Argentina: where are the black people?
Toyin Falola
Cornelius Hamelberg
A few days ago Argentina’s President Alberto Fernandez made some racist comments to wit, “The Mexicans came from the Indians, the Brazilians came from the jungle, but we Argentines came from the ships and they were ships that came from Europe”….
DN reports that between 1881 and 1914, 2 million Italians and 1.4 million Spaniards emigrated to Argentina which had already exterminated most of the indigenous people of that country. The new immigrants then built Buenos Aires which became the third city in the world, after London and Chicago.
Today Argentina has one of the greatest foreign debts and almost half of the population lives in poverty.
The President’s comments are supposedly based on a phrase from Argentina’s greatest writer Jorge Luis Borges who famously wrote, “An Argentine is an Italian who speaks Spanish, thinks he’s French, and would secretly like to be an Englishman”
DN :In reality the Argentinian self-image indicates an identity crisis which has led to Buenos Aires being one of the cities which has the greats number of psychotherapist per capita. President Fernandez has apologised for his condescending remarks and admitted that there were indigenous people in Argentina before the Europeans arrived there.
He wrote on Twitter:” I didn’t mean to insult anyone.”
To me, “ Argentina” means His Holiness Pope Francis, The Falkland War, Borges, Diego Maradona, Gato Barbieri , Marcelo Racana and Menachem Harari...