Questioning the whiteness of the nation: afrodescendant identity configurations and “Afro culture” in Buenos Aires (Argentina)

Abstract

In recent decades, Argentine society has experienced a progressive questioning of its alleged “whiteness”. Since the mid-1990s, an Afro-descendant  Social Movement has been created by organizations that are fighting for their revitalization, against racism and exclusion. In addition, the arrival of Afro-descendant migrants dedicated to teach Afro-Latin American arts, was articulates with this political movement and grew as a cultural field, as Argentine apprentices and practitioners become, also, teachers and referents. As a result of our respective ethnographic field work, in this article we will problematize some of the de / articulations that grows between the configuration of afrodescendant identities and memories, and the practice and the resignifications of Afro cultural expressions. We will analyze these connections, first, in the case of young people who identify themselves as Afro-descendants in a broad context of visibility and social vindications of their identities and, secondly, between social actors who practice Afro culture beyond these ethno-racial belongins. We aspire to contribute to the understanding of these complex relations between racialization, ethnicization, cultural and political expressivity in the local context.