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Hiding in Plain Sight: Black Women, the Law, and the Making of a White Argentine Republic
Winner of The Association of Black Women Historians 2020 Letitia Woods-Brown Award for the best book in African American Women’s History and the 2021 Western Association of Women Historian's Barbara "Penny" Kanner Award
2021 Finalist for the Harriet Tubman Book Prize
Details how African-descended women’s societal, marital, and sexual decisions forever reshaped the racial makeup of Argentina
Argentina promotes itself as a country of European immigrants. This makes it an exception to other Latin American countries, which embrace a more mixed—African, Indian, European—heritage. Hiding in Plain Black Women, the Law, and the Making of a White Argentine Republic traces the origins of what some white Argentines mischaracterize as a “black disappearance” by delving into the intimate lives of black women and explaining how they contributed to the making of a “white” Argentina. Erika Denise Edwards has produced the first comprehensive study in English of the history of African descendants outside of Buenos Aires in the late colonial and early republican periods, with a focus on how these women sought whiteness to better their lives and that of their children.
Edwards argues that attempts by black women to escape the stigma of blackness by recategorizing themselves and their descendants as white began as early as the late eighteenth century, challenging scholars who assert that the black population drastically declined at the end of the nineteenth century because of the whitening or modernization process. She further contends that in Córdoba, Argentina, women of African descent (such as wives, mothers, daughters, and concubines) were instrumental in shaping their own racial reclassifications and destinies.
This volume makes use of a wealth of sources to relate these women’s choices. The sources consulted include city censuses and notarial and probate records that deal with free and enslaved African descendants; criminal, ecclesiastical, and civil court cases; marriages and baptisms records and newsletters. These varied sources provide information about the day-to-day activities of cordobés society and how women of African descent lived, formed relationships, thrived, and partook in the transformation of racial identities in Argentina.
2021 Finalist for the Harriet Tubman Book Prize
Details how African-descended women’s societal, marital, and sexual decisions forever reshaped the racial makeup of Argentina
Argentina promotes itself as a country of European immigrants. This makes it an exception to other Latin American countries, which embrace a more mixed—African, Indian, European—heritage. Hiding in Plain Black Women, the Law, and the Making of a White Argentine Republic traces the origins of what some white Argentines mischaracterize as a “black disappearance” by delving into the intimate lives of black women and explaining how they contributed to the making of a “white” Argentina. Erika Denise Edwards has produced the first comprehensive study in English of the history of African descendants outside of Buenos Aires in the late colonial and early republican periods, with a focus on how these women sought whiteness to better their lives and that of their children.
Edwards argues that attempts by black women to escape the stigma of blackness by recategorizing themselves and their descendants as white began as early as the late eighteenth century, challenging scholars who assert that the black population drastically declined at the end of the nineteenth century because of the whitening or modernization process. She further contends that in Córdoba, Argentina, women of African descent (such as wives, mothers, daughters, and concubines) were instrumental in shaping their own racial reclassifications and destinies.
This volume makes use of a wealth of sources to relate these women’s choices. The sources consulted include city censuses and notarial and probate records that deal with free and enslaved African descendants; criminal, ecclesiastical, and civil court cases; marriages and baptisms records and newsletters. These varied sources provide information about the day-to-day activities of cordobés society and how women of African descent lived, formed relationships, thrived, and partook in the transformation of racial identities in Argentina.
- GenresHistoryNonfiction
184 pages, Hardcover
Published January 28, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
August 8, 2024
Inconsistently edited is UTP too big? Never really provides a sense of place though book begins siting itself in opposition to BsAs, regional and remote. Marriage manumission and concubinage are rather unsurprising strategies. What made it so conservative there? Unanswered. Casta system not a real system in the Americas. Royal Provisions of 1540? New Laws, dammit. Repetitive conclusions for each chapter, and signposts to primary sources: this means that, this shows that. Dissertation-y. I wish the cover image so attractive were analyzed!
February 11, 2023
While I’m still unsure about the thesis (is it really “institutional whitening” if it’s based on cultural traits like dress and jewelry, and achieved through education?) this book presents hard to find information about African descended women in the interior of Argentina, and some really interesting and salacious case studies.
October 5, 2025
The number of books and articles we have about whitening in Latin America is enormous. That this book is so celebrated given how badly written, poorly researched, and unoriginal the argument is is truly weird.
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November 13, 2020~read for modern history of latin america class~
August 31, 2023
Strange thesis, but an interesting book filled with intriguing informations
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews