Former Argentine President Carlos Menem once declared: "In Argentina, blacks do not exist, that is a Brazilian problem.”
Afro-Argentines, as the black people of Argentina are known, made up a large part of the country’s population in the eighteenth century.
In 1778, according to a census taken by its Spanish colonial masters, Afro-Argentines made up 37% of the total population of the South American country. By 1857, 79 years later, the black population had dropped to 15%.
It is widely reported that the President of Argentina from 1868 to 1874, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento carried out a "secret genocide" that wiped out the Afro-Argentinean population so much that by 1875, there were so few blacks in Argentina that the government did not even bother to register people of African descent at the national census.
Today, more of Argentina's population is white. Only 5% of Argentines are black - the lowest of all Latin American states.
As a matter of fact, their numbers have greatly decreased and it will be almost impossible to see Afro-Argentines in sports, journalism, politics, and so on.
So what led to the reduction and near-eradication of Afro-Argentines in Argentina?
In today's episode, we seek to find out how Argentina got rid of its Black population.
#afroargentina #slavetrade #nghistorical #history #crime #scandals #truestories #government #britishmonarchy #historyexplained #ancienthistory #revolution
