![Sample our Area Studies journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5922/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Area-Studies.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
In Argentine colloquial language, calling someone ‘negro/a’ may have two opposite connotations. It can be derogatory and racist, but in other contexts, it can be used as a term of endearment. It is also customary to nickname someone ‘el negro/la negra [+ name]’, with no offense intended or taken. These usages are unrelated to actual skin colors; both white and dark skinned people may be affectionately called ‘negro’. This article analyses the origins and meanings of such a habit, by relating it to other forms of vicarious blackness and to the specificities of the vernacular racial formations. In turn, the malleability and instability of the negro allusion is explained as a sign of the country’s disjointed process of ethnogenesis. The last section explores possible implications of the Argentine case for debates on hybridity, nation formation and mixed race studies.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. For examples of nicknames using ‘el pardo’, see Salas (Citation1892), 101 and 109; for el negro, see examples below.
2. Argentines of non-Chinese Asian ancestry are less happy to be called ‘chino’.
3. ‘El Pecoso y su pandilla: todos cumplieron veinte años,’ Sintonía, no. 97, 2 March 1935, n/p.
4. Famous non-Polish ‘Polish’ are tango hero Roberto Goyeneche, cumbia star Ezequiel Cwirkaluk (née López), broadcaster Eduardo Caimi, football players Claudio Arzeno, Fabián Della Marchesina and Adrián Bastía.
5. ‘Gringos’ that have Spanish surnames (but are blonde) include boxers Mauricio Cabrera and Luis Sebastián Medina.
6. ‘Rusos’ include Football players Bernardo Vilariño, Diego Matías Rodríguez and Evaristo Sande López, and journalists Eduardo Ramenzoni and Norberto Verea.
7. Non-Chinese ‘chinos’ include actresses Concepción Zorrilla and María Eugenia Suárez, actors Darío Volpato and Ricardo M. Darín, football players Pedro Coudannes and Carlos Daniel Tapia, boxing star Marcos René Maidana, golfer Vicente Fernández, punk musician Adrián Vera, and politicians Carlos Zannini and Fernando Navarro.
8. Argentina’s president Victorino de la Plaza (1914–1916), himself a mestizo of light-brownish skin, was called ‘chino’ (although it is not clear if he approved it). In his private letters to Evita, Perón sometimes called her ‘chinita querida’.
9. I could not find any famous case, but I can offer as an example the father of historian Nicolás Kwiatkowski, who was known as ‘el tano’ in his neighborhood (while his best friend, Hugo Pichersky, was called ‘el gallego’, not to be confused with the former). Although I never carried it as a nickname, I have been humorously introduced as ‘el tano Adamovsky’ several times.
10. From the Kolla, the indigenous nation that lives there, such ‘coyas’ include football stars Daniel Humberto Gutiérrez and Daniel Ortega.
11. Recalled in a 3 March 2010 article of El Gráfico, available at www.elgrafico.com.ar/2010/03/03/C-2459-llegue-a-tomar-10-gramos-de-cocaina-por-dia.php (accessed 4 November 2015). Other ‘turcos’ with no Middle Eastern backgrounds include football players Sergio Vázquez and Hugo Maradona; basketball player Rodrigo Ezquerra; and transvestite artist La Turca Glamour (née Pedro Nicoletti).
12. Such ‘cholos’ include tango performer Rodolfo Montironi; football players Carmelo and Diego Simeone, Miguel Converti and others; and journalists Ramón Andino, Marcelo Sottile and Oscar Gomez Castañón. Evita was also called ‘la chola’ as a child. ‘Indios’ who do not look indigenous include football players Enrique Guaita, Jorge Solari and Oscar Arévalo; folk composer Antonio Comas; and rock star Carlos Alberto Solari.
13. ‘Tanos’ include football players Vicente Pernía, Leandro Gracián and Fernando Ortiz.
14. See http://infoblancosobrenegro.com/noticias/278-evita-fue-la-razon-de-mi-vida-confiesa-su-companera-de-lucha-blanca-ibarlucia and http://museoargentinodeljuguete.com/evita-peron-museum/nggallery/eva-peron-museum/eva-peron-museum-notas-manuscritas (accessed 1 November 2015).
15. Other famous 20th-century Argentines who willingly carrying ‘el negro’ as nickname include Afro-Argentine filmmaker José Agustín Ferreyra (born 1889), brown-skinned (but not African-looking for local standards) tango singer Raúl Lavié (b. 1937) and journalist Oscar González Oro (b. 1951). Those who would be considered white by local standards include tango composer Celedonio Flores (b. 1896), comedian Alberto Olmedo (b. 1933) and writer Roberto Fontanarrosa (b. 1944).
16. For example, General Lorenzo Barcala and Senator Jerónimo L. del Barco; see Cutolo and Ibarguren (Citation1974), pp. 201, 281.
17. Leandro Losada, the main specialist in Argentina’s turn-of-the-century high society, is not aware of any examples either (personal communication, October 2015).
18. ‘Mi negra’, El Fogón Argentino (Lomas de Zamora), no. 1, 18 December 1910, n/p.
19. See Soler Cañas (Citation1958); La Broma, 31 October 1878, pp. 3, 7 February 1880, p. 2.
20. See ‘Local Customs and Culture in Venezuela’, available at https://www.gapyear.com/countries/venezuela/local-customs (accessed 1 July 2015); Vaughan (Citation2005); Rodríguez & Sánchez Korrol (Citation1996, 27); Nascimento dos Santos & Alomba Ribeiro (Citation2010); Sansone (Citation2003, 49).