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URUGUAY, ARGENTINA, PARAGUAY, CHILE

UNMIXED Negroes are comparatively rare in Uruguay, Argentina, Paraguay, and especially Chile, today, but they once formed a large portion of their respective population. All four countries imported large numbers of Negro slaves. As in the lands to the north of them, the Spanish adventurers took no women with them and the first mothers of those of European ancestry born in the colonies were first Indian women and then Negro ones. In time there grew up a body of Indian, Negro and Caucasian mixed bloods so powerful that certain leaders used them again and again together with Negro slaves to set themselves up as dictators.

There is probably no record of the number of Negroes brought into this area of South America but it must have been large. “Considering the number of slaves that were directly imported into Uruguay,” says Koebel, “as well as those that filtered southwards through Brazil, it is, perhaps, somewhat a matter for astonishment that these blacks are not numerically stronger than is the case.”¹ The explanation lies largely in the numerous wars of these lands. The black men were used as soldiers and were as usual sent into the most dangerous positions, where they were killed. The Negro women and children were left, however, and were later absorbed by the whites and the Indian mixed-bloods.

Garibaldi, famous Italian liberator, won his spurs by fighting in this River Plate region. In his autobiography he tells of commanding a regiment “composed entirely of slaves liberated by the Republic and chosen from the best horse-tamers in the province and all of them blacks, even to the superior officers. The enemy had never seen the backs of these true sons of liberty. Their lances, which were longer than the common measure, their ebony faces and robust limbs strengthened by perennial and laborious exercise, struck terror into the enemy.”²

Garibaldi showed his entire lack of color prejudice, and class prejudice, too, by marrying a colored Brazilian peasant, Annita, whom, just before landing he had seen working on or near the wharf. His groom, later his aide-de-camp, was also a Negro, an Uruguyan, Andrea Aguyar. Both served him very devotedly and both died fighting for Italian independence.

In Argentina, Negroes were also used as shock troops. They were the backbone of the army of General San Martin, a mestizo, and liberator of Chile, and partly so of Argentina and Peru. “The government of Buenos Aires,” says Dawson, “sent San Martin, a valuable addition in a corps of manumitted slaves. The crudest charges and the heaviest losses fell to their lot. Few of them ever returned alive over the Andes.”³ That is, Chile owes much of her victory for independence to Negroes. She has shown her gratitude by a recent law barring all Negroes from her soil.

GARIBALDI AND HIS NEGRO WIFE AND COMPANION.

XVIII. 1. Andrea Aquyar, Garibaldi’s groom and later his aide-de-camp, saving Garibaldi’s life during a navel battle off La Plata, 2. Andrea Aquyar. 3. Annita Garibaldi, devoted wife of the great general.

In Argentina, too, where the Negroes were used as shock troops, their numbers were frightfully decimated in the numerous revolutionary and civil wars of that country. Juan Manuel de Rosas, an unmixed white, and one of the fiercest dictators in history, was enabled to seize power by winning over the Negroes, mulattoes, and zambos. Speaking of the Negro’s part in making Rosas, The Encyclopedia of Latin America says, “The anarchical wars had reduced considerably the masculine part of the population which in 1810 numbered half a million, the fourth part of which were quadroons, descended from half-breeds, mulattoes, and Negroes. A leader, unbalanced and fierce, Juan Manuel de Rosas, Chief of the federals, now assumed command and pleased himself with collecting the savage Negroes of the population, some 40,000 recently emancipated slaves, nearly all in the province of Buenos Aires and bringing about the exile of the cultivated and industrious elements.”⁴

Rosas’ favorite was a mulatto, General Eusebio, to whom almost everyone, white and black, had to pay homage. Garibaldi who knew him, said, “Everyone in Buenos Aires knew Eusebio, the more so as at one holiday, Rosas had the idea of making Eusebio do what Madame DuBarry used to make her Negro, Zamore, do for her. Dressed as the governor, Eusebio received the homage of authority in place of Rosas.”⁵

W. H. Hudson, naturalist, who saw Eusebio, speaks of him as Rosas’ clown but this was probably due to the pranks that Rosas used to play on Eusebio. Once Rosas went so far in his jokes as to have Eusebio sentenced to death. Pretending that the faithful Eusebio had betrayed him, he had him arrested, duly tried, and sentenced. Eusebio was conducted to the place of execution, absolution was given by a priest, and the soldiers were lined up ready to shoot. Already they had taken aim when Rosas, himself, galloped up like a god from Greek tragedy, and ordered him to be freed, at the same time telling the thoroughly frightened Eusebio that his daughter, Manuelita, was in love with him, and wanted to marry Eusebio.

Hudson’s description of Eusebio hardly bears out the idea of clown. He says, “He marched along with tremendous dignity, his sword at his side, and twelve soldiers, also in scarlet, his bodyguard, walked six on each side of him with drawn swords.”⁶ Had anyone failed to remove his hat to Eusebio, he would have been immediately cut down by the guards, says Hudson.

Hudson reports seeing also many Negro washerwomen in Buenos Aires, and tells of the rich Don Evaristo, grand old man of the pampas, who had a wife with Negro strain, and of how it came out even more in her daughter.

One of the most spectacular figures of the Argentine wars was an unmixed Negro, Antonio Ruiz, “El Negro Falucho,” who on the night of February 3, 1810, was surprised by the rebels while on guard, and died rather than pull down the flag. A monument stands to his honor in Buenos Aires.

As late as 1838, Negroes still constituted an important part of the population of Buenos Aires. Robertson says that the 10,000 inhabitants of the city was composed “of a mixed breed of the natives of Old Spain, of the offspring of these so-called creoles, and a proportionately large mixture of blacks and mulattoes.”⁷

Paraguay

Much Negro strain was also absorbed in Paraguay. The second and the third rulers of this country after its independence, were both of Negro ancestry, namely, Carlos Antonio Lopez, and his son, Francisco Solano Lopez, commonly called Lopez I and Lopez II. The first dictator of Paraguay, the terrible Dr. Francia, was very likely of Negro descent, too. His father was a Brazilian mixed-blood, and was himself so dark that he was more than once taken for a mulatto.

Paraguay, thanks to Francia, had the strangest miscegenation law in history. It provided that certain aristocratic white families could marry only Negroes and mulattoes. These were the Spanish-born, the Spanish families of old stock, and other Europeans, who had set themselves up as gods over the native-born whites, and whose social prestige had grown so great that the rich white Paraguayan girls, would rather have one of them, however poor or worthless, than a native Paraguayan man, however rich, amiable, and cultured. Accordingly, Francia, whose racial pride had also been hurt, issued the above-mentioned decree, hoping to break up their power, and to wound them in their dearest conceits.

This singular law had a singular result. Because of it, Francia’s successor, but one, the bloodthirsty Lopez II, came into being.

C. A. Washburn, who was American Minister to Paraguay in the 1860’s, tells the story thus: A rich planter, Lazaro Rojas, who lived in a great mansion “with silver plate enough to set off a royal palace” in casting about for a suitable match for his white step-daughter “selected Carlos Antonio Lopez as the most eligible person inasmuch as he was a man of intelligence above the average and having some Negro blood to boast of the union would not be in violation of that law which Francia had promulgated forbid ling all marriages of those claiming Spanish blood except with Negroes. The marriage was therefore permitted and the fruit, not of, but after the union was Francisco Solano Lopez.”⁸ Carlos Antonio Lopez, himself, thanks to the wealth and prestige brought him by this marriage, was enabled to become the next dictator of Paraguay.

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., Latin America, p. 192. 1913.

⁹ Ramos Mejia, J. R., Rosas y el Dr. Francia, p. 264. 1917.

¹⁰ Amunategui Solar, D., La Trata de Negroes en Chile. Revista Chilena de Historia y Geografia, Vol. 44, pp. 25-40. 1922.

¹¹ La Barbinais de Gentil. Voyage autour du monde, p. 64. 1731.

¹² Sarmiento, D. F., Life in the Argentine Republic, p. 276. 1868. (Trans, by H. Mann.)