Where Did Argentina’s Black Population Go? the Hidden History and Modern Reckoning
Q1: Did the yellow fever epidemic of 1871 wipe out Argentina's Black population?
No. While the 1871 outbreak killed roughly 14,000 people in Buenos Aires and severely affected working-class southern neighborhoods, it struck immigrant groups, particularly Italian laborers, just as hard. Thousands of Black residents survived, but state institutions stopped tracking them in municipal registries.
Q2: Why does Argentina have far fewer Black citizens today than Brazil or Colombia?
Brazil and Colombia received vastly larger numbers of enslaved Africans across multiple centuries and had large plantation-based cash crop economies. Argentina received fewer enslaved individuals overall, and between 1870 and 1930, it absorbed more than 4 million European immigrants. That demographic deluge, paired with interracial marriage and census reclassification, diluted visible African ancestry over generations.
Q3: How many Afro-descendants live in Argentina today?
In the 2022 census, over 300,000 people explicitly identified as Afro-descendant. Genetic studies show that up to 9% of people in Buenos Aires carry African genetic markers, suggesting the number of people with partial African heritage is far higher than self-reported counts indicate.
