Identities and conflict in afroporteño organizations in the second half of the nineteenth century

Abstract

The Argentine Constitution of 1853 –revised in 1860– was established as the end of the long path of emancipation of African and Afro-descendant communities in Argentine territory. However, discrimination and oppression, invisibility and labor exploitation were a constant for this population throughout the century. Faced with oppression, Afro-descendant communities deployed a wide range of resistance tools, forming different associative spaces with the aim of improving their reality. We intend to explain the modulations of associative life since the mid-nineteenth century considering the associations' structures, their internal debates and their changes as a result of profound political, economic, social and cultural transformations. Our axis will be to examine how afroporteño communities went through a diversity of conflicts and experiences crossed by age, gender, ethnic and class differences that promoted the transformation of their organizational forms.