Mixed race in Argentina: Concealing Mixture in the ‘White’ Nation

Abstract

In Argentina, race has been an elusive concept and a changing category. During the nation-building processes of the nineteenth century, ruling elites implemented policies to achieve an ideal white-European national citizenry. The European migrants who arrived in great numbers between the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century were thought to ‘improve’ the pre-existing population comprised of Afrodescendants, Indigenous Peoples, Spaniards, and their mixtures. Through overlapping processes of racialization and ethnicization framed in a settler colonialism process, Argentineans developed two types of mixing ideologies: ‘whitening’, considered a positive process, and mestizaje (mixture). Unlike other Latin American countries where mestizaje and the Mestizo were celebrated by national elites, these terms carried a negative charge in Argentina, as they named the ‘undesirable’ mixed (non-white) people. The permanence of the whitening ideology explains why mixed race categories are still not included in the National Census. Even though Argentina represents itself as a ‘raceless’ republic, the racialization of the social class structure and the ethnicization of race mean that racial classifications continue to exist under different names. As such, mixed race categories—comprising racial, ethnic, and social meanings—emerged through alternative channels.