Argentina conducts census of its Afro community for the first time

Nélida Wisneke is Afro-Argentine. This teacher and writer recounts that her ancestors were slaves who fled from Brazil in the 19th century. At 55 years old, for the first time she will see her ethnic identity recognized in the new national census: Argentina is asking all the country’s inhabitants if they are descendants of Africans or indigenous people, one of the main novelties of the census and much celebrated by the entire Afro-Argentine community.

“The state is beginning to repay the historical debt it owes us. For the community it is extremely important, because based on these data it will be possible to develop public policies to get out of invisibility and be able to access basic rights,” adds Wisneke, author of the novel No te olvides de los que nos quedamos (or Do Not Forget About Those of Us Who Remain).

“I think this is a historic moment for the Afro-Argentine community because this census represents the fruit of many years of struggle. Beyond the statistical data on economic and sociodemographic conditions, which are important to advance towards a more inclusive society, it is also very important that it makes the community visible. It changes the Eurocentric and colonial paradigm with which our society was conceived,” says musician Emanuel Ntaka, today in charge of the Afro Program of the Argentine Ministry of Culture.

In the previous census, carried out in 2010, there was a question about Afro-Argentine identity as a sample in some of the forms, but not in all. Now, it is one of the 61 questions included in the survey that will be carried out throughout the country. The 2010 census recorded that nearly 150,000 people perceived themselves as Afro-descendants, 10 times less than the estimate made by community leaders.

In the 12 years that have passed since then, Ntaka explains, Afro-descendant organizations have worked to try to reverse decades of policies of invisibility and social homogenization. Still, there is a possibility that the number is lower than the real number because there are people of African descent who choose not to perceive themselves as such.

Prejudices are installed from childhood, even at school. “In school events, the representation of the Afro-Argentine is picturesque. They are the empanada sellers, the porridge sellers, the laundresses… that is the place that we Afro-descendants occupy in the construction of this country. But in reality, the African influence is everywhere, from the war of independence to culture, with the influence in music, in cuisine, in language,” Ntaka points out.

In an official video released this past week for the census, prominent Afro-Argentine figures appear proudly talking about their ancestors. “I am Miriam Victoria Gómes, I was born in the province of Buenos Aires, and I belong to the Cape Verdean community of Dock Sud,” says one of the people featured in the video. Ntaka details that he is the son of a teacher from the Argentine province of Santiago del Estero and a South African singer and activist father. “Collecting data on our living conditions is going to be a necessary instrument for public policy,” says actress Silvia Balbuena, a descendant of slaves who arrived in Argentina in the 15th century.

One of the community’s goals is to combat structural racism in Argentine society. Wisneke experienced it first hand: she is the only one of 10 siblings who has completed her studies. Born into a peasant family in Misiones, in the extreme northeast of Argentina, this teacher says that her ancestors were slaves. “They came from Brazil and settled in Misiones. They were part of the quilombos [settlements], of which nobody talks here,” she points out as an example of the visibility of this community in a country that is proud of its European roots but not of others. “Very recently, in the city of Córdoba, a plaque was inaugurated in commemoration of the first sale of slaves, in 1588. The African presence in Argentina is very old,” Wisneke underlines.

Ntaka was 23 years old when a group of skinheads attacked him at a bus stop in 2001. “You fucking Black, go back to your country,” he heard them scream before they began to beat him until he was unconscious. To which country did they want him to return if Argentina was the country in which he was born? With that question in mind, the attack became the starting point of his activism promoting the rights of the Afro-Argentine community. The census will offer a first x-ray of who they are and how they are faring.