LACS Lecture. “Whiteness, Blackness and Impossible Mestizaje in Buenos Aires”

Co-sponsor: Department of History

Since the early twentieth century, and even today, porteños—residents of the Argentine capital city Buenos Aires—identify their city as modern, white, and European, a notion based in part on the broadly-accepted idea that Afro-Argentines have “disappeared.” Through the cases of three Afro-descendant porteña women, this talk will explore how whiteness is, in fact, continuously constructed in the everyday lives of city-dwellers. We will analyze not only how categories like “black,” “white,” and others are used and understood in contemporary Buenos Aires, but also how people’s very “ways of being” are at play, creating a discriminatory and oppressive environment for those at risk of not matching the national ideal.