CRASSH

In the past twenty years, three kinds of social actors have made several efforts to make visible the African-descended cultural heritage and population of Argentina. They include Argentine devotees of Afro-American religions, practitioners of Afro-Uruguayan candombe music – who are of mixed national and racial origin -, and, most recently, Afro-Argentine political and cultural activists. The paper describes the sometimes cooperative but mostly conflictive relationships these different actors have established, and how their strategies are conditioned by intervening variables of race, class and nationality, as well as by a structural context that invisibilizes and rejects Afro-American culture. The development, in the past decade, of multicultural policies – especially in the city of Buenos Aires - has provided a structure of political opportunities that has made possible their struggles but, emphasizing mostly cultural (re)presentation and spectacularization, has severely constrained the possibilities of actually improving the social conditions of Afro-Argentines and the unhindered practice of Afro-American culture.