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 c...

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Published in:Journal of Social History Vol. 50; no. 2; pp. 386 - 411
Main Author: ADAMOVSKY, EZEQUIEL
Format: Article
Published: Oxford University Press / USA Winter2016
Subjects:
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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        atl: A Strange Emblem for a (Not So) White Nation: La Morocha Argentina in the Latin American Racial Context, c. 1900-2015.
      aug:
        au: ADAMOVSKY, EZEQUIEL
      su:
        Argentina
        Brubaker, Roger
        Women
        Ethnicity
        National emblems
        History of popular culture -- 20th century
        Exceptionalism (Political science)
        Latin Americans
      sug:
        subj:
          Women
          Ethnicity
          Argentina
          National emblems
          History of popular culture -- 20th century
          Exceptionalism (Political science)
          Latin Americans
          Brubaker, Roger
      ab: 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.
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      doctype: Article
      src: R
    language: English
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