AfroArgentina: A Documentary in Resistance
By Ava Emilione
A false history runs through the streets of Argentina and spills from the mouths of its people: There are no Black people here.
AfroArgentina: A Documentary in Resistance, follows the lives and families of Florencia Gomes and Jesica Lamadrid, who are AfroArgentina artists and activists. The film’s directors, Lina Lasso, an AfroColombian multidisciplinary artist living in Argentina, and Hunton Warren, a filmmaker from North Carolina, are bringing AfroArgentine lives and perspectives into sharp focus. Despite their significant contributions to the nation throughout its history (where do y’all think tango and porteño candombe come from?), Black people in Argentina have faced centuries of institutional racism and material scarcity. AfroArgentina, which is currently fundraising to pay crew members and fund post-production, shows how the AfroArgentine community is reclaiming their space and demanding liberation in a nation that claims they do not exist.
Image Courtesy of AfroArgentina
At the end of the 19th century, white Argentine politicians and intellectuals sought to “civilize” the nation, where AfroArgentines once made up over a third of the population. With dreams of an all-white nation and cotton balls soaked in social Darwinism filling their skulls, state leaders launched an invisibility campaign on AfroArgentine people, following the example of colonial entities like the U.S. and England. The beast that makes racialized people disappear has many limbs, wreaking havoc in every corner of life: In Argentina’s fight to colonize more land in the nineteenth century, the military sent Black men to die in droves on the front lines of battle. Urban planners pushed Black families out of Buenos Aires up until the 1960s to encampments of cardboard homes known as La Matanza. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Argentinian government encouraged Europeans—including literal Nazis—to immigrate to Argentina and make themselves at home, pushing out Black and Indigenous Argentines to the outskirts of cities and job opportunities.
Since its independence in 1816, the Argentinian state has manipulated its official census and wiped out historical records to destroy evidence of a Black population. Today, President Javier Milei’s social and economic policies have only worsened the plight of Afro-descendents through hyperinflation, cuts to federal spending on the arts, crackdowns on marginalized people, and calls to “make Argentina great again.”
Navigating a complex web of time zones and cultural perspectives, the crew behind AfroArgentina are revealing how marginalized people are lighting fires of joyful resistance in the wake of ongoing, state-sanctioned brutality. The fight is long, but the tools to achieve such freedom lie in tranquil, everyday moments. See: Asados, or barbecues, bursting with hundreds of people dancing and blasting music from the African diaspora. Argentinas with afros and fists raised high calling for their rights as they march towards the National Congress. Independent theater productions with an all-AfroArgentine cast, reading letters and historical records from the Black diasporic archive in Buenos Aires’ sprawling independent theater scene.
Image Courtesy of AfroArgentina
AfroArgentina: A Documentary in Resistance brings AfroArgentines’ ongoing lucha, or struggle, to an international audience. Beneath the far-right politics of Javier Milei’s current presidency, the expulsion from major cities to prisons and barrios, and erasure from their nation’s history, a political and artistic movement is taking shape that intersects with queerness, class solidarity, and international coalition building. Born out of necessity and driven by visions of a free world for all people, we would do well to support the AfroArgentine resistance against the rising wave of fascism and anti-Blackness around the world.
I sat down with AfroArgentina’s dynamic co-directors to learn more about the Black movement in Argentina and the process of creating such a politically relevant film. Alexandra Chapman, the film’s archival producer, also participated in the conversation through written responses. This interview has been edited for clarity and (relative) brevity. With Hunton’s help, I’ve also included English translations for the parts of our conversation that were spoken in Spanish.
To support the production of AfroArgentina: A Documentary in Resistance, please consider donating to their fundraiser which closes on June 6.
Part 1: Pre-Production and Life in Buenos Aires
Image Courtesy of AfroArgentina
Ava: This [documentary] is very interesting to me and up my alley. I love hearing about how the diaspora is handling these situations across borders, and especially in Latin America. I'm Puerto Rican myself, so this stood out to me. I would love to go around and just share your pronouns and what your role is in the film.
Lina: My name is Lina. My pronouns are they/them and she/her. I'm AfroColombian, and I've been living here in Argentina since 2011. I am a multidisciplinary artist. My main art is performance and theater, and now cinema. I'm part of a huge movement, a Black movement here in Argentina…I came looking for better rights in work, in study, even [as] an LGBTQ person. I came here because there is a better possibility for me, for my expression, and [for] my existence.
Hago parte de diferentes grupos de personas Afrodescendientes que hacen arte. Tengo la obra de teatro de Argentina, y parte de un colectivo artístico de performance que es muy conocido. [I am a part of various Afrodescendent artistic groups. I have a play from Argentina, called AfroArgentinas, and am part of a very-well known artistic performance group, called Kukily.]
Hunton: I'm from North Carolina and then I went to NYU and graduated in 2024. I grew up speaking a little bit of Spanish with my dad. He grew up in Venezuela and Ecuador. Part of why I decided to go to Argentina, of course, [was to go to] a different country, but also to better my Spanish. When in Argentina, I met Lina. I studied Global Liberal Studies. It's a small major at NYU, but my minor was documentary film in Tisch, and then I also studied Spanish—[it’s] very much what we're doing now, a documentary in Spanish. Right now, I'm in Madrid teaching English.
Ava: How did this documentary come about? I want to just hear a little bit about it in your own words and what inspired y'all to create it in the first place.
Hunton: Alexandra recommended AfroArgentinas the play, which Lina is a part of. I went to see the play with Jes and Flor, who are the protagonists in the documentary. It was an extremely impactful play. Basically, they talk about their lives in a more performative way, but it's in a small theater, so it feels very personal. I asked Lina and Jes and Flor if we could start doing some filming for a short documentary, [which was] a very different project than it is now. It was going to be a short film for school. That's kind of how it started, through an NYU class. I was filming things about the play and about Jes, Flor, and Lina, and then it just slowly became a bigger project.
Lina: Como bien decía Hunton, así empezó nuestro contacto. Nosotras aceptamos hacer este proyecto porque el teatro es muy finito—se termina cuando lo haces en escena y nadie más lo ve. Que también algo que trajo Hunton fue la mirada que tienen los extranjeros acerca de Argentina. Hunton traía como problematización de lo que ella escuchó de otras personas de afuera de Argentina o personas blancas, así que nos parecía interesante que ella traía esa problemática. [Like Hunton said, that’s how our contact began. And we agreed to do this project because theater is very finite—it ends when you put it on stage and no one else sees it. Hunton also brought a foreign perspective on Argentina. Hunton brought a new perspective of what she heard from white people and people outside Argentina and we found it interesting to have this perspective.]
Alexandra: Navigating my semester in Buenos Aires as a Black woman was a challenge. I think I went in naively thinking–I’ve lived as a Black woman in the US, in Georgia for two decades, I can handle racism. I wasn’t aware, though, or familiar with how race and Blackness in particular was approached in Argentina. It got so dire at one point that I was considering calling it quits and finishing the rest of the semester back in New York but I called my independent study supervisor instead and she encouraged me to create and be seen in a space where Blackness is invisibilized. For about every open-ended project or paper in my classes, I brought in Blackness. This culminated in a final project with Hunton in our Spanish class where we created a media campaign targeting false, whitewashing narratives in Argentina. I continued my independent study project on Afrofeminism and art in Argentina the following semester. I returned to Buenos Aires over Spring Break and attended the AfroArgentinas play at the recommendation of Miriam Gomes, Flor’s aunt and the mother of Afrofeminism in Argentina. After seeing it, I told Hunton about it and when she came to me months later about helping with this project it was an immediate yes. One way that invisibilization projects like these succeed and remain successful is by silencing the voices and stories of those they want to hide. If their stories are being buried, you can make up whatever you want to fit your narrative. This film pushes back on that, recentering autonomy in the story of Blackness in Argentina.
Hunton: When Alexandra and I were studying in Buenos Aires, we heard just constant racism, honestly, and a lot of invisibilization about how all Argentines are white. That was something that really stuck out to me, especially then seeing this play and understanding that there's clearly a false narrative that's being taught.
Lina: Que no es solo un problema de Argentina, sino es un problema de todo el mundo. Que nos pareció bien esta colaboración, producción o hermanada para hacer estos apuntes. [This is not just a problem in Argentina, it’s a worldwide problem. We thought this seemed like a good collaboration, co-production, or sisterhood to make these points.]
Ava: Hunton and Alexandra, you already started to touch on it, but you went to NYU's Buenos Aires campus. What motivated you to study abroad? What did that experience teach you? Did any specific moments during your time there make a lasting impression on you especially within the terms of this film? Lina, I would also love to hear if there are certain moments throughout your time [in Argentina] that really were like, "Wow, this is the situation we're dealing with," or, "This is the way out."
Alexandra: Part of the reason I chose NYU in particular was because it offered a Latin American country as a study abroad option rather than just Spain as the Spanish-speaking choice. Most of the world’s Spanish speakers live in the Americas, yet it is Europe that we often turn to explore the language and culture of Spanish speakers. It sounds cliche but it truly was the most transformative and rewarding experience of my life. The part that most sticks out was a conversation I had with Chary Lisoleth, an Afro-Venezuelan textile artist living in Buenos Aires. We had met at the Afro-Argentine Art Fair in November and I reached out to interview her for a project on “Afrofeminism and Creative Resistance.” After my planned questions, we just got to chatting about being Black women, Afrofeminism, liberation, and more. As we were talking, she referenced Black women figures from the US but I realized I couldn’t reference one from Venezuela, or Argentina, or South America as a whole for that matter. When describing what I work with, am interested in, read about, I’d always mention Black storytelling but, until this moment, hadn’t realized the silent asterisk of Western that came with. Yeah, I’m reading Black authors and engaging with Black history and thinkers, but they’re all from the U.S. When we talk about colonialism and imperialism, it is easy to forget about intellectual imperialism and how we value or engage with knowledge from those parts of the world our country has told us are irrelevant to, you know, the “almighty United States.” This realization really prompted me to reflect on that and how I’ve played into those assumptions. I will forever hold Chary and the other women I met in Buenos Aires as my most impactful teachers in not only the knowledge they shared but the introspection and self-development they encouraged.
Lina: A lo largo de que Javier Milei, tomó el gobierno, ha habido más o menos un 300 a 400% de inflación y nuestros salarios, sueldos son los mismos que en ese momento. Así que ahora, vivimos una etapa de mucha escasez y hay una gran problemática de casas para alquilar o habitacional. También ha habido recortes en diferentes organismos del gobierno que defienden los derechos humanos. El único instituto que teníamos contra el racismo, la xenofobia, y discriminación ha sido cerrado, así que no tenemos dónde reclamar casos de racismo, por ejemplo. Aún el discurso de que Argentina no tiene personas negras sigue vigente, y hay como un incentivo miento desde el gobierno para el odio a todas las personas racializadas, mujeres, personas homosexuales. Also, our arts industry is cooked. So now we are creating with our own resources. If you are a woman or a racialized person or gay and an artist, you are in a very bad place here. We are still creating because there's not another way to survive.
[Throughout Javier Milei’s tenure, there has been an inflation rate of roughly 300% to 400% and our salaries remain the same at the moment. So now, we are living in a time of massive scarcity and we have a housing crisis. There have also been cuts to various government organizations that defend human rights. The only organization we had against racism, xenophobia, and discrimination, Inadi, has been closed. So there is nowhere to defend against cases of racism, for example. The narrative that Argentina has no Black people lives on, and the government incentivizes hate towards people of color, women, and LGBTQ+ people.]
Hunton: In Argentina, they had a lot of arts funding from the government prior to Javier Milei. That is part of what's been cut.
Lina: That's why we need the collaborations and co-productions, because it's very difficult here. Even though we have some grants here for art, it's never a place for indigenous or Black people. Every one of us is fighting for the same money in the same way, and we don't have the same living conditions.
Ava: Hunton, I was also curious about your experience as an American. You said you witnessed a lot of racism when you were in Buenos Aires. I would love to hear a little bit more about your experience there.
Hunton: I think being a foreigner, people are very open to teaching you about their country, which has a lot of pros and cons. Even just like going to a soccer game or being at a bar, people would love to talk about Argentina. What was really interesting is people who I just met would feel very comfortable saying really racist things to me because maybe they assume I'm also racist. I'm not exactly sure. Or maybe they don't see it as racism. But when I was with one of my Black friends, they would constantly say things like, "Oh, your friend isn’t not from Argentina, right?" And it's this assumption—no one has opened their mouth. There's absolutely no reason to have thought that. I think hearing those things constantly and so openly said, it really shocked me. That's when I started to do more research on how I can go to different things that are made by the AfroArgentine community or made by indigenous communities, particularly art…I don't know if you remember this, Lina, but we were together with Jes and Flor, and they were like, "Where are you guys from?" I wasn't talking. It was just you guys. They were like, "Brazil? Venezuela?" It would happen many times. So that was another experience that was definitely eye-opening, I would say.
Ava: It's like if you're Black, you're not from Argentina, obviously.
Hunton: Right. Being a foreigner in any country, people want to teach you about their culture and their country. I think being there, I would just hear so many racist comments that were openly said and that were not hidden. Even if I questioned it, they would repeat it in the same way. So it's just, it was a very interesting atmosphere that I'd never experienced in quite that way in the U.S.
Part 2: The Process of Documentary Filmmaking and Telling AfroArgentine Stories
Image Courtesy of AfroArgentina
Ava: Hunton and Lina, why did you decide to be co-directors? How do you navigate your relationship directing this project jointly? That's not the most common decision, so I wanted to hear a little bit about how y'all came to that decision.
Hunton: When we started, it was a smaller school project that I was doing. When we started to get funding, mainly from NYU in the beginning, and realized that it could be a bigger project that would ideally reach bigger audiences and go to different countries, we wanted to make sure that it was being authentically told. As a foreigner and a white person who doesn't live in Argentina, yes, I bring a different perspective, but not the perspective that we want to be the focus. We wanted it to be a film that could be understood from an international audience that doesn't know anything about Argentina, but also understood and appreciated by Afro-Argentine communities and Afro-descendants living in Argentina.
Lina: Sì. A mí me gusta trabajar de manera colaborativa también y me interesaba mucho la perspectiva que podía traer Hunton también desde el cine. [Yes. I like to work in collaborative environments and I was very interested in the perspective Hunton brought from the film industry.]
Ava: That makes a lot of sense. Have you faced any challenges in your co-direction process, and how have you navigated that?
Hunton: I think because some of our producers are based in the U.S., but primarily New York, and then some are in Argentina, [we have] very different daily experiences and knowledge of what's going on. I think the harder part has been having experiences in different parts of the production because I was physically closer to the producers in New York [when I lived there]...Since we're working remotely so often, it's hard to go to so many different people in different countries. I would say navigating it [looks like] having a long conversation through Zoom.
Lina: Sí, y también siento que nosotras, siendo como las personas locales y afrodescendientes, también cómo poder expresar o enseñar de algún modo el modo en que nosotras queríamos ser representadas o representarnos, eso también es una conversación que tuvimos. Y también poder escuchar una perspectiva de parte de Hunton y de los productores, de cómo también funciona esta industria del cine, básicamente. Así que tuvimos que llegar como a un equilibrio entre esas partes o perspectivas. [Yes, and we also had a conversation about how we, as local people and Afrodescendents, can also express or show the way we want to be represented and represent ourselves. Also, we listened to Hunton’s perspective and that of the producers on how the film industry functions, basically. We’ve had to arrive at a balance of these different perspectives.]
Ava: So Lina, you were saying how you want Afro-Argentine people to have their experiences accurately represented, while also learning about the film industry and what their expectations are. I wonder if either of y'all, but especially Lina, have run into some kind of limitation on the types of things that you can represent from your side or any pressure from the types of opportunities you're looking into for this film. Are there any barriers to expressing the full authentic experience of Black people living in Argentina?
Lina: Creo que ahora en este momento las personas Afroargentinas llevan muchos años de lucha y de mostrarse siempre en una lucha. Entonces, por un lado están invisibilizados y por otro lado solo están representados luchando. Así que yo tenía o tengo mucho interés que este documental pueda representar otra cara de una existencia más tranquila y natural— cómo viven las familias dentro de sus casas, cómo son las relaciones que tenemos entre nosotros de amistad? No sé si la industria del cine quiere ver algo tan tranquilo. Así que estaba pensando, bueno, ¿cuáles son las cosas atractivas? Y creo que esto es atractivo y es como un reto también poder traernos de una manera que ni siquiera es calmada, es como más personal o cotidiano y que aún así sea atractivo y que no siempre se necesite el morbo. Que no sea solo un consumo más, que no sea un como que las vidas Afroargentinas no sean un consumo desde el morbo de la lucha y la tristeza.
[I believe that currently, AfroArgentine people have been fighting for many years and have always shown up in the struggle. On one hand they are made to be invisible and on the other hand, they are only represented as fighting. I am very interested in this documentary representing another existence that is more calm and natural—how families live inside their homes, what our friendships are like. I don’t know if the film industry wants to see the calm side. So I was thinking, well, which are the attractive things? I believe this is attractive and it’s a challenge to be able to present it in a way that isn’t even calm, but more personal or everyday and still be attractive and not always necessitate morbidity. Let it not be just another form of consumption, let it not imply that AfroArgentinas’ lives are only consumed by morbidity and struggle and sadness.]
Hunton: Flor, or Florencia, one of the protagonists always says to have fun is to resist. She's an architect, but she's also a DJ. That's a big part of her activism, as well as having events and playing music. That just made me think of her.
Image Courtesy of AfroArgentina
Ava: As we all know, the Argentinian state has erased historical records, perpetuated inconsistencies in census data that erased the percentage of people who identify as Afro-Argentine, and destroyed files to remove the Black diaspora from the nation's history and memory. Given that background, how have you countered the loss of information and memory in your research and your filmmaking process? What other types of memory and history are you working with and using to tell this story?
Alexandra: While some call it a whitewashing, Melissa Maldonado-Salcedo, one of my professors and independent study supervisor, has described it as un-Blackening. It is more than not wanting to be white but desperately not wanting to be Black or Indigenous or anything associated with “barbarism.” In this, while the existence of the Black diaspora is obscured, the plans and process of un-Blackening the country has been well documented. Civilization and Barbarism by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, the second president of the nation, is a foundational document of Argentina and lays out this mindset and approach that underlies the problem of race as understood in the nation. Even amidst the state’s erasure and destruction of Black history, they can’t get rid of Black people. Try as they might, they can’t silence them. They can make it harder, sure, but there are and will still be those who push forward. Those like Madoda Ntaka, Erika Denise-Edwards, Miriam Gomes, Sandra Chagas, and more who have taken these circumstances not as concrete reality but as jumping off points for change. Black diasporic knowledge in Argentina still exists but not always through the most obvious channels. That knowledge is in community, in stories, in art.
Lina: Seguramente es mucho de lo que está borrado, lamentablemente. De a poco se han hecho algunas investigaciones. Qué vamos reciclando cada vez que sale una producción nueva, ya sea de un libro o de una película? [Como] revisamos materiales de antes? De hecho, el último censo en Argentina arrojó que habían como 300,000 personas que se reconocen como Afrodescendientes. Pero sabemos que en Argentina la gente no quiere considerarse a sí misma negro o afrodescendiente porque no saben qué es afrodescendiente y porque ser negro está mal.
[Surely a lot has been erased, unfortunately. Little by little, some research has been done. What do we reuse every time a new production comes out, whether it’s a book or a movie? How do we revisit materials from the past? In fact, the last census in Argentina showed there were about 300,000 people who identified as Afrodescendents. But we know that in Argentina, the people do not want to be Black or Afrodescendants because they don’t know what Afrodescendent is, and because being Black is bad.]
Hunton: People don't want to self-identify as AfroArgentine, especially if they're white-passing. But also, you can be white and be AfroArgentine, which is part of why the census has become [so complicated].
Lina: The word negro is used like a slur here. If you identify as Black, do you want to be affiliated with this concept? The people don't want it. In recent times, we have had some archivals from television or discourse or presidential speeches. But there is not much information about our people, from our people…We are creating this archive because we don't have a lot of that from the past. In the present, we are creating our positions, memories, and everything related to our lives in a modern archival.
Hunton: A big part of the play is using letters, photos, and objects from old birthdays that will hopefully be in the documentary.
Lina: We have a lot of relatos orales [oral histories]. That's our way for now. That's why we are creating a documentary. It's very necessary.
Hunton: When doing research, I saw some of the invisibilization. It was really hard to find anything that was older than 10 years…Even articles talking about the AfroArgentina community have been really limited.
Image Courtesy of AfroArgentina
Ava: The method of expressing the lived experiences of the cast can be painful and vulnerable. I know you all delve into your family and childhoods and history. Throughout making this film specifically, how do you navigate your power as filmmakers? Hunton, this might be more for you, but how do you navigate your own personal privilege being white and American in telling such intimate stories?
Alexandra: For me, a big part goes back to keeping in mind the Western intellectual imperialism we’re raised with in the United States. We are entering these spaces as learners, taking what we learn and combining it with our individual skills to serve these stories, not ourselves. Some things will resonate immediately and others you have to mull over and it’s important to sit with it all. As a Black woman from the U.S., it has really been a practice in expanding the understanding and borders of the diasporic community. So often, we refer to the Black diaspora of the Americas when really just talking about the US and the Caribbean. There is so much more and it is truly a privilege to be in community with these women, learning from and sharing with them toward collective liberation.
Hunton: In Argentina and a lot of Latin American countries, it's a very different culture of slowing down and talking much longer to talk than in the U.S. Lina and I talked a lot and I especially talked to Flor and Jes before we actually filmed or did any interviews. I learned what they wanted to share, how they wanted to share it, and what the point was so I didn’t ask questions just to have an emotional reaction that is not healthy for the interviewees. We did a pretty basic interview, and then later on, months later, we did a more in-depth interview once we all knew each other better. Whenever Lina and I would come up with the questions together, and whenever there was something that she wasn't sure about asking, we would talk that through before we asked it on camera, which is another thing that I think was important. I've learned from Lina and from the Argentine culture to take your time a little bit. In the U.S., we're so quick. Taking your time to make sure that every piece or every question is the best for everyone is the best way to explain it.
Lina: Cuando eran entrevistas a la comunidad, creo que da mucha tranquilidad que hubiese alguien presente de la comunidad participando del proyecto, ¿no? Así que siempre es necesario, y más en la comunidad Afroargentina, que es muy, muy desconfiada—siempre es necesario que haya alguien presente creando la confianza de cómo va a ser usado el material. Y también algo que hicimos fue cuando hicimos entrevistas a personas fuera de la comunidad, eras Hunton la persona que estaba recibiendo las respuestas para no recibir respuestas racistas, por ejemplo.
[When we interviewed the community, I think it was very reassuring to have another person from the community present as if they were participating in the project, right? That is always necessary, but even more so in the AfroArgentine community, which is very, very distrusting. It’s always necessary for someone to be present creating confidence in how the material will be used. Also, when we were interviewing people from outside the community, Hunton was the person receiving the answers so I wouldn’t receive racist responses, for example.]
Hunton: When we did interviews or when we interviewed people that were outside of the AfroArgentine or Afro-descendant community, I would ask the questions. We did some street interviews and Lina wasn't there because we wanted to get genuine reactions or genuine responses about what people knew about the AfroArgentine community. In those interviews, we got so many racist comments and people saying there are no Black people in Argentina. Of course, if Lina is next to me with the camera, they're probably going to change the answer.
Lina: As a Black person, you want to protect yourself from these answers. I also don't want to be present there.
Part 3: Creative Resistance
Image Courtesy of AfroArgentina
Ava: AfroArgentinas is a documentary project but it also serves as a form of activism, obviously, as we've been discussing. How does art intersect with activism, especially in the case of AfroArgentina expression and liberation? What has working with Flor and other co-creators of the AfroArgentinas play taught you about this connection?
Alexandra: No matter its reach, art is also always still deeply personal. In a context where they’ve tried to flatten Blackness and relegate it to the past, it’s powerful to stand as an individual here and now, sharing your story on your own terms. The state can control the census. They can control immigration. They can control what’s published as official history. What they can’t do is take the power of creation. Fine, you can’t see us in your official documents? But you’ll see our mark and feel our rhythms through the streets. I think AfroArgentinas really captured that by engaging Blackness not as a distant subject but as an identity of authorship and creation. Art is a form of knowledge production, preservation, and dissemination. It’s a medium of the people that litigation and control will always be one step behind.
Hunton: Going to AfroArgentinas the play, which is where the idea for the film came from, and seeing all of the people afterwards go up to Jes and Flor, the actresses in the play, and talk to them about, "Oh my gosh, I had this experience of relating to what they were talking about and never heard someone vocalize it," was really impactful for me. That was a really clear connection of how the play and sharing stories is a form of activism. It was bringing community together and talking about things that people hadn't talked about before. I think in Argentina as well, specifically the theater industry, there's a lot of independent theaters…where you can bring the community together [in ways that are] not as difficult as filling big theaters.
Lina: Being in the art industry is a way to claim our place. We always create in the periphery with our cultural expressions and we usually don't have an independent theater to show it. So that's why we want to go to a theater and make a theater play. Why not? Surely, our stories have never been played in a theater. [They were] always in a place of suffering or about theater representation, so we wanted to create this history. Our ritual expressions are very, very related to the performance, for example. In our everyday rituals, we are doing performance. That was our way to say, "Okay, this is a place for us too”...We don't usually present the play in a state theater. It never comes from the state or white spaces.
Ava: In November 2023, there was a big march of Afro-Argentina people towards the National Congress for the first time to demand equality and equity in public policies. That was a huge moment in this fight for AfroArgentina liberation. I've been reading a bit about how the urban planning in Argentina is also very prohibitive and racist. Many Black folks live outside of urban centers in Argentina and they may not always have the ability to do such grand shows of protest and resistance. How have you seen AfroArgentina people who are living in rural areas or lower-income areas organize, resist racist policies, and capture the joy and calm that you were mentioning earlier?
Lina: Jesica, que es una de las protagonistas del documental, tiene esta experiencia de desplazamientos de los centros urbanos a fuera de la ciudad [en La Matanza]. Son planes ejecutados por el gobierno donde a su familia la sacaron de una casa donde vivía junta y muchas otras familias, y las desplazaron fuera de la ciudad, donde las ubicaron en casas de cartón que iban a ser temporarias, pero iban a ser temporarias como de dos años y vivieron 25 años ahí.
[Jesica, who is one of the protagonists in the documentary, has experienced displacement from the urban center to outside the city in La Matanza. Government plans removed her family from a house where they lived with many other families and displaced them outside of the city, where they lived in cardboard houses they were told would be temporary. They were supposed to be there for about two years, and they lived there for 25 years.]
Ava: Oh my God. Are they still there?
Lina: No están más ahí. Luego los ubicaron en otros lugares. Así que a partir de eso, distintas familias afroargentinas tienen más sus lugares de reunión o de lucha en esas provincias y no en la ciudad. Entonces, la familia de Jes le habla de su lucha como algo que se llama “puertas para adentro.” That's why for a long time, these families weren’t marching. That's why people also believed they didn't exist.
[No, they’re not there anymore. They were later relocated elsewhere. From that point on, AfroArgentine families have their meeting places or places of resistance in those family homes and not in the city. So, Jes’ family talks about their struggle as “behind closed doors,” or indoor resistance.]
Ava: What does that look like in practice, if you don't mind me asking? What does it look like to resist indoors?
Lina: There is something called candombe porteño. It's music and dance from the diaspora.
Hunton: Porteño is something that they call people [born and raised in] Buenos Aires specifically.
Lina: Exactly. The candombe from Uruguay is very popular here and people think there’s not another candombe. But these Afro-Argentine families create this wave of candombe. They start practicing resistance indoors, practicing this music with drums and singing and dance. The song is in quitombo, which is a Afro-diaspora language. Jes’ family doesn't know the meaning of the words they are singing. They learn by ear. This is a form of the indoors resistance, creating this way of candombe that a lot of people don't know exists.
Hunton: It's also almost always with food. So it'll be a big Sunday gathering with candombe and asado which is an Argentine barbecue. We got to film with Jes's family in La Matanza. It was really beautiful to see that resistance. I remember asking, "Oh, what do these lyrics mean?" They explained, "Well, we don't know, but that's not the point." That was really cool.
Lina: Houses are very, very important here. For example, they choose one house. They meet there every celebration, like holidays and Mother 's day. Y Jesica dice que son más o menos 200 personas en la casa. [And Jesica said that roughly 200 people come to the house]. That's why it was very important, this protest in the city, on the street, because usually we do another kind of protest.
Hunton: On the news, people were like, "Oh, they're Afro-Argentines?" because it was finally a public protest, which was really interesting.
Image Courtesy of AfroArgentina
Ava: What do you wish that more people knew about AfroArgentina history and culture? How can we build coalition with the AfroArgentina struggle in other parts of the world? How do we join y'all in the fight and in the joy?
Alexandra: I wish people knew that the idea that “There’s no racism in Argentina because it’s all white, there are no Black people” is wholly false propaganda. When I first told people I was studying abroad in Argentina, everyone responded with some variation of that idea and yet every part of it is false. There is racism. It’s not all white. There are Black people. Because this idea is so ingrained in our impressions of Argentina, it stops further conversation and exploration immediately. People don’t think to investigate it because it is accepted as fact. Once we understand that assumption as just that, an assumption, we can dig deeper toward the truth. I won’t speak for AfroArgentines about what would be helpful to support their struggle but I think something that will help us do so is amplifying their voices. I highly recommend the book Black Feminist Constellations: Dialogue and Translation Across the Americas which even features 2 chapters with Florencia Gomes.
Hunton: If other countries recognize that Argentina has AfroArgentines and Afrodescendants, then Argentina one day will recognize it themselves. Historically, Argentina has followed other countries in their vision of themselves. This is a very specific example, but tango is AfroArgentine. It was not accepted in Argentina until it was taken to France and accepted in France. I see that connection with when we talk about wanting other countries to know about the Afro-Argentine community. I think that is a simple step of hopefully the film reaching a lot of different audiences and a lot of different countries. Whenever I talk about the film with someone outside of Argentina, for the first few times, they don't hear it correctly. I'll say, "It's a film about AfroArgentines," and they'll be like, "Oh, so tell me about the Afro-Cuban film or the Afro-Latina film." And yes, in a sense, it's the Afro-Latina film, but they never hear the word because it's not heard often, which has happened so many times that I know it's not just a fluke.
Lina: Espero que con este film, puedan como diferentes personas de todo el mundo ser reconocidas en sus territorios. Y creo que puedan sentir sus lugares, su tierra como propia. Y creo que esta lucha afroargentina está conectada a muchas luchas de reconocimiento y de territorio, que viven personas en el mundo. When you hear someone saying there's no black people in Argentina, say, "It's not true. I know a documentary about AfroArgentine people. It's called AfroArgentina."
[I hope that with this film, people from around the world can feel recognized in their own territories. I think they can feel their places and their land as their own. I think that the AfroArgentine struggle is connected with many struggles for belonging and territorial rights, experienced by people around the world.]
Ava: How can folks support the production of AfroArgentina? What do you hope that people take away from the film?
Alexandra: You can donate to our IndieGoGo campaign, follow us on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. I hope that viewers reflect on their assumptions about Argentine identity and the Black diaspora. For me, this film also brings to mind Sankofa, “go back and fetch it”. The past holds answers, explanations, and inspiration. Our ancestors started the threads we continue to weave and I hope this film encourages folks to interrogate and reimagine what could be through creative community.
Hunton: What's very important is that people outside of Argentina understand the connection of what's going on. As you've seen, things are very similar in the US, especially right now. Just seeing that supporting this film is telling a story that is reflected in so many different parts of the world is just one thing I wanted to emphasize. To support us, donate to our crowdfunding campaign which is currently scheduled to end June 6th. Every little bit helps—donations, sharing, everything. It would be really helpful to have spaces offer to do screenings once it's complete or maybe to host the AfroArgentinas play.
Lina: Yo quiero agregar algo, más una reflexión, que hemos decidido contar esta historia. Trabajas de dos historias personales, que son la de Jesica y la de Florencia, pero que hay muchas otras historias de personas afroargentinas que no conocemos y que merecemos conocer. Así que está bueno empezar por algo.
[I want to add something, more of a reflection, on deciding to tell this story. This is the work of two personal histories, Jesica’s and Florencia’s, but there are many other AfroArgentine stories that we don’t know and that we deserve to know. So it’s good to start somewhere.]
