A Strange Emblem for a (Not So) White Nation: La Morocha Argentina in the Latin American Racial Context, c. 1900–2015

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.

In March, 2013 the President of Argentina, Cristina Kirchner, delivered a controversial speech in the outskirts of Buenos Aires. Remembering the military dictatorships and other bitter conflicts of the past, she alluded to a racial dimension of domestic antagonisms, past and present. She pointed to the prejudices of those who, “perhaps for having blond hair” or “light eyes,” or just because they are the offspring of European immigrants, “believe that they are different from a morocho or a Latin American brother.”¹ Although morocho is an ambiguous term in Argentina—it may refer either to a dark skin tone or just to brunette hair color with no racial connotation—in Cristina Kirchner’s speech it referred to people of dark complexion and lower social condition, as she was arguing for equality and national unity in diversity. In fact, she was the first Argentinean president to raise the taboo topic of racial differences within the national population. To be sure, in the 1950s and later, some Peronist intellectuals and activists had brought the issue to public debate, but it had never been publicly addressed by the main leaders of the party. It was only after 2008 that Cristina and her late husband Néstor started to allude publicly to the differences between “whites” and morochos. Although they did so on very few occasions, some of their supporters were more outspoken on the issue, which in turn irritated many of the Kirchners’ opponents, who claimed that they were inventing a “racial problem” that did not exist in Argentina.²

In her 2013, speech Cristina Kirchner also made a joke that was celebrated by her audience. She claimed that she was free of racist prejudice “as I am morocha: I am the Argentinean morocha [la morocha Argentina].” She had already described herself as the morocha Argentina in a 2012 speech.³ And her followers seem to have embraced the idea even before: in June 2011 one of her fans chose the classic 1905 tango “La morocha” as a soundtrack for a video in celebration of her career.⁴ Later in the same year the popular 1998 rock song “Avanti morocha” [“Go, morocha!”] was omnipresent in her campaign for a second term, and it was performed live in the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires the day she took office (it became a classic in her future street gatherings). “Avanti morocha” was also used as a slogan in official posters and street graffiti.⁵ As a well-known essayist wrote in the main pro-Kirchner newspaper, both famous songs—the 1905 tango and the 1998 rock song—were appropriate to frame the life of Cristina Kirchner, as she was the personification of “la morocha argentina,” a representative of the “criolla woman” (had she been a guerrilla fighter—the writer imagined—her nom de guerre could well have been “La Negra or La Negrita”).⁶

“Criollo,” as we shall argue, is an ethnically imprecise term in Argentina. It may simply mean “born in the country,” or it can imply having an old local ancestry (as opposed to a recent and purely European one). Following this second meaning, it is often used as a mild term to allude to someone’s mestizo appearance. Yet, Cristina Kirchner is not a criolla in this sense. Her four grandparents were European immigrants—three Spaniards, one German—and, in any case, her complexion is white by Argentinean standards. Why would she and her followers depict her as the incarnation of la morocha argentina and thereby encourage a discussion of racial antagonisms?

This article will explore the origins of La morocha argentina as a national emblem, the personification of the quintessential Argentinean woman. It will be argued that the ambivalence of Cristina Kirchner’s playful incarnation of that figure, the possibility to use it in order to speak on behalf of dark-skinned and lower class Argentineans (without being one herself), are ingrained in the emblem itself. Indeed, from the early twentieth century onwards, the instability of the meaning of morocho and its gendered embodiment channeled subtle disputes over the racial profile of the nation. Such ambivalence was indispensable in the Argentinean cultural context, heavily marked by official discourses embraced by large portions of the population that presented the nation as “white” and “European.” The very racial uncertainty of the emblem of La morocha argentina helped undermine the certainties of the white, European nation, in a context in which open challenges of that myth were still unfeasible. Despite claims of racial exceptionalism, the making and trajectory of this emblem proves that Argentina’s racial regime is a particular variant of the Latin American “color-continuum” racial formations. By analyzing the Argentinean case in this light, 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 (sometimes conflicting) group-making projects, rather than (only) as the expression of pre-existing ethnic entities.⁷

I. Morocha: The Argentinean Morena?

In his illuminating study of Latin American music and dances, John Chasteen presents an insightful explanation of how rhythms such as tango, salsa, and samba became emblems of their respective nations. All of them of African origins and “transgressive”—they crossed color, social, and moral lines—they were nevertheless appropriated by elites as part of nation-making projects. In racially diverse scenarios, mestizo rhythms were useful as symbols of national unity. Indeed, in the twentieth century, ideas of mestizaje, or “racial democracy,” became foundational myths of most Latin American nations. Of course, Chasteen is aware that those were unifying myths rather than descriptions of reality. Interracial mixture is far from complete in these countries and racial hierarchies persist everywhere (something that notions of “racial democracy” overlook). Yet, as myths they also rest on the reality of the extensive biological and cultural mestizaje of Latin American populations. The elites made use of popular rhythms for their own purposes, but this manipulation “was rarely cynical or one-sided.” As Chasteen notes, “the deep history of Latin American popular dance reveals an unquestionable white attraction and even white participation going back centuries, despite pervasive racism.” The myth of mestizaje has often served to conceal the reality of racial oppression, but it has also limited the most extreme and open forms of racism and provided subaltern groups with arguments for their self-defense.⁸

In Chasteen’s argument, the figure of the morena, the “Dark Woman,” plays a central role. A typical trope of the twentieth century, the glorification of the morena can be found in songs of diverse rhythms across the Americas. Of course, it has an obvious oppressive dimension, as it presents actual morenas as sexual objects under the gaze of males. Moreover, as Vera Kutzinski has noted, the celebration of the morenas is part of exclusively male projects of national union through mestizaje, in which interracial rape can be refigured “as a fraternal embrace across color lines” (the body of the Dark woman passively receiving the seed of the white man).⁹ But while accepting this critique, Chasteen argues that, like the myth of mestizaje, the figure of the morena is also based on elements of reality and is open to subaltern appropriations. While white women of “decent” condition were the last ones to engage in transgressive dancing, white males participated from the very beginning. Erotic encounters between them and nonwhite women were a widespread reality:

Latin America’s national rhythms stand for harmony in a multiracial society, partly by evoking the erotic pleasure of interracial union. People of different class and ethnicity who gathered at dances across the hemisphere over hundreds of years gained affinity for each other as they invented Latin American popular culture together. And while they were at it, they made mixed-race babies, lighter than one parent, darker than another.¹⁰

Indeed, in popular music the morena represents “the (Latin) American Eve.” As she dances and seduces men, she embodies fertility. As the spirit of celebration and loyalty to a particular place (whether the nation, the province, or the city), she also epitomizes social harmony and native authenticity. And as a morena Eve, she is a key symbol of mestizaje as a foundational myth. For this reason, Chasteen concludes, being the object of desire was dangerous for actual morenas, but at the same time it was “empowering.”¹¹

In Chasteen’s view the figure of the Dark Woman often appears as la morena but also as the negra, the mulata, the china, and the morocha (he mentions the 1905 tango “La morocha” as an example). But does his argument really hold for Argentina? How can the morocha be the Argentinean “Dark Woman” when official discourses of the nation have embraced whiteness and Europeanness as foundational myths? Can the morocha perform the role of a domestic Dark Woman in a country that has rejected biological mestizaje as a relevant part of its identity? Moreover, if she is dark, how come la morocha argentina became the quintessential Argentinean woman? Answering these questions requires a careful empirical examination.

The popularity of the morocha as a trope in Argentinean popular music is beyond doubt. At least 250 songs explicitly referring to her in their titles have been registered in the country since the early twentieth century. Many of them found their way into the record industry, while commercial publishers printed the scores for sale of at least 50. It is impossible to know how many more songs refer to morochas without doing so in their titles, but there must be many.¹² The fashion seems to have started in tango: “La morocha” was tremendously popular when it was released in 1905 and it remained so for decades. Morochas are well represented in lyrics of later tangos and of other Afro-Argentinean styles, such as milonga and candombe. But they are also present in folk songs of different parts of the country—like zambas and chamamés—and in other Latin American and international rhythms that are (or were) popular in Argentina, including fox-trot, rumba, bolero, cumbia, polka, waltz, and rock. Regardless of musical genre, most lyrics describe the morocha as an object of romantic love and/or sensual desire (quite often she is depicted dancing). Her physical features are usually praised, but other “spiritual” attributes are commonly attached. In quite a few cases, the morocha appears as representative of the land, be it the country as a whole, a province, a region, or the city of Buenos Aires.¹³ However, only lower class neighborhoods of that city are home to morochas, whose humble “arrabalero” origins are often highlighted.¹⁴ Local and lower class authenticity is also evoked in references to the morochas as “provincianas” or by locating them in bygone times, in particular in relation to the nineteenth century Federal Party.¹⁵ And of course, they are also depicted as “criollas” or associated with the gauchos.¹⁶ Most lyrics are indefinite when it comes to racial features; dark hair and black eyes are the most commonly mentioned physical traits. However, quite a few songs do refer to the dark skin of the morochas or mention other markers denoting darkness or miscegenation, for example by calling them “chinas,” “morenas,” or “negras.”¹⁷

Summing up, the central attributes of Chasteen’s Latin American morenas are very much present in the morochas, not only in tangos but also in other rhythms. Moreover, there are also dozens of Argentinean songs dedicated to the praise of “morenas,” with contents that are indistinguishable from those in which the chosen adjective is “morocha” (however, it is worth noting that “la morena argentina” does not exist as a national emblem or even as a commonly used syntagma). Thus, the paradox remains. How can the morocha be the local personification of the Dark Woman in a country that thinks of itself as “white” and has rejected the whole idea mestizaje?

II. The Making of “La Morocha Argentina”

The question is all the more paradoxical given the fact that the morocha is not only a popular trope of local rhythms but also became a national emblem. Popular and mass cultural products throughout the twentieth century did not just praise a morocha who happened to be Argentinean. Already at the beginning of that century she was named as “la morocha argentina” (not a, but the morocha) and endowed with attributes that were explicitly linked to nationhood. No other type of women ever disputed this centrality; there are no “Argentinean blonds,” “red-heads,” “white women,” “negras,” or any other female characters of that kind (if anything, mass culture has often construed stereotypes of blond women who are socially pretentious and weak in the department of national authenticity).¹⁸ From the very beginning, the morocha argentina was meant to represent (not a but) the quintessential Argentinean woman. In the lyrics of the 1905 tango “La morocha,” the female character introduces herself in these words:

Yo soy la morocha,	I am the morocha
la más agraciada,	the most graceful
la más renombrada	the most renowned
de esta población.	of this town.
[…]
Soy la morocha argentina,	I am the Argentinean morocha,
la que no siente pesares	the one who does not feel regrets,
y alegre pasa la vida	and spends her life
con sus cantares.	happily singing.
Soy la gentil compañera	I am the gentle partner
del noble gaucho porteño,	of the noble porteño gaucho,
la que conserva el cariño	the one who saves her affection
para su dueño.	for her owner.
[…]
En mi amado rancho,	In my beloved hut,
bajo la enramada,	under the arbor
en noche plateada,	on silvery nights,
con dulce emoción,	with sweet emotion
le canto al pampero,	I sing to the Pampa’s wind,
a mi patria amada	to my beloved fatherland
y a mi fiel amor.	and to my faithful love.
[…]

Yo surjo desde lo muerto	I surge from the dead
como luz de más allá …	like a light from the beyond …
perfil grabado que está,	a carved profile that is here,
y la tradición mantiene,	and upholds the tradition,
entre la raza que viene	between the race that comes
y la raza que se va!43	And the race that is leaving!

En mi amado rancho,	In my beloved hut,
bajo la enramada,	under the arbor
en noche plateada,	on silvery nights,
con dulce emoción,	with sweet emotion
le canto al pampero,	I sing to the Pampa’s wind,
a mi patria amada	to my beloved fatherland
y a mi fiel amor.	and to my faithful love.
[. . .]

Composed by Enrique Saborido, with lyrics by Angel Villoldo, “La Morocha” is credited as the first successful tango song with lyrics.¹⁹ It was tremendously popular when it was released in 1905, and it was immediately printed in scores for sale and in popular magazines (it is likely that it was reproduced at least once in a brochure entitled “La Morocha argentina”).²⁰ In this classic song, the femininity of the morocha is presented in both romantic and sensual tones. She is “sweet,” “tender,” “gentle,” and “faithful” but also has “flaming eyes” and feels a “burning love” for her “owner.” While it is clear that she is there to please and serve her man, there is no moral condemnation of her sensuality (something very common in other tango lyrics). Her relation to the nation is transparent in her introduction as “the morocha Argentina” and in her singing to the “fatherland” but also as the partner of the male emblem of nationhood, the gaucho (also named as “paisano” and as the “noble and brave criollo”). Interestingly enough, while the gaucho is typically a rural character, the lyrics place him as a city (“porteño”) dweller, as if the morocha and the gaucho represented prototypes of tradition but also of urban modernity. This combination should not come as a surprise; in fact, the subtitle of “La Morocha” was “Tango criollo.” Tango culture in Argentina emerged very much intermingled with criollo folk music; a good deal of the repertoire of early stars such as Carlos Gardel was composed by rural traditional rhythms, and it was not rare that he and other singers performed in gaucho attire.²¹

In fact, the trope of the morocha seems to have appeared first in the criollista literature that flourished in the Río de la Plata at the end of the nineteenth century. As is well known, in the turmoil generated by rapid urbanization and the massive arrival of European immigrants, criollista discourse presented the traditional, rural, masculine and criollo world of the gauchos as the repository of national authenticity.²² Praise for morochas was very common among authors of this genre before and after 1905,²³ some of whom also related them to essential Argentineanness.²⁴ The acclaimed poet Rafael Obligado had already exalted “a certain morocha / of the Argentinean land” in a 1876 poem entitled “Flor de Ceibo” (which incidentally is the name of Argentina’s national flower) but which he also informally called “mi morocha.”²⁵ In any case, Villoldo’s famous lyrics strongly resemble an earlier song by the prolific criollista writer Francisco Anibal Riu alternatively entitled “La Morocha,” “La flor del pago,” “La porteña,” or “La criolla,” which was in circulation at least since 1901 and had been printed in brochures and magazines before the famous tango appeared. The first two verses read “Yo soy la gracia argentina / con mi garbo de morocha” (“I am the Argentinean grace / with my charms of a morocha”) , and she also refers to herself as the faithful companion of the rural criollo.²⁶ It is not clear who published his composition first, but Villoldo may have also found inspiration in F. Ortega’s “La morocha pampera,” in which the title character declares “Yo soy la Morocha Gauchita” and sings to her absent companion and to “the Argentinean land.”²⁷ The relationship between morochas and nationhood was also common in criollista poetry and in lyrics of folk music published immediately after Villoldo’s hit, some of which strived to imitate either the latter or Riu’s original verses.²⁸

La morocha argentina as an emblem remained visible during the following decades. Villoldo’s tango was recorded by several artists and was also performed by the star Libertad Lamarque in a major local film, the melodrama Puerta cerrada (1939), in which Lamarque plays the role of an honest, lower-class tango singer rejected by the insensitive and pretentious family of her wealthy fiancé. Feeling disdained, she proudly sings “La Morocha,” stressing her sensuality and of course her role as the true carrier of national authenticity. Later on, another tango star, Tita Merello, came to be regarded as the incarnation of the Argentinean morocha. Born into poverty in 1904, she worked as a dancer in bars of ill repute until she made her way into the theatre and film industries. As a tango singer and movie star she cultivated the image of a witty and independent plebeian woman. It is not clear exactly when she started to be regarded as the quintessential morocha argentina, but it probably followed from her leading role in the film La morocha (1958), in which she plays a noble prostitute who redeems herself by helping a piano student to become a renowned artist, only to be left behind when he starts to consort with the upper class.²⁹

In addition, two tangos/milongas published in the second half of the century were entitled “La morocha argentina,” and at least one other mentioned her as a character.³⁰ Beyond the tango scene, the emblem of la morocha argentina continued to appear in criollista compositions,³¹ in theatre plays,³² and also as title of a cumbia album in 2006.³³ And diverse actresses, celebrities and singers marketed themselves or have been proclaimed by the press as “the Argentinean morocha.”³⁴

It is worth noting that some authors also proposed a masculine version as an incarnation of the criollo, of masculinity and of lower class authenticity. Villoldo himself composed another “tango criollo” modeled on his 1905 hit, in which the main character introduces himself as the “fancied morocho” of “noble heart,” a renowned and “passionate criollo” born “in this land.”³⁵ More or less at the same time, one prolific criollista writer also presented his own rendering of Villoldo’s “La morocha” with a masculine character, a brave and sensual man who introduces himself by claiming “I am the morocho argentino.”³⁶ Likewise, “Morocho y argentino!” was the proud exclamation of a character in a tango recorded by Carlos Gardel in 1930.³⁷ Gardel himself was nicknamed “el morocho del Abasto” before he died in 1935 as the biggest tango star and one of Argentina’s national icons. Yet, el morocho argentino was not nearly as successful as a national emblem as the female version.

III. The Morocha Argentina: Brunette or Mestiza?

Like most popular songs referring to the morocha, the syntagma la morocha argentina usually appears without explicit racial connotations. As a national emblem, it is as ambivalent as it is as a musical trope. Yet, from the very beginning it provoked intense disputes over the ethnic profile of the nation.

As we have already noted, the morocha argentina was born associated with the criollo world. At a time when half of the dwellers of Buenos Aires were immigrants (mostly Europeans), the emblem—like the massively popular phenomenon of criollismo itself—placed the criollos at the heart of the nation. Yet interpreting this in ethnic terms is no easy task. After 1910, the emergence of a nationalist current of thought among Argentina’s intellectual élites vindicated the previously scorned criollos as the authentic Argentineans, an argument with intentionally xenophobic implications. But the tango and the popular criollista literature, which had arisen before and were in turn despised by those elites, were eagerly produced and consumed by both natives and newcomers (the latter were often keen on adopting a criollo identity and even on mimicking the way of talking and of dressing of the gauchos as a way to feel part of the Argentinean people). In fact, some of the early worshipers of the morocha argentina were natives like Riu, but others were Italians like Silverio Manco; Villoldo himself was possibly born in Spain.³⁸ Still, by making of a criolla and morocha the emblem of the nation, they were implicitly putting immigrant women in a secondary role.

That move did not pass unnoticed at the time. Around 1906, another “tango criollo” was released in response to Villoldo’s hit. It was entitled “Yo soy la rubia” (I am the blonde) and was written by Eloísa D’Herbil de Silva, acknowledged as the first female tango composer. She had been born in Spain into a family of the European nobility and lived in Cuba before settling in Buenos Aires, where she consorted with the political elites and composed dozens of songs. In “Yo soy la rubia,” she challenged Villoldo’s morocha in a saucy way. The lyrics also begin with a self-introduction: “I am the gentle blonde, / of golden hair, / the one who keeps a treasure / in her languid look.” In the rest of the song she praises herself by enumerating her talents for love. But these come from both European and local origins: “I have the grace of the porteña / from the French girl all of her charm / from the Spaniard I have the wit / and from the English blond, her sweet flirting.” She adds that she can certainly prepare mate (the traditional criollo infusion) but also a good coffee. Instead of the criollo female emblem for the nation that Villoldo and other men of the lower classes were putting forward, the Baroness D’Herbil humorously proposed a cosmopolitan one, embodied in a blond girl instead of a morocha. Her tango, however, did not become popular, and it is only known today among specialists.³⁹

One of the reasons for Villoldo’s success in a multiethnic context was, perhaps, that a criollo emblem was not necessarily perceived as an exclusionary one. In fact, in the late nineteenth century the term “criollo” was rather imprecise as an ethnic label.⁴⁰ In Argentina it could be employed to refer to the mestizo population that was predominant before the great wave of immigration and to convey racist stereotypes, ⁴¹ but it was often used simply to talk about those who were born in the country, of whatever origin they may be (or even to people born abroad who had acquired local customs).⁴² Yet, the morocha argentina as an emblem did sometimes allude to more specific ethnic features. In the last verses of Francisco Riu’s song that is likely to have inspired Villoldo’s tango, the praised morocha describes herself as representative of a “race” that was disappearing:

Yo soy esa morena	I am that morena
Que por las calles va	that walks along the streets
Moviendo las caderas	swinging hips
Con un toque sensual	with a sensual touch
Un tanto arrabalera	A bit arrabalera [from lower class suburbs]
Me siento al caminar.	I feel as I walk.
Luna de tango llena	A full moon of tango
Pasión que quema	burning passion
No puedo más.	I can’t hold it anymore.
Y dicen …	And they say …
Que soy divina	that I am divine
Una hermosa morocha argentina	a gorgeous Argentinean morocha
Que mi cuerpo a los hombres fascina	that men are fascinated by my body
Y a cualquiera puedo enamorar. […]56	and that I can make anyone fall in love.

But in these verses, the morocha is not only a representative of a dying “race.” She is also the fertile soil that receives the (male) seed of the coming races, thus inscribing tradition in the heart of their offspring.⁴⁴ This is why she is not just any morocha, but the Argentinean morocha, as her presence ensures the permanence of nationhood in the midst of drastic cultural and demographic changes (a central concern in several of Rui’s criollista texts of these years). Another version of the same song includes more verses that make it even clearer: the morocha is described as a “national symbolism / in the ideal future / larva, caterpillar and butterfly /of the great and mysterious / social metamorphosis.” ⁴⁵ The image of the morochas or criollas as those who preserve the older race is also present in other compositions of the same years, including one of Carlos Gardel’s songs, in which she is described as “soul of the race,” “the legendary criolla of a past / that erects in our souls an encouraging memory.”⁴⁶

Moreover, in some compositions the morocha argentina is described with explicit racial markers. In another of the several versions of Riu’s song, she is a “trigueña” (brown skinned),⁴⁷ a feature that is also included in other songs in praise of the criollas argentinas.⁴⁸ In other compositions, the morocha argentina is a “chola,” a word that refers to a person of racially mixed origin.⁴⁹

The emblem of the morocha argentina was so malleable that even Afroargentineans could claim to embody it. At a time when the intellectual élites had already decreed that Argentina was a white country and that Afro descendants were extinct, one of them, Gabino Ezeiza, produced his own version of the emblem. Ezeiza was the most famous of all the payadores—popular composers, experts in the art of improvisation, who performed live for audiences of all types in bars, circuses, and theatres and were in vogue before the advent of the music industry. Like some of the most renowned turn-of-the-century payadores, he was an Afroargentine. A compilation of his songs published c. 1917, immediately after his death, included “The daughter of the payador,” dedicated to his own daughter Matilde Ezeiza. The song seems to have been well known, as it was highlighted in the title of the brochure. It contains several verses that resemble Villoldo’s tango, but we cannot know who copied whom. Both men knew each other and shared stages; Ezeiza printed his song later, but that does not necessarily mean that he was not singing it before. Like Villoldo’s, Ezeiza’s song features a woman who introduces herself to the audience by saying “I am the morocha.” The last verses read:

morocha soy, no lo niego	I am morocha, that, I cannot deny
muy bajito es mi color;	very low is my color;
no soy como aquella flor	I am not like that flower
que por su explendor (sic) domina,	that dominates by her splendor,
soy la morocha argentina	I am la morocha argentina
soy la hija del payador.50	I am the daughter of the payador.

By claiming that the daughter of (not a but) the payador was the stereotypical morocha argentina—with her dark skin color explicitly mentioned—Ezeiza was obviously reclaiming a place in the nation for the people of “low color” like himself. He had already reclaimed that in other compositions, by recalling the contribution of black soldiers in the wars of independence.⁵¹ Matilde Ezeiza also sang songs in which she introduced herself as the “true Argentinean,” heir of “patriots” or older times, a “humble” and “uncultivated” woman who is “endowed with no beauty” but is nevertheless “noble” and tenderly loves her “little paisano” (the “pariah of the Pampas”).⁵² Other payadores also praised Matilde in a similar vein, by calling her an “Argentinean relic” of “Pampean lineage” and by highlighting her “manners of a china” and her looks of a “morocha ladina.”⁵³

By presenting a morocha argentina of African background the Ezeizas were doing something unusual, as “morocho” was not a word normally used to describe Afroargentineans, who were typically called “negros,” “pardos,” or “morenos.” Yet, it was not totally arbitrary. As we have seen, the morochas could be taken as emblems of the nation because they were associated with the lower class and the criollo world. Afroargentineans also had these associations, for obvious reasons.⁵⁴ Moreover, as in some of the songs we have mentioned, “morocha” and “morena” were to some extent interchangeable. So, relating the morocha argentina to things Afro or to “morenas” was not difficult. Villoldo’s “La morocha” included no explicit references to racial features. But interestingly enough, as Matthew Karush has pointed out, when Libertad Lamarque sang it in the film Puerta cerrada, the scene included two Afroargentinean boys. It is not clear who decided to include them in that scene in particular—they do not appear anywhere else in the movie—but they were likely featured to stress the lower class outlook of Lamarque’s character.⁵⁵ By contiguity, then, “La morocha” of the song was associated with blackness.

Later on, and moving from tango to a more obviously Afro-Latin rhythm like the cumbia, the morocha argentina was openly depicted as dark. In 2006 the TV actress Iliana Calabró decided to name her debut album La morocha argentina. In the song quoted as album title, she introduces herself in a way that resembles Villoldo’s classic:

Yo soy esa morena	I am that morena
Que por las calles va	that walks along the streets
Moviendo las caderas	swinging hips
Con un toque sensual	with a sensual touch
Un tanto arrabalera	A bit arrabalera [from lower class suburbs]
Me siento al caminar.	I feel as I walk.

Luna de tango llena	A full moon of tango
Pasión que quema	burning passion
No puedo más.	I can’t hold it anymore.

Y dicen . . .	And they say . . .
Que soy divina	that I am divine
Una hermosa morocha argentina	a gorgeous Argentinean morocha
Que mi cuerpo a los hombres fascina	that men are fascinated by my body
Y a cualquiera puedo enamorar. […]56	and that I can make anyone fall in love.

A cumbia, it is nevertheless full of references to tango, not only in the word tango itself, but also in the word arrabalera—little used in common language but a typical expression of that genre (and also the name of one of Tita Merello’s most famous songs). That word also conveys the idea that the singer is of a modest social condition (something the lyrics emphasize later by saying that she is “from a lower class neighborhood”). That she is of dark complexion is explicit in her depiction as “morena” and also more subtly indicated in references to her passion for the “sound of drums” and for carnival ensembles, something typical of Afroargentineans according to several classic tango/milonga lyrics (for instance the perennial “Siga el baile”).

IV. Vicarious Blackness in the Latin American Context

Unlike Matilde Ezeiza, Iliana Calabró, Libertad Lamarque, and Cristina Kirchner are brunette morochas but not mixed race morochas; they look “white” by Argentinean standards. And they are not criollas either (at least not in the racial sense of the word), as all three had recently arrived European ancestors. Why would they associate themselves—and the emblem of the morocha argentina—with dark skin? It would seem that we are dealing with a phenomenon of vicarious blackness, understood as racial appropriation.

Cultural appropriation is often conceptualized as an exploitative practice. “Vicarious blackness,” as a variety of racial appropriation, has been interpreted in that way, while other forms of “vicarious ethnicity” are normally presented as a fake or superficial adoption of the Other’s attributes, a commodification of difference, that leaves ethnic borders and hierarchies unchanged or even reinforced.⁵⁷ However, the examples of vicarious blackness that we are analyzing here are difficult to understand in this light. Indeed, the ambivalence and malleability of racial categories that we have noted is engrained in the vernacular language itself.

According to the Spanish Royal Academy’s Diccionario de la lengua española, the word morocho was coined in South America and derives from the Quechua muruch’u, originally used to designate a hard variety of maize. Applied to a person, it means “robust” and “vigorous” (thus conveying a positive connotation). But in some countries it also alludes to other physical features. In Peru it refers to a dark skin tone, but that is not the case in Paraguay, where it only alludes to a brunette hair color. According to that dictionary, in Argentina the term can be used in both senses. It may refer to a person of dark complexion or simply to a brunette, without associations to skin-tones or ethnic backgrounds.⁵⁸ Thus, it may describe a “white” and European-looking person, but it can also be used as a synonym of “moreno” or “negro”⁵⁹ (the latter usually refers to people of low class and brown skin and/or other features perceived as mestizo, rather than to individuals identified as Afroargentineans). This ambivalence was already present in the nineteenth century. The first dictionaries of Argentinean terms mention the variety of maize as the origin of the word and also the positive connotation when applied to a fresh and vigorous person. But interestingly enough, one of the oldest dictionaries, compiled in the mid-1870s, also includes, as an alternative Spanish etymology, “old diminutive form for Moor [moro],” and points out that morocho can be used to imply that a person is “trigueño” (brown-skinned) or “prieto” (dark-skinned).⁶⁰ Another dictionary, published in 1910, also defined morocho as “moreno or trigueño.”⁶¹ It is worth noting that Moor itself was often used as euphemism for “negro” (meaning a person of African looks), and that “moreno/a,” deriving from it, was one of the most common words to describe Afroargentineans at that time. In fact, according to another dictionary of 1910 “morocho” was usually employed as a “term of endearment [por cariño]” to refer to a “morena, fresh, well-kept, person of the white race, especially if young and beautiful.”⁶² The definition may seem incomprehensible, as it combines moreno and white in the same description. But it is no mistake, as “moreno/a” was also a somewhat ambiguous term. According to another dictionary published in 1916, “moreno/a” could be used to refer both to Afroargentineans (“negros”) and to “the least light of the white race” [el menos claro en la raza blanca].⁶³

These malleable Argentinean categories are consistent with other Latin American cases. Just like in Argentina, in countries like Cuba, Venezuela, or Puerto Rico, “negro/a” can be used as a term of endearment applicable to both dark-skinned and white people. The equivalent Portuguese words, “negro” and “preto,” are generally used in Brazil to refer to black people only. But the slang “nego/a,” which evolved from the former (and was already in use in the nineteenth century as a derogatory term to refer to slaves), can be employed as a term of endearment for people of any color. In turn, “moreno” is also ambivalent in Brazil, as it may refer to any shade of nonwhite skin, but white brunettes can also call themselves “morenas.”⁶⁴ The variety and malleability of racial categories reflect the nature of racial formations in Latin America. In the United States and in some European countries, race relations were traditionally structured as a polar system that opposed “whites” and “blacks” as two ethnic groups neatly demarcated. According to the “one-drop rule,” actual miscegenation was not supposed to alter that polarity, as even a distant African ancestry made a person “black.” Scholars have argued that, despite that rule, the race boundary in the United States was more flexible in practice, as certain groups of immigrants who were considered nonwhite upon arrival were later acknowledged as fully white.⁶⁵ Yet, this flexibility notwithstanding, the local racial formation still imagined a neat “white” vs. “black” polarity. By contrast, race relations in Latin America are organized in a nonpolar system, a color continuum in which being “white” is not defined as a matter of blood purity but one of culture and phenotype (which in turn are flexible and situational). Consequently, there is not one unified condition of nonwhiteness but several ambiguous and sometimes overlapping terms that allude to phenotype and/or to ethnicity.

In turn, these two different systems are also reflected in different narratives of national identity. In the United States, for instance, the actual population that founded the nation was racially defined as white and Anglo-Saxon. In other words, there was an ethnos before an actual nation. Other ethnic groups were later granted membership through a narrative of gradual integration of “minorities,” a process that lead (or will presumably lead) to a multiracial nation. In this imagined outcome, races remain discrete, clearly defined groups, while white Anglo-Saxons continue to be regarded as the founders of the nation. By contrast, most Latin American countries developed discourses of nationhood that revolved around the idea of mestizaje or “racial democracy.” The actual population that founded the nation was imagined as a blend of different ethnic components that had already undergone a process of biological and cultural miscegenation. In these narratives, the national ethnos crystallized as part of the process of independence and nation building. And it is not just a matter of narratives and origin myths. In Latin America, national formation was coeval with actual processes of ethnogenesis.

As we have already argued, mestizaje and “racial democracy” are myths, but as such, they also rest on the reality of the extensive biological and cultural mestizaje and on a pattern of less hostile relations among people of different colors or ethnic backgrounds. This is not to say, of course, that racial hierarchies and oppression do not exist. But they allow for the coexistence of racism of diverse intensity and cordial relations despite color difference, particularly among the lower classes. This is why, in the Latin American context, individual cases of appropriation of things black (or indigenous) may perhaps be explained as practices of racial exploitation or commodified “vicarious ethnicity.” Yet, looking at it from the collective point of view, they were often indispensable ingredients of ethnogenesis-cum-national making. By engaging in enactments of blackness, by consuming and re-adapting African and indigenous cultural products, by producing mestizo emblems for their nations, people of all colors and ethnic backgrounds were often experimenting with performative games through which they built a national ethnos out of the heterogeneous pieces left at the end of the colonial period.

V. Back to the Morocha and Argentinean Whiteness

The Latin American color-continuum racial formations translate into different vernacular color regimes, combined in specific ways with the official narratives of the nation. The ideology of mestizaje in Mexico, widely shared by the population, incorporates the indigenous legacy to the nation but minimizes the African contribution; when it comes to skin colors, it does not prevent most people from associating themselves with whiteness as much as they can.⁶⁶ By contrast, the “trigueño” in Puerto Rico or the “café con leche” skin color in Venezuela and Colombia embody the national character, which more fully acknowledges the impact of African ancestry. Argentina is a peculiar case in the Latin American context, as it is one of the few countries in which the official discourses of the nation reject the whole notion of mestizaje, to embrace instead a myth according to which the national ethnos is “white” and of purely European ethnic origins. Of course, indigenous communities are acknowledged, but they are accepted as “minorities” attached to the nation. As for Afroargentineans, dominant discourses proclaimed that they disappeared in the late nineteenth century. As the official discourses would have it, “there are no races” within the Argentinean people.

It would be a mistake, however, to conclude that the local racial formation corresponds to the polar system—only with no blacks in the territory of the nation. For the cost of symbolic whitening was an extraordinarily flexible and inclusive definition of “white.”⁶⁷ After the alleged extinction of Afroargentineans, official recordkeeping tended to reclassify people formerly labeled “negros” as “trigueños,” which in Argentina makes you count as nonblack (and therefore “white”).⁶⁸ As we have already noted in the local vocabulary, even someone described as “moreno” could nevertheless be thought of as “the least light of the white race.” Similarly, in the early twentieth century, part of the population of the northwest, previously counted as “indians,” was reclassified with the ethnically undetermined term “criollo.”⁶⁹ And it is not just a matter of labels and accounting games: the local eye is trained to perceive as belonging to the “black race” only people of a pronounced African phenotype. After an intense process of miscegenation, today the vast majority of actual Afroargentines pass simply undetected as such. Likewise, urbanized indigenous individuals usually cease to be perceived as “Indians.” Using surveys and statistical methods, Edward Telles and René Flores have recently demonstrated the “greater propensity for light brown persons to identify as white” in contemporary Argentina than in other Latin American countries.⁷⁰

But beyond the dominant culture and official labels, even if they deny racial distinctions among them, Argentines are not color-blind. Darker skinned people (especially if poor) are often referred to as “negros.” That does not imply that they are perceived as being of African descent, for which there is a different colloquial expression, “negro mota” [kinky haired black]. Dark skin not associated with very prominent African features is usually interpreted as denoting miscegenation with Amerindians. But that does not necessarily locate someone in a different ethnic group. According to local taxonomies, they may just be whites with a “trigueño,” “moreno” or “morocho” appearance, i.e., people with some distant aboriginal ancestry but who are nevertheless part of the white-European Argentinean Self.⁷¹ In certain contexts, however, when accompanied by cultural traits that are not accepted as part of the supposedly “European” nature of Argentina, dark nuances can be taken as signs of a different ethnicity. In those cases, “negro” becomes a derogatory term and functions as an unacknowledged racial category, thus exposing the uncertain status of these “honorary whites” as part of the national ethnos.

To complicate things further, and reflecting the fact that the class divide in the country to some extent overlaps with phenotype differences—higher class people tend to be whiter and blonder than the poor—in recent times many lower class Argentineans have adopted the “negro” label playfully to describe themselves, regardless of their actual skin colors. Likewise, in some contexts they may also use labels such as “rubio” (blonde) or “blanquito” (whity) to describe stereotypical higher class folks, thus conveying a sense of racial difference, however vague, to class hierarchies. As we have already noted, after 2008 some pro-Kirchner voices have tried to politicize these would-be racial differences. Thus, both downward class hostility towards the poor and upward resentment towards the middle and upper classes can express themselves through racial allusions, even if everybody agrees that “there are no races in Argentina.” This inconsistency between the official discourses of the nation and actual practices of racism and self-identification often coexist in the same individuals. As scholars have reported, a person may claim that in Argentina there are no races even as he or she expresses hatred for the local “negros.”⁷² And at least some lower-class people who identify as “negros” or point to others as “whitey” would not hesitate to consider themselves “white” if asked about their own race.

This inconsistency is not accidental, but springs from the disjointed and unfinished nature of Argentinean ethnogenesis. Indeed, the dominant narratives of the white, European nation, as presented by the political élites of the mid-nineteenth century, systematized by positivist intellectuals in the early twentieth century and embraced by a good deal of the population (more than half of which was comprised of Europeans or children of European immigrants) were particularly exclusive. Contrary to most Latin American cases, mestizaje was not only not celebrated, but rejected altogether. To be sure, both mestizaje and “white Argentina” are unifying myths. But the myth that the Argentinean state chose to endorse was particularly difficult to reconcile with the physical diversity visible in its population.

Due to that disjointedness, among other factors, Argentinean élites experienced serious difficulties when it came to culturally “civilizing” and politically including the lower classes. To put it the other way round, élites’ incapacity to provide effective unifying myths is also demonstrated by the capacity of the common people to resist certain cultural messages and State initiatives and to propose alternative views of the nation, the profile of its ethnos included. The aura of lower-class (and therefore national) authenticity attributed to things black and to dark skins in popular culture, and the phenomenon of “vicarious blackness” that we have analyzed in this article can be better understood in this light. Both subtly undermined the solidity of official discourses of the nation, and offered safe ways to challenge the myth of white, European Argentina without having to wage open combat against it. However unsystematic, they were performances pointing to a national ethnos differently defined. As such, they cannot be understood naively, as if they were part of efforts of oppressed sections of the population (Amerindian, mestizo or Afro-Argentine) to demand a new, multicultural definition of the nation: there was no such idea for most of the twentieth century. But nor can they be considered mere examples of cultural appropriation/expropriation by white people with no relation to the social and demographic reality of the country. Seen not from the point of view of the individual or of discrete, pre-existing ethnic groups, but from the collective perspective of ethnogenesis, it is not strange that people of all complexions participated in these performances.

As I have shown elsewhere, the embodiment of Argentineanness—the gaucho—was particularly disputed when it came to racial characteristics. In nationalists’ and State sponsored descriptions the gaucho was usually portrayed as a criollo of Spanish (therefore white-European) origins; in popular and mass culture, however, he was often described as a dark-skinned mestizo.⁷³ As we have seen, as a national emblem the morocha argentina was equally ambivalent and open to racial games from its very inception. The meaning of being a morocha is still contested today. While the morocha argentina celebrated in mainstream magazines is invariably a white brunette, sociologist Ana Julia Aréchaga found that dark-skinned women of the lower classes may claim that those are not the real morochas, or even deny them the right to use that label.⁷⁴ Further investigation is needed to arrive to firmer conclusions, but it seems that the disputes over the emblem’s ethnic profile have been a constant thread. Its explicit politicization in Cristina Kirchner’s times, however, brings a novelty that is worth noting and that is consistent with a new politicization of ethnicity in Argentina after the 1990s.⁷⁵

In fact, this ambivalence is not coincidental: only racially ambivalent emblems could come to symbolize the racially disjointed Argentinean ethnos. Had these emblems been undoubtedly “white,” their popular appeal would probably have been compromised; conversely, if they had been obviously and undeniably dark-skinned, a more elite part of the population would probably have rejected them. Ambivalence was arguably their most valuable asset.

The male gaucho being the official emblem of the nation, suspicion of its mestizo ancestry could certainly destabilize the myth of the white Argentina. But as he often appeared as a bygone character of spiritual significance but no actual demographic presence—the death of the gaucho was proclaimed already in the 1870s–, that danger was easy to neutralize. Even believers in the myth could sympathize with the gauchos’ dark skin, provided it was clear that they left no relevant biological trace in the present. According to dominant narratives, European immigrants replaced the actual gauchos as procreators of modern Argentineans. By comparison, the morocha argentina is potentially a more subversive emblem, as she was—and still is—meant to be the embodiment of actual, contemporary women. While the gaucho inhabits museums and patriotic celebrations, the morochas are everywhere on the streets. While the gaucho is accepted as a national icon in both official and popular culture, the morocha has remained an unofficial emblem, as neither the State nor nationalist intellectuals ever gave her the status of a national symbol.

Scholars have pointed out the importance of the female body as symbol of the nation. While both male and female characters have been used as emblems, the latter often represent in abstract ways the soil, flesh and tradition of the nation, while male figures tend to appear as symbols of the body politic, as builders or rulers. In some countries two such emblems may coexist—for instance, the allegorical Britannia and the more mundane John Bull in the United Kingdom, or Lady Liberty and Uncle Sam in the United States. As reproducers, women’s bodies have also served as markers of national boundaries. Protecting women from being sexually accessed by foreigners is conceived as a way to preserve the “purity” of the nation; conversely, raping women has been a frequent way to humiliate an ethnic group conquered or defeated at war. In this view, women’s bodies are the containers of the nation, inseminated by the male seed. Thus, controlling women’s “decency” is important for the preservation of both the patriarchal order and the nation itself.⁷⁶

In Argentina, only a male character is officially acknowledged as personification of the nation. The gaucho represents the original inhabitant, the land and traditions on the one hand, and also the body politic (as “Juan Pueblo”) on the other. Actual gauchos did have a female partner, the china, but she remained a voiceless character never endowed with any relevant symbolism. Yet, in the official narratives of the nation, the female body did play an important role in stories of the cautivas, the women kidnapped by the indigenous warriors who endangered and humiliated the emerging nation before they were defeated by “civilization.” In the local visual culture, these bodies had a distinct racial mark: the narrative of national making was powerfully illustrated by famous paintings showing scenes of semi-naked, white women being taken on horseback by darker-skinned savages. Forever lost for the nation, these cautivas projected the implicit ideal of decent (white) Argentinean women, protected by male nation builders from sexual disgrace and racial intercourse.

The morocha argentina, as a nonofficial emblem, clearly collides with this ideal, not only due to her ambivalent racial profile but also because of her joyful romantic and erotic exuberance. She is not a “decent,” passive maiden waiting for male protection but an assertive (and sometimes clearly independent) woman. At least in some of the cases that we have analyzed, she positively represents racial mixture as a valuable asset of the nation. A final example, the film La parda Flora (León Klimovsky 1952), will help us illuminate this aspect. A typical Argentinean melodrama, it is a love story between a tango-singing plebeian woman and an upper class man. As in Puerta cerrada, the morocha here stands for lower class authenticity, while her fiancée’s family represents corruption and privilege. As in La morocha, she is a strong woman of ill repute—she runs an exclusive brothel on behalf of the father of her fiancée, who secretly owns it. However, unlike the other two examples, in this film the lead character is of mixed race, a characteristic made explicit in the very title (The mulatta Flora) and alluded to through the subtle darkening makeup worn by Amelia Bence, the actress who played her. In the opening scene she sings a milonga proudly introducing herself as a “morocha” of “sinner’s life.” In the rest of the film, she fights moral and racial prejudice in order to retain her love and on behalf of her two white-looking daughters who live in a boarding school and know nothing of her mother’s job. The main villain is of course the owner of the brothel, who wants to keep Flora as manager, disapproves of his son’s feelings for her, and threatens to reveal her secret. At the end of the film, she morally redeems herself by quitting the brothel for good. Her fiancée finally abandons her, but in exchange, she can have a new beginning with her elder daughter, who reveals that she had always known the truth about her mother and lovingly accepts her. The final scene suggests that the two women will settle together in the countryside, as the daughter’s vocation is to work as a teacher in a rural school. Thus, motherly love, rural purity, and the teacher’s noble mission help Flora leave behind her indecent past in the corrupt, upper-class brothel.

Interestingly enough, the action takes place in the 1910s and Flora’s personal story of liberation and redemption overlaps with the nation’s path from oligarchic rule to democracy. By exposing the corrupt owner of the brothel—who is also a politician—Flora plays a key role in the defeat of the Conservatives in the nation’s first democratic election. The film even associates her with the popular Hipólito Yrigoyen, elected president in 1916, who features as a character delivering a powerful speech near the brothel. At the end, Flora actually becomes a heroine of the lower-class folks of the area. Thus, in this film a mixed race morocha of strong temper and exuberant sexuality comes to represent the democratic drive of the Argentinean people fighting upper class corruption and oligarchic rule. As Flora redeems herself, the nation finds liberation. Although it is beyond the scope of this article, it is tempting to contrast this mulatta with the totally opposite character of the “tragic mulatta” in US melodramas, usually presented as a grim and sad type, whose tragic fate illustrates the dangers of racial transgression.⁷⁷ By contrast, there is nothing tragic in Flora’s tale of redemption. On the contrary, her story illustrates the successful struggle of authentic Argentineans fighting for recognition and for democracy. The fact that authentic Argentineans are represented in this film by an independent, lower-class woman of mixed race, explicitly introduced as a morocha, reveals the heretical potential of the emblem we have dealt with in this article. It is perhaps no coincidence that it was produced during Juan Perón’s government, when the racial dimensions of class differences in Argentina started to become the object of public scrutiny.⁷⁸

Indeed, the morocha is the local version of Chasteen’s joyful and erotic community-making force, the “Dark Woman”—only less obviously mestiza than the morenas of the rest of Latin America. Deliberately ambivalent as it was, as an alternative emblem for the nation, la morocha argentina proves that the local racial regime can be better understood as belonging to the Latin American color-continuum models. Underneath the apparent solidity of the whitening, official discourses the nation, this unofficial emblem impregnated mass culture, thus revealing the contested, unfinished, and disjointed process of ethnogenesis in Argentina.

Figure 1.

Original score of La morocha, by Villoldo and Saborido (c. 1905). Author’s photo of the original at the Biblioteca Nacional.

Figure 2.

The quintessential morocha argentina—plebeian, dark skinned, Peronist, and sexually exuberant—main character of the pro-Kirchner magazine La negra del sur (2015). Reproduced by permission of the illustrator, Mariano Utin.

Ezequiel Adamovsky is a professor at the Universidad de San Martín and the Universidad de Buenos Aires / CONICET. Address correspondence to Ezequiel Adamovsky, Camarones 2025, (1416) Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Argentina.

1

Full speech available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjSGRZU4UJI, accessed March 13, 2015.

2

Ezequiel Adamovsky, “El color de la nación argentina: Conflictos y negociaciones por la definición de un ethnos nacional, de la crisis al Bicentenario,” Jahrbuch für Geschichte Lateinamerikas 49 (2012): 343–64.

3

See www.presidencia.gob.ar/discursos/26180-acto-de-entrega-del-botiquin-numero-1500000-en-el-marco-del-programa-remediar-mas-redes-palabras-de-la-presidenta-de-la-nacion- (acc. March 13, 2015).

4

See www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-Apvx55rUU, accessed March 13, 2015.

5

See Perfil, 10 Dec. 2011; “‘Avanti Morocha,’ el ser nacional en tacos altos,” La Gaceta 16 Oct. 2011.

6

María Moreno, “Avanti Moroooocha,” Página 12 (“Las 12”), 28 Oct. 2011. The writer Washington Cucurto also depicted the president as the quintessential “morocha nacional” in his poem Hombre de Cristina released on the same year.

7

Rogers Brubaker, Ethnicity without groups (Cambridge Mass. 2004).

8

John Charles Chasteen, National Rhythms, African Roots: The Deep History of Latin American Popular Dance (Alburquerque, 2004), 199–200.

9

Vera Kutzinski, Sugar’s Secrets: Race and the Erotics of Cuban Nationalism (Charlottesville, 1993), 168. See the discussion in Marilyn Grace Miller, Rise and Fall of the Cosmic Race: The Cult of Mestizaje in Latin America (Austin, 2004), 56.

10

Chasteen, National Rhythms, 202–3.

11

Similar interpretations of the instable meanings associated to the glorification of the morena in Micaela Díaz-Sánchez & Alexandro D. Hernández, “The Son Jarocho as Afro-Mexican Resistance Music,” The Journal of Pan African Studies, 6:1 (2013): 187–209; Vannina Sztainbok, “Imagining the Afro-Uruguayan Conventillo: Belonging and the Fetish of Place and Blackness” (University of Toronto PhD Thesis, 2009); George Reid Andrews, “Recordando África al inventar Uruguay: sociedades de negros en el carnaval de Montevideo, 1865–1930,” Revista de Estudios Sociales (Colombia) 26 (2007): 86–104.

12

Furt registered several early ones from Buenos Aires, Córdoba and Santiago del Estero; Jorge M. Furt, Cancionero popular rioplatense, 2 vols. (Buenos Aires, 1923), i, 237, 245, 247, 252, 287 and 294.

13

Song titles include morochas (or morochitas) “argentina” and of several provinces: “chaqueña,” “correntina,” “de Santa Fe,” “santafecina,” “entrerriana,” “salteña,” and of course “de Buenos Aires” and “porteña.” There are also more abstract references to the land, as “La morocha de mis pagos,” “ribereña,” “del Paraná,” “serrana,” “de mi pueblo,” or “del barrio.” All scores mentioned in this article were consulted at the Biblioteca Nacional; additional titles are available at the archives of SADAIC.

14

That kind of neighborhood is represented in titles “La morocha de San Telmo” (1979), “de Monserrat” (1945), “de Puente Alsina” (1984). Morochas as “soul of the arrabal” or of a “barrio popular” also in lyrics of “Morocha” (1961), “Morocha de arrabal” (1962), “La morocha argentina” (2006).

15

Provincianas in “Morocha triste” (1938) and “Morocha preciosa” (1987, in W. Lescano’s “Diferente”); times bygone in “Del tiempo de la Morocha” (1960); Federals in “Morocha sangre de fuego” (1959) and “Morocha guapa” (1984).

16

In “La morocha” (1905), “Oh criolla morochita” (1936), “Santiago del Estero” (1949), “El patio de la morocha” (1951), among others.

17

Brown/dark skin in “El patio de la morocha” (1951), “Morocha de arrabal” (1962), and “La morocha” (1997, in O. Serna’s “Peluche”); China in “Morocha linda” (1945), “Morocha del Paraná” (1949), and “La Proposición” (1953); Morena in “Morocha es la moza” (1962) and “La morocha argentina” (2006); Negra in “Morochita de mi vida” (1981) and “La morocha” (1997, in O. Serna’s “Peluche”).

18

To offer but two examples, in the film La rubia del camino (Manuel Romero, 1938) and in the classic rock song “La rubia tarada” (Sumo, 1985).

19

On the history of that hit see Rubén Pesce, “La historia de La Morocha,” in La historia del tango, 3 vols. (Buenos Aires, 1977), iii, 381–85; Oscar del Priore & Irene Amuchástegui, “La Morocha, un tango de exportación,” Accessed 10 April 2015. http://www.todotango.com/historias/cronica/222/La-Morocha-un-tango-de-exportacion

20

This brochure, now lost, was listed in the back covers of Antonio A. Caggiano, Modulaciones (Buenos Aires, n/d) and Francisco N. Bianco, Cantos del alma (Buenos Aires, n/d).

21

See Irene López, “Morochas, milongueras y percantas. Representaciones de la mujer en las letras de tango,” Espéculo: revista de estudios literarios, 45, 2010. Accessed 10 April 2015. http://pendientedemigracion.ucm.es/info/especulo/numero45/mutango.html.

22

Adolfo Prieto, El discurso criollista en la formación de la Argentina moderna (Buenos Aires, 2006).

23

See, for example, Quintín Chingolo: “La Morocha,” El Fogón, periódico criollo (Montevideo), 10, no. 10 (Nov. 1895): 113–14; Ambrosio Rio, Sentimientos criollos (Rosario, s/f c. 1917), 14; Jacinto Flores, “La morocha,” La Pampa Argentina, 1, 7 April 1907, 11; Cruz Campera, “A mi morocha,” Vida Argentina, II, 30, 11 Aug. 1909, n/p. Praise for sensual black women or dancing “morenas” can be found earlier in periodicals of the Afroargentinean community; see La Broma, 21/11/1877, p. 1.

24

For instance Agustín Alvarez, “Criollita,” La Pampa, 53, no. 21 (Dec. 1904): 1.

25

Included in Rafael Obligado, Santos Vega (Buenos Aires, 1917), 27 and 34.

26

There are different versions; this rendering was taken from Francisco Anibal Riu, “La Morocha,” Caras y Caretas, 336, 11 March 1905, 31. A 1901 version entitled “La criolla” was included in Relaciones y pensamientos (Buenos Aires, 1906) and in the magazine El Ombú (Revista del género criollo), 1, 25 Dec. 1903. When the anthropologist Robert Lehmann-Nitsche set to register nonprofessional singers in 1905, he recorded three performers who offered variants of this song. See Miguel A. García and Gloria B. Chicote, Voces de tinta: estudio preliminar y antología comentada de Folklore Argentino (1905) de Robert Lehmann-Nitsche (La Plata, 2008), 67, 114–18, 187.

27

F. Ortega (Gil Blas), La morocha pampera (Buenos Aires, n/d), 5–8. (It is impossible to date this brochure but Lehmann-Nitsche wrote in the front cover “c. 1904”).

28

See La morocha (Buenos Aires, 1907); “Brisas camperas (estilo argentino),” in A. G. Villoldo, Cantos populares argentinos (Buenos Aires, n/d c. 1910), 13; “La Argentina (Buenos Aires),” in Manuel Cientofante, Los boqueños con La trifurca de Barracas, décimas y estilos nacionales de las 14 provincias por escala (Buenos Aires, n/d), 6–7; Silverio Manco, La morocha pampeana (Buenos Aires, 1910), 5–11; La Morocha, Canción del pajarito y respuesta a la anterior carta amorosa (Buenos Aires, 1907), 2–3.

29

In Mercado de Abasto (1955), Merello interprets a single-parenting mother and proud worker and is also referred to as “la morocha.” Tita Merello, la morocha argentina (Buenos Aires, 2006).

30

José Francisco Traviglia & F. M. Brecciaroli, Morocha argentina (Rosario, Emar, 1956); Adrián Schenquerman, Morocha argentina (Buenos Aires, Universal Music Publishing, 2007). Mention in Tito Ribero & Leopoldo Díaz Velez La milonga y yo (SADAIC, 1968).

31

In the 1940s a publishing house specializing in gaucho literature published a booklet by L. A. García entitled La morocha argentina, now lost (Listed in M. Castro, El gaucho no ha muerto [Buenos Aires, 1944]).

32

In 1951 the famous scriptwriter Juan Carlos Chiappe staged “La Morocha Argentina o Margarita la Chacarera” in Zárate (Boletín Oficial, 23 April 1951, 2nd. Section, p. 32); see also Jorge Dubatti, “La Morocha, entre globalización y teatro,” Conjunto (La Habana) 124 (2002): 82–86.

33

Iliana Calabró, La morocha argentina, CD, Magenta, 2006.

34

Among others, 1960s film star Isabel Sarli, 1980s celebrity Susana Romero, and more recently, TV presenter Carla Conte, cumbia singer Sabrina Bera, celebrity Karina Jelinek, or dancer Laura Fidalgo.

35

A. G. Villoldo, “Pamperito,” in Cantos populares argentinos (Buenos Aires, n/d c. 1910), 8–9.

36

Manuel M. Cientofante, “El Morocho (tango criollo),” in Tangos populares (Buenos Aires, 1909), 11–13.

37

“Araca París,” by Ramón Collazo & Carlos Lenzi (1930).

38

See the discussion in Enrique H. Puccia, El Buenos Aires de Ángel G. Villoldo, 1860–1919 (Buenos Aires, 1997), 315.

39

Vicente Gesualdo, “Eloísa D’Herbil de Silva, el Chopin con faldas,” Todo es historia, 304 (1992): 35–41.

40

See Juan M.Vitulli and David M. Solodkow, eds., Poéticas de lo criollo: la transformación del concepto Criollo en las letras hispanoamericanas, siglos XVI al XIX (Buenos Aires, 2009), 10–43.

41

Eduardo A. Zimmermann, “Racial Ideas and Social Reform: Argentina, 1890–1916,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 72: 1 (1992): 23–46.

42

See, for example, the presentation of the magazine Criolla, 1, no. 8 Nov. 1934, 11.

43

Francisco Aníbal Riu, “La Morocha,” Caras y Caretas 336, 11 March 1905, 31.

44

This idea is also present in an academic text that mentions the morocha argentina as the typical reproductive companion for male European immigrants; Delfin Leocadio Garasa, “Cómo somos los argentines,” Journal of Inter-American Studies 7, no. 3 (1965): 363–74.

45

“La porteña,” in Décimas variadas, con el tango “Las cigarreras” (Buenos Aires, 1909), 19–23.

46

“La criolla,” in Colección de cantos nacionales del célebre dúo argentino Gardel Razzano, (n/p, n/d c. 1917), 9. See also “La Argentina (Buenos Aires),” in Manuel Cientofante, Los boqueños con La trifurca de Barracas, décimas y estilos nacionales de las 14 provincias por escala (Buenos Aires, n/d), 6–7.

47

García & Chicote, Voces de tinta, 114–18.

48

See Silverio Manco, “La dulce trigueña,” in Las niñas argentinas, con el tango de los casados (n/p, n/d); “Americana” in Ricardo J. Podestá, Lira, gran colección de canciones, tangos y valses (Buenos Aires, n/d c. 1913); “Sos la criolla más linda del pago,” in Francisco N. Bianco, El zorzal criollo (Buenos Aires, 1939), 93–94; Orosmán Moratorio, “La flor del monte,” in García & Chicote, Voces de tinta, 112–13.

49

La morocha (Buenos Aires, 1907), 3–6; Rafael Obligado, “Independencia,” in Aires de mi tierra, ed. Andrés Pérez (h.) (n/p, n/d. c. 1921), 3.

50

Gabino Ezeiza, Glorias radicales, con la canción La hija del payador (Rosario, n/d c. 1917), back cover.

51

Marvin A. Lewis, Afro-Argentine Discourse: Another Dimension of the Black Diaspora (Columbia, 1996), 76–77 and 119–120.

52

“La inculta poetiza” in La hija del payador: hermosa colección de canciones cantadas por Matilde Ezeiza en la tumba de Ezeiza (Rosario & Buenos Aires, n/d c. 1917), 11–12.

53

Florencio Cabrera (hijo), “La hija del payador,” in Canciones populares por el celebrado payador nacional (Buenos Aires, n/d c. 1925), 6. In this context “ladina” is surely used as synonym of mestiza.

54

See Matthew Karush, “Blackness in Argentina: Jazz, Tango and Race Before Perón,” Past & Present 216, no. 1 (2012): 215–45.

55

Matthew Karush, Culture of Class: Radio and Cinema in the Making of a Divided Argentina, 1920–1946 (Durham, 2012), 112–15 and 148.

56

Cumbia song by Néstor M. González, Osvaldo García & Jorge Kirovsky, La morocha argentina (Buenos Aires, Publisong/Publitrack, 2006).

57

See, for example, Greg Tate, ed., Everything but the Burden: What White People are Taking from Black Culture (New York, 2003), 9; Marilyn Halter, Shopping for Identity: The Marketing of Ethnicity (New York, 2000), 82.

58

See http://lema.rae.es/drae/srv/search?key=morocho (acc. March 13, 2015)

59

Academia Argentina de Letras, Diccionario del habla de los argentinos (Buenos Aires, 2003), 407; Federico Plager, Diccionario integral del español de la Argentina (Buenos Aires, 2008), 1203.

60

Pedro Luis Barcia, Un inédito Diccionario de Argentinismos del siglo XIX (Buenos Aires, 2006), 239.

61

Ciro Bayo: Vocabulario criollo-español Sud Americano, Madrid, Sucesores de Hernando, 1910, p. 148. The example provided is from Argentinean vocabulary.

62

Tobias Garzon, Diccionario argentino (Barcelona, 1910), 319.

63

Matias Calandrelli, Diccionario filológico-comparado de la lengua castellana (Buenos Aires, 1916), xii, n/p.

64

Umi Vaughan, “Shades of Race in Contemporary Cuba,” Journal of the International Institute 12:2 (2005); “Local Customs and Culture in Venezuela,” https://www.gapyear.com/countries/venezuela/local-customs (acc. July 1, 2015); Clara E. Rodríguez & Virginia Sánchez Korrol, eds., Historical perspectives on Puerto Rican survival in the United States (Princeton NJ, 1996), 27; Gabriel Nascimento dos Santos & Maria D’Ajuda Alomba Ribeiro, “Análise semântica e pragmática dos significantes “neguinho (a),” e “nego (a)" no século XIX e no mundo contemporâneo,” Cadernos do CNLF, XIV, 4, no. 3 (2010): 2347–55; Livio Sansone. Blackness Without Ethnicity: Constructing Race in Brazil (New York & London, 2003) 49.

65

See, for example, Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, 1999).

66

See Christina A. Sue, Land of the Cosmic Race: Race Mixture, Racism, and Blackness in Mexico (New York, 2013).

67

See Lea Geler, “African descent and whiteness in Buenos Aires: impossible Mestizajes in the white capital city,” in Rethinking Race in Modern Argentina, eds. Paulina Alberto and Eduardo Elena (New York, 2016), 213–40.

68

George Reid Andrews, The Afro-Argentines of Buenos Aires, 1800–1900 (Madison, 1980), 83–92.

69

Oscar Chamosa, “Indigenous or Criollo: The Myth of White Argentina in Tucuman’s Calchaqui Valley,” Hispanic American Historical Review 88, no. 1 (2008): 71–106.

70

Edward Telles and René Flores, “Not Just Color: Whiteness, Nation, and Status in Latin America,” Hispanic American Historical Review 93, no. 3 (2013): 411–49.

71

Alejandro Frigerio, “Negros y Blancos en Buenos Aires: Repensando nuestras categorías raciales,” in Leticia Maronese ed. Buenos Aires negra: identidad y cultura, (Buenos Aires, 2006), 77–98; José Luis Grosso, “Indios muertos, negros invisibles: la identidad ‘santiagueña’ en Argentina,” (PhD Thesis, Universidad de Brasilia, 1999).

72

Emanuela Guano, “A Color for the Modern Nation: The Discourse on Class, Race, and Education in the Porteño Middle Class,” Journal of Latin American Anthropology 8, no. 1 (2003): 148–71

73

Ezequiel Adamovsky, “La cuarta función del criollismo y las luchas por la definición del origen y el color del ethnos argentino (desde las primeras novelas gauchescas hasta c. 1940),” Boletín del Instituto de Historia Argentina y Americana “Dr. Emilio Ravignani” 41 (2014): 50–92.

74

For celebration of brunettes, see, for example, “Made in Argentina,” Gente, online undated, http://www.gente.com.ar/personajes/avanti-morochas-made-in-argentina/3267. Claims that those are not the real morochas in “Yo soy morocha” and “La idea de la morocha argentina es una trampa,” Página 12, 5 Aug. 2005, http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/suplementos/las12/13-2115-2005-08-05.html (all accessed 13 July 2015). Lower class women disputing the right of a middle class woman to call herself morocha in Ana Julia Aréchaga, “‘Yo soy muy barrial.’ Usos y concepciones del cuerpo, en relación a la belleza, de mujeres de sectores populares,” Paper presented at the X Jornadas de Sociología, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad de Buenos Aires, 2013.

75

See Adamovsky, “El color de la nación …”

76

See Jackie Hogan, Gender, Race and National Identity: Nations of Flesh and Blood (New York, 2009), 7–8; Nira Yuval-Davis, “Gender and nation,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 16, no. 4 (1993).

77

Suzanne Bost, Mulattas and Mestizas: Representing Mixed Identities in the Americas, 1850–2000 (Athens, 2005), 61.

78

See Ezequiel Adamovsky, “Race and class through the visual culture of Peronism,” in Rethinking Race in Modern Argentina, eds. Paulina Alberto and Eduardo Elena (New York, 2016), 153–83.