ethnic backgrounds and phenotypes of large portions of the population did not (and still do not) easily fit into standard definitions of whiteness. For one thing, Afro-Argentines and indigenous groups managed to preserve some ethnic particularities despite the states homogenizing pressures. The continuity of their physical presence also posed challenges to assertions of whiteness. In addition, a large portion of the Argentine population with no sense of belonging to any particular ethnic minority bore phenotypes that did not fully align with contemporary images and stereotypes of whiteness. All Argentines were formally considered “white,” but in terms of physical appearance there was a substantial grey area between those who clearly displayed the right (“European”) skin tones and facial features, and those who obviously did not. In theory, Argentinas whiteness was one; but in practice it had its visual and social nuances. Indeed, although Argentines of non-exclusively European ancestry have been rendered invisible through discourses of whiteness, racist aggressions against the lower classes have been present throughout modern Argentine history, particularly when plebeian sectors have acquired political representation. Both President Hipolito Yrigoyens and Juan Perons followers were discredited for being negros . Their capacity for citizenship was thus questioned, as the racial allusion evoked shortcomings traditionally associated with irrationality and barbarity. Moreover, as I have shown elsewhere, middle-class identity in Argentina developed around a particular historical narrative that imagined the middle class as a force for civilization and progress supposedly brought to the country by European immigration.

La cocina criolla: A history of food and race in twentieth-century Argentina

In 1889, an Italian visitor to Santiago del Estero praised the liberal “progress” sweeping this Northwestern provincial capital. He celebrated the new market, buzzing commercial center, and renovated homes filled with products from Europe and Buenos Aires. He emphasized his appreciation for the renovated kitchens that, in his view, “reveal[ed] a step forward in the manner of eating.” Citing writer Brillat-Savarin’s famous aphorism ‘tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are,’ he argued that this new manner of cooking and eating among the santiagueño elite embodied “true progress.” Even in this relatively sleepy city far from the national capital, cosmopolitan culinary practices had recently begun to have a marked impact. While our visitor did not specify the exact nature of the foods consumed, in Santiago, as in Buenos Aires and Córdoba, it was likely French fare or at least local dishes dressed up with French names and served at elegant, well-set tables. The question of who Argentines were as well as what and how they should eat received a considerable amount of attention during the late nineteenth century and throughout the twentieth. Around the turn of the century, many Argentine scientists and politicians embraced a version of Lamarckian eugenics that held that changing a combination of biological and environmental factors, including people’s diets, would improve the population. Given the association of French cuisine with high civilization across the Americas, Argentine elites (like their counterparts in Mexico or Brazil) publicly embraced French dishes to cement their own respectability and that of their nation. At the same time, in more private, quotidian settings, they also enjoyed specialties with local ingredients and techniques. As massive numbers of immigrants –most from Italy and Spain –made their way to Argentina around the turn of the century, they shaped new ideas about what defined Argentine food. Even today, most urbanites describe Spanish and Italian influences as particularly prominent in the development of a national

Making Samba: A New History of Race and Music in Brazil by Marc Hertzman (review)

Making Samba offers a substantial, indeed superb, contribution to the already robust literature about the birth of samba in the aftermath of slavery in Brazil and its rise to the status of national rhythm by the early twentieth century. Hertzman brings in a previously unexplored set of sources and stories about musicians, with ample details of their contracts, salary structures, and negotiations; their activism in professional associations; and their manifold encounters with police, the state, and various regulatory bodies as they struggled to define and claim music as intellectual property. In doing so he moves the analysis of samba and its relationship to Brazilian racial politics, and beyond the realm of symbolic ownership or belonging. Instead, Hertzman combines cultural, legal, and economic history to uncover new perspectives on the gritty business of “making samba,” placing Afro-Brazilian musician-entrepreneurs at its center.

Blackness in the White Nation: A History of Afro-Uruguay (review)

In this thoroughly engaging book, George Reid Andrews traces the processes by which candombe (an African-creole musical form) became central to Uruguayan popular culture and identity. This is a story usually told of countries with large or majority nonwhite populations, such as Brazil or Cuba. Andrews turns instead to the country once touted as the Switzerland of Latin America, a place deeply identified with white immigrants and European cultural values, yet where black music has emerged as a defining national icon. Along the way, Andrews poses a question that lies at the heart of the study of culture and politics in Afro-American societies: does the nationalization of an African cultural form like candombe reflect and contribute to the erasure of historical racial hierarchies—or does it help to reinforce and reproduce them?