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The Census That Made Blacks Vanish: Statistical Racism in 19th-Century Argentina.

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In the nineteenth century, Argentina underwent a profound transformation in its national identity, one that was deeply intertwined with race, modernity, and the politics of enumeration. The disappearance of Afro-Argentines from official records—most notably from the national censuses—has long puzzled historians and sociologists. This phenomenon, often described as the “statistical disappearance” of Black Argentines, was not merely a demographic accident but a deliberate act of racial erasure embedded in the state’s project of nation-building. The census, a seemingly neutral instrument of governance, became a tool of ideological construction, shaping the contours of Argentine identity around whiteness and European modernity. As historian George Reid Andrews observes, “The census in nineteenth-century Argentina did not simply record reality; it created it” (Andrews,  The Afro-Argentines of Buenos Aires, 1800–1900 , 1980). Through the manipulation of categories, selective enu...
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The Colour Bar Acts – Institutionalized Racial Exclusion

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The concept of the “Colour Bar” represents one of the most insidious forms of institutionalized racial exclusion in modern history. It refers to the formal and informal systems of racial segregation and discrimination that restricted the rights, opportunities, and social mobility of non-white populations, particularly within colonial and settler societies. The Colour Bar Acts, as they came to be known, were legislative and administrative instruments that codified racial hierarchies, ensuring that political, economic, and social privileges remained the preserve of white populations. These laws were not isolated phenomena but part of a broader global pattern of racialized governance that emerged during the height of European imperialism and persisted well into the twentieth century. As historian W. M. Macmillan observed, “The Colour Bar was not merely a social prejudice; it was a system of law and administration designed to perpetuate white supremacy” (Macmillan,  Africa Emergen...
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The Bois Caïman Ceremony: Myth, Memory, and Vodou’s Revolutionary Legacy

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  A Night That Changed the Atlantic World On an August night in 1791, in the forested highlands of northern Saint-Domingue, enslaved Africans gathered for what would later become one of the most debated events in Atlantic history: the Bois Caïman ceremony . According to later accounts, African-born slaves, many of them recently transported from West and Central Africa, convened under the leadership of ritual specialists and political organizers. Oaths were sworn, spirits were invoked, and a collective decision was made to initiate a general uprising against plantation slavery. Within days, the northern plains of Saint-Domingue—the wealthiest colony in the world—were engulfed in coordinated revolt. Sugar plantations burned, colonial authority collapsed, and a process was set in motion that would culminate in the Haitian Revolution (1791–1804) , the only successful slave revolution in modern history. Yet Bois Caïman occupies a contested place in historical scholarship. Was it a li...
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