Paulina Alberto has written a book about the stories of the celebrity Raúl Grigera and the narratives of Blackness in Buenos Aires Argentina during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Using Grigera's life, the book uncovers the various ways that blackness was created and curated during the twentieth century—one of the few studies about Afro-Argentine history in English that explores that period. Using sources such as police records, property records, photos, historical maps, hospital records, Black newspapers, baptismal records, census data, and various cultural newspapers, newsletters, and magazines that carried articles about Raúl Grigera, Alberto's book leaves no stone unturned. It is an exemplar of meticulous and careful research.
Her book is divided into six chapters. It is a microhistory of Grigera's life and a social political and cultural history of the racialization of blackness. The first phase delves into Grigera's ancestors. These two chapters, appropriately named “Ancestors 1850–1880” and “Community 1880–1900,” provide a crucial social and economic context of the nineteenth century in the mist of gradual abolition. Within these two chapters, Alberto dismantles common myths of “black disappearance” and methodically pinpoints the house in which Grigera's ancestors lived. This was a great find, and it is a testament to her thorough research. The “Community” chapter further undertakes the analysis of the black press to reveal a vibrant Black community amid institutionalized whitening.
The next two chapters, “Youth (1900–1910)” and “Celebrity (1910–1916),” focus on Grigera's stay at the Marcos Paz “home” and his rise to fame. He had a short stint at Marcos Paz, a state-run reformatory for abandoned or delinquent male minors. His admission to this reformatory spoke to the larger criminalization of blackness that was taking place. Forced into the home by his father, he remained there for 13 months.
The chapter “Celebrity” focuses on his rise to fame, a period during which he became known as the murciélago —the creator of the night. The backdrop of his celebrity—the larger success of Argentina's achievement of whiteness during the period—made Grigera a rarity and fulfilled one of the narratives of the last remaining Black Argentines. The chapters “Defamation (1916–1930)” and “Death (1930–1955)” recount the later stages of Grigera's life. In the Defamation chapter, he becomes associated with niños de bien who take advantage of Grigera's simplicity—or possibly Grigera himself plays into these stereotypes. Various journals publish cartoons or comics to further perpetuate his buffoonery.
Within the larger political atmosphere of the presidencies of Hipólito Yrigoyen (1916–22; 1928–30), the word ‘negro’ became popularized and started to move beyond racial terms and toward “ways of being.” Grigera's wayward buffoonish behavior further confirmed that his blackness was more of his character and less of his race. The “Death” chapter details his stay in Colonia's hospital and his death in July 1955. This sad chapter elicits emotion as it details the death of a person and Black erasure. It was during this rise of Peronism that meanings of blackness made the disappearance of blackness complete.
The epilogue makes a quick reference to “Obaca,” a black character parody, who rose to fame during Barack Obama's presidency. Centering on the twenty-first century, which in this context is one of parody and sarcasm, Alberto provides an opening to the next narrative of blackness in Argentina.
However, I do question Alberto's choice to explain her archival access and personal identity in the epilogue. Since she has already provided this information in the introduction, it is repetitive here and distracts the reader from an otherwise brilliant epilogue. Nevertheless, this biographical microhistory, which speaks to the stories of blackness in Argentina, was both clever and entertaining, and Alberto's ability to uncover so many details about Raúl Grigera's life is to be commended. Experts and the general public would enjoy this book.
