When Denise Braz, 42, from Minas Gerais, stepped on Argentine soil for the first time, in 2012, the estrangement was almost immediate. Black, she looked around and saw only white people at the airport in Buenos Aires. Accompanied by her sister and a friend, also black, she asked herself: where are the blacks?
In the streets of the capital, he saw the first faces like his own, mostly among street vendors. By repeating to others the question she had asked herself, the raw answer was the second shock. “People said: ‘Blacks all died in the war of independence [1810-1816], of yellow fever. Or they were mixing, disappearing, extinct’. Words that are used to talk about animals,” he says.
There were still the third, the fourth and several other moments of surprise and indignation. In tourist places, the three black women were regarded as beings from another world. “It was terrible, they wanted to take a picture, they took it without permission, they ran their hands over their skin, their hair, something horrible”.
The scenes experienced by Braz reflect a process that blacks in almost all of Latin America are subject to. A numerical minority in 18 of the 20 countries that make up the region, Afro-Latinos face situations of everyday racism as they struggle to have their existence recognized by states that often treat them as invisible or second-class citizens.
The way in which this historical erasure took place varies between countries, but, in general, it can be characterized by a series of practices marked by the reproduction of racial hierarchies, explains Flávio Thales Ribeiro Francisco, a professor at the Federal University of ABC.
“What happened in Latin America, particularly in Argentina, was a process, the attempt to create a white nation, based on the idea that a Eurocentric nation, whose racial profile is white or white, is ideal for progress”, he says.
These policies —applied in Brazil through state incentives to the migration of European workers— with the aim of making the country “less black” constituted, according to Francisco, a symbolic imaginary of a state that has erased its presence throughout history. of black and indigenous peoples.
Three months after his first visit to Argentina, Braz returned to the country, this time to study for a master’s degree in anthropology at the University of Buenos Aires. He then experienced episodes of racism that were even more open.
In the only elevator that led to the floor where he attended classes, he came across a sign that, among other homophobic and anti-Semitic insults, said that “the world would be better without the black woman”—written in the singular and feminine, as a direct message to her, the only black graduate student on campus.
Waiting for a bus on the streets of Buenos Aires, she was spat on by an unknown man who called her a “black shit”. Braz also lived through an episode of sexual violence, which he attributes to the hypersexualization of black women, particularly in Brazil. The taxi driver who harassed her said that he had never experienced a “negrita brasileña”.
In addition to her master’s degree and her engagement in feminist causes, the anthropologist says that she takes from Argentina the perception that the country still carries a very primitive and colonial image of black individuals. “To them we are just a body.”
Part of that vision was echoed in a statement by President Alberto Fernández in June. At an event with the Spanish prime minister, he said that “the Mexicans came from the indigenous people, the Brazilians, from the jungle, and we [os argentinos], we arrived in boats”, in reference to his Spanish ancestry.
For Francisco, from UFABC, societies like Argentina celebrate their “whiteness” to the detriment of Afro-Latin and native populations, who, according to racist logic, would be doomed to disappear because they are an archaic heritage.
In countries like Colombia and Peru, the invisibility of black subjects takes place through geographic isolation. There are territories where Afro-Latinos gather and celebrate their culture and roots, but this is not reflected in the national imagination.
“And there is the case of Brazil, where there is a dispute over narratives. On the one hand, those who say that capoeira or samba are key elements of national culture; on the other, black activists who will say that they are elements of a story of black resistance.”
According to the expert, Afro-Latin race relations differ from the rhetoric of racial purity seen in places like the United States and South Africa, but that does not mean that they have been less dangerous for black individuals.
After leaving Argentina, Braz began his doctorate at the University of Texas, USA. The state is located in the southern region of the country, historically marked by the scars of racial segregation. There, she lives in Austin, a city that has been changing its demographic profile since the arrival of immigrants and is becoming less conservative in this regard.
Even so, the anthropologist lived another episode in which she feared for her safety due to the color of her skin. On Jan. 6, when then-President Donald Trump rallied supporters and spurred them on to attack the Washington Capitol, his Texas supporters staged anti-democratic demonstrations at the seat of the local legislature.
Braz was told by friends that it was not safe to leave the house that day, but did not receive the alerts in time. On her return from a supermarket, she was surprised by armed white trumpists. A woman, who carried a Confederate flag, symbol of the American states that defended the maintenance of slavery during the civil war, directed a series of insults to the Brazilian. She didn’t understand what was said, but the tone of voice and expression made it clear that a black immigrant was not welcome in this group. The intimidation, at the time, stopped there.
“Racist Americans defend their whiteness as a property, a heritage they defend at all costs, although it’s not very clear what it is,” he says. “Here you can have a racist neighbor and he will have a gun.”
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