INSTITUTO "DR. E.RAVIGNANI"   24160
INSTITUTO DE HISTORIA ARGENTINA Y AMERICANA "DR. EMILIO RAVIGNANI"
Unidad Ejecutora - UE
congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
The Peronist Melting Pot: Racial Differences and Images of the Nation in the Origins of the Peronista Movement
Autor/es:
EZEQUIEL ADAMOVSKY
Lugar:
San Francisco
Reunión:
Congreso; XXX International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA); 2012
Institución organizadora:
LASA
Resumen:
Nineteenth-century
Argentinean elites postulated that the nation that they were building was
embodied in a white-European people. Inhabitants of African and Amerindian
origins were declared extinct or irrelevant. However, racist aggressions were
profusely used by the decent part of society whenever the lower classes
embarked in political action. Both Yrigoyens and Perons followers, for
example, were discredited as being negros, i.e., not good enough to enjoy
citizenship. In turn, racist assumptions had an lasting impact in the job
market, where those with darker skins tended to have worse opportunities.
The aim of this
presentation is to argue that, despite arguments in the contrary, hints of a
non-diasporic negro identity can be traced in Argentinas 20th
century. Reactions to the discrimination on racial grounds in the job market
and in the political arena can be found in the first half of that century.
However, they did not appear explicitly in political discourses, but rather
indirectly, through the use of certain keys and symbols that alluded to the
negro mark. Argentinean lower classes chose not to confront openly with the
mandatory whiteness of the Argentinean nation, but rather to question and
subtly undermine its solidity. The presence and political function of such keys
and symbols will be empirically explored by studying the political discourse
and the practices of the Laborista and
union activists of Berisso. It will be argued that they enlarged the sense of
the racial melting pot without openly confronting with the dominant narrative
of Argentinean (white) national identity.