La Morocha
Monday, July 08, 2019
Del
quechua muruch'u 'variedad de maíz muy duro'.
1. adj.
Arg., Bol., Par., Perú y Ur. Dicho de una persona: Que tiene la piel morena.
2. adj.
Arg., Par. y Ur. Dicho de una persona: Que tiene pelo negro.
Diccionario
de la Real Academia Española
In many ways Argentina, my country of birth is no different from the United States
of America. Unlike Mexico and Perú, there were no “advanced” pre-Columbian
civilizations. In Argentina, Argentine generals and great armies pushed the
native Argentines west and shot them. Black slaves were brought in the 1700s
but few have remained through the years to notice.
Late 19th
century and early 20th century immigration brought the Spanish, the
Irish, the English and the Italians. Jews that came from Europe after WWII are
uniformly called rusos (Russians) by Argentines.
As a
little boy I was not aware of any racism perhaps because I went to an American
school full of people that looked like me. But it was in the very early 50s
that President Juan Domingo Perón coined the expression “descamisados” or the
poor shirtless ones who were (to use the Trumpian term) his base. It was then
that I first heard another epithet (positive or negative depending who used it)
“cabecitas negras” or “those dark haired”.
Because
Buenos Aires is cosmopolitan European-inspired city, it is rare to see a native
Argentine. You have to look closely. You see Argentines of English, Spanish and Italian descent. Other “minorities”
are invisible. The city is glorified by the sophisticated tango while the
interior of the country has a completely different music calle folclore .
Without knowing, when I was 8 or 9 when asked what kind of music I liked I would answer, “I like music from the Teatro Colón (what did I know of classical music?).
And so
now I can discern a most palpable racism based on those with darker skin, who
may be poor (and they are) who follow their football team called Boca while
those on the other end might be fans of River Plate. There are these almost
unseen differences that still divide the country into a racism that cannot be
legislated out of existence.
The
average Argentine is a patriotero, or uncommonly patriotic. They will point out
to you when an Argentine soccer team wins abroad or how wonderful Gabriela
Sabatini was. But in his zenith, Maradona was seen as a cabecita negra. He was
judged to be uncouth and uncivilized not like the light skinned Messi who
rarely loses his temper on the field or does fake falls to get fouls in his
favour.
Those
who are white skinned and with money and some sort of education look down on
the masses that live in the villas miserias (shanty towns).
The
coming presidential elections in October will have no winners as the country is
bankrupt. Members of my privileged family point out the massive infrastructure
projects of the present Macri government. My friends from the left say, “They
can walk on nicely paved sidewalks to new schools with no food in their
stomachs."
It was
Perón and his wife Evita who promised the food and the cheap utilities that
those masses waned and want. My privileged family will always manage to survive any
economic downturn.
But then
they would not understand how I can have a friend who is a retired city bus
driver or that my son-in-law works for Translink. There is that class system
that makes Argentina extremely polarized and racist, too.
You
might find the photographs illustrating this ranting blog strange. But I want
to show that the Argentines have a term for a dark-haired person that is a
pleasant euphemism (if that can be true) especially when used to describe him/her as someone with
romantic and striking (and dark) good
looks.
I met
Susan Jane at a party in the late 90s. She was thin, boyish and had very
striking eyebrows. She danced up a storm from my vantage point of the eternal
wallflower. I went up to her and asked her, “Would you pose for me for a
project that I have for a gallery opening that involves women in tubs?” She
said yes.
It would
be difficult for me to perceive now the difficulty of approaching perfect
strangers (of the female kind) and asking them to pose for me in this 21st
century.
Susan
Jane had very black hair, lots of body hair including heavily populated
armpits. She was ahead of her time.
Nobody
in my Argentine family, I believe, could grasp the beauty of these three
images. Or would they?
