Cultural policies and afro-descendants in Argentina: a possible analysis of their state configurations in the post-bicentennial stage

Abstract

After the democratic reopening, dance and sound expressions of Afro-descendant origin began to spread in the city of Buenos Aires, largely thanks to the contribution of African-American cultural workers in a situation of migration. Over the decades, these initiatives favored the visibility of the Afro-Argentine population, the increase of “Afro” political organizations and, finally, the inclusion of Afro-descendant activists in state performance. In spite of this, and the academic support and youth adhesion with which this type of Afro-descendant expression is available, the rejection of some sectors of society in the face of its institutionalization and / or its deployment on public roads, continues to show the persistent denial that this type of acquis falls to in Argentina, which would leave the crystallized groups in a perennial struggle for "recognition."

By drawing the primacy of the Buenos Aires-centrist translation of these processes, in this article I intend to analyze this future starting from discussing the very idea of ​​“cultural policy” as conceived from different perspectives in Latin America, in a restricted way in Argentina . Using multisituated ethnographic work that encompasses both state action and the agency of the protagonists, I analyze the Buenos Aires case synchronously and diachronically, noting the projection that this mobilized flow has on the interior of the country. Contradictions and possibilities of this post-bicentennial stage are characterized, characterized by the entry of the State (metropolitan, national or provincial) as a “new actor” in this initial dynamic of group mobilization.