ARGENTINA’S BLACK HERO.
XIX. Monument to “El Negro Falucho” In Buenos Aires.
Carlos Antonio Lopez must have been very dark because his son, Francisco, who succeeded his father as dictator, was so dark, that he used to claim that his color was due to his Indian blood. Washburn who knew Francisco says. “As he could not pretend to be of pure Spanish blood, he would rather ascribe his swarthy color to a mixture with the Indian than with the Negro race.”
Francia, who was another Ivan the Terrible, had also come into power largely through his use of Negroes and mulattoes. His bodyguard consisted of six hundred Negroes so fanatically loyal that it permitted him to carry out his most cruel decrees. He kept only Negro women about him, one of whom, it is said, was his mistress.
Francia had an immense inferiority complex. He believed himself to be another Napoleon, and used to boast of his French ancestry, which his name, Francia (France), seemed to indicate. However, Dr. Ramos Mejia, one of the most brilliant of Latin American physicians, who made a psychoanalytic study of him, reports that his father was a Brazilian mixed-blood of obscure origin who had come to settle in Paraguay, and that Francia hadn’t “a drop” of French blood.
Francia, as was said, was sometimes taken for a mulatto. A rich Spaniard who called him one, and refused him the hand of his daughter in marriage, when Francia was yet almost a nobody, was the object of Francia’s most terrible vengeance. No sooner had he come to power than he threw the Spaniard into a dungeon, where, says Ramos Mejia, “he lived hungry and martyrized, as only Francia knew how, for eighteen years. Finally he was sent to the gallows, to which he could barely crawl because his legs, benumbed from the long inaction in the prison were paralyzed. Francia had a big debt to settle with the prisoner. Not only had he repelled certain ambitious matrimonial pretensions of Francia, but he had called him a ‘mulatto.’ And the ‘mulatto’ for nineteen years had bided his time, waiting the moment of vengeance.”9
TWO FAMOUS MIXED BLOODS OF PARAGUAY AND ARGENTINA.
Francia, who is sometimes called the Robespierre of South America, and was highly praised by Thomas Carlyle, was undoubtedly a paranoiac of the most depressed type. His order that the white aristocrats should marry Negroes had very likely been prompted by his own matrimonial snub.
Francia had a colony of abandoned Negro slaves, men and women, at Tevego to which he would exile whites of both sexes, and where in time, a considerable colony of mulattoes developed. In Asuncion, the capital, adolescent Negro slave boys and girls used to wait on table quite nude, according to the Robertsons—a fact, which was true of several other slave lands, including the United States.
Chile
Negroes were in Chile from its founding by the Spaniards in 1535. Diego de Almagro, the real founder of Chile, had one hundred and fifty Negroes with him. Valdivia, its conqueror, had as one of his favorite companions, a Negro, Juan Valiento, who had also been with him in Mexico in 1540. Later Juan Valiento married Juana Valdivia, who was evidently the daughter, or other relative, of Valdivia.
In the next century of wars with the Indian tribes, the Negroes played an important part in establishing complete domination for the Spaniards. They were brought, too, in considerable numbers to work the gold mines, an unusually large number arriving in 1608. The Jesuits at the time of their expulsion from Chile had over 20,000 Negro slaves. Between 1778 and 1912, the total number of Negroes and mulattoes in Chile was 55,108, which was a high percentage of the population.10 Negro slavery was abolished in Chile in 1823. Few Negroes came after that and the Negroes were gradually absorbed in the population. In recent years due to strong Nazi influence, all Negroes were barred from the republic.
Barbinais le Gentil who visited Chile in the early part of the eighteenth century tells of seeing a white woman who had a child as “black as a Guinea slave.” This woman, having been made “pregnant by her husband,” thought it would now be safe to indulge her passions with a Negro. But nature fooled her that time, and the black baby was born.11 Barbinais was amazed at the color of the child. He thought it ought to have been at least the color of a mulatto. But it sometimes happens that when the Negro strain is too pronounced the white does not show in the child.
In none of these southern republics is there any color prejudice, except in certain hotels catering to white Americans. Perhaps the best place in any city to detect color prejudice is the brothels. In the United States, for instance, no brothel catering to white men, whether the inmates be white or Negro women, will admit a Negro. I know of but one exception, which I will mention in the section on the United States. However, in the Latin-American brothels where women of all colors are to be found, sometimes mixed indiscriminately, a Negro will rarely be refused, and a mulatto almost never.
An unmixed American Negro who was in Buenos Aires in 1942 went into one of the brothels of that city, where there were many white and colored women. His object was to find a friend, who he thought might be there. One of the white inmates came to him, and he not being able to speak Spanish pointed to his face, meaning that he was looking for a friend of his own color. The girl, thinking that he was objecting to her because of her color, tried to say that the color made no difference, but when the man kept pointing to his face, she finally went off and brought another girl as near to his color as she could find. This same Negro visited several other brothels and found the women there very willing, regardless of color.
Today, the number of unmixed Negroes in Argentina is small. Blasco Ibanez, celebrated author, who visited Buenos Aires in 1909, tells of his surprise in seeing so few unmixed Negroes where he had expected to find many. Almost the only ones he saw, he said, were six or eight who were ushers in the Chamber of Deputies. The war, however, has brought in several hundreds, mostly sailors, who come and go.
The complexion of most native Argentinians today is that of a light quadroon with straight, or curly, Indian-like hair. In a word, the Negro and the Indian strain, because of the recent white immigration is being totally absorbed.
Argentina’s first great educator, one of its greatest writers, and also its president, Domingo Sarmiento, shows an undoubted Negro strain. He was quite dark, and claimed descent from an Arab chief of the twelfth century. When he went to Algiers in 1846, he says that he was taken for an Arab,12 so much had the Arab strain remained in his family. This was really stretching the potency of racial inheritance too far, especially when there was so much opportunity of his acquiring a more direct African strain in Argentina.
Vincente Rossi in his valuable work. “Cosas de Negro” (1926), shows the considerable influence that the Negro has had on Argentine and Uruguyan life and manners, and especially on its music. It was the Negro who originated the tango, he said.
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1 Koebel, W. H., Uruguay, pp. 243-5. 1911.
2 Garibaldi, G., Life of General Garibaldi, pp. 47, 86-7. 1859.
3 Dawson, T. C, South American Republics, Vol. 1, pp. 102, 106. 1903.
4 Wilcox, M. & G. E. Rines, Encyclopedia of Latin America, pp. 183. 1917.
5 Garibaldi, G., Memoires, Ire. Series, p. 274. 1861. (Alexander Dumas.)
6 Hudson, W. H., Far Away and Long Ago, pp. 109-10. 1923.
7 Robertson, J. P., & W. P., Letters on Paraguay, Vol. 1, p. 102. 1838.
8 Washburn, C. A., History of Paraguay, Vol. 1, pp 212, 340: Vol. 2, p. 47. 1871.
Robertson, J. P. & W. P., Letters on Paraguay, Vol. 2, p. 34. 1839.
Garcia Calderson, F.,