A Strange Emblem for a (Not So) White Nation
La Morocha Argentina in the Latin American Racial Context, c. 1900–2015
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9080882 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ezequiel Adamovsky (0000-0002-0288-7165, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2016 |
| Pages | shw018 |
| Publication date | 2016-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Social History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0022-4529 • E-ISSN: 1527-1897 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/jsh/shw018 |
| OpenAlex | W2418507928 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 7 |
| References cited | 29 |
This article explores the origins of La morocha argentina as an unofficial national emblem, the personification of the quintessential Argentinean woman, from its emergence in the early twentieth century to the present. A typical character of vernacular popular culture, the Argentinean “morocha” is compared to the “morenas” featured in other Latin American countries, to find similarities and differences. The racial uncertainty of the “morochas”—who, unlike the “morenas,” were not always marked as being of dark complexion—helped undermine the official discourses of the Argentinean nation, which described it as racially white and ethnically European. The ambivalence of the “morocha argentina” was crucial in contexts in which open challenges of that myth were still unfeasible. Thus, despite claims of racial exceptionalism, the making and trajectory of this emblem proves that Argentina’s racial regime is a variant of the Latin American “color-continuum” racial formations. By analyzing the Argentinean case in comparative perspective, this article also seeks to contribute to a better understanding of nonbinary racial models and, more generally, of ethnicity “beyond groupism”—to put it in Roger Brubaker’s terms. In other words, it aims to reconsider ethnicity as a process, the outcome of group-making projects, rather than (only) as the expression of preexisting ethnic entities
Archaeology · Art · Biology · Context (archaeology · Emblem · Geography · Humanities · Latin Americans · Political science · White (mutation · Argentine historical studies · Hispanic-African Historical Relations · Indigenous Cultures and History · Law
Land of the Cosmic Race
Afro-Argentine Discourse
Poéticas de lo criollo. La transformación del concepto “criollo” en las letras hispanoamericanas (siglo XVI al XIX)
Ethnicity without Groups
Rise and Fall of the Cosmic Race
Mulattas and Mestizas
Culture of Class
Rethinking Race in Modern Argentina
Blackness without Ethnicity
Ethnicity without groups
National Rhythms, African Roots
A Color for the Modern Nation
Mulattas and Mestizas
El color de la nación argentina. Conflictos y negociaciones por la definición de un ethnos nacional, de la crisis al Bicentenario
Culture of Class
El discurso criollista en la formación de la Argentina moderna
Gender, Race and National Identity
Recordando África Al Inventar Uruguay
Blackness in Argentina
The Afro-Argentines of Buenos Aires, 1800-1900
Racial Ideas and Social Reform
Not Just Color
Indigenous or Criollo
Whiteness of a Different Color
Land of the cosmic race
| Unique citing works | 7 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,78 |
| Citation span | 2017 - 2021 (5) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 7 |