School textbooks across Argentina long promoted a dual tragedy thesis to explain the decline of the Black population: disproportionate slaughter during the Paraguayan War (1864, 1870) and mass mortality during the yellow fever epidemic of 1871. While both historical events brought immense loss, modern demographic research shows neither caused total demographic extinction.
During the War of the Triple Alliance, Black soldiers were heavily recruited into assault battalions. They suffered devastating casualties in battles such as CurupaytÃ. However, casualty rolls demonstrate that Argentine combat losses totaled roughly 18,000 to 25,000 men across all ethnic backgrounds. While the death toll gutted an entire generation of working-class men, it could not have eradicated a Black population that numbered in the tens of thousands across urban centers and rural provinces.
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Historical Period | Black Demographic Share | Primary Mechanism of Erasure or Shift |
|---|---|---|
| 1778, 1810 (Late Colony) | 25%, 33% (Buenos Aires); up to 54% in interior | Enslaved labor imports; strict casta census categorization |
| 1810, 1870 (Early Republic) | 15%, 25% (Declining relative share) | War of Independence frontline service; Paraguayan War conscription |
| 1880, 1914 (Great Migration) | Under 2% (Statistically submerged) | State-subsidized influx of 4.2M European immigrants (blanqueamiento) |
| 1895, 2001 (Bureaucratic Erasure) | Unrecorded (0% official status) | Elimination of race questions from national censuses; reclassification |
| 2010, 2022 (Re-Emergence) | 302,972 individuals (2022 National Census) | Inclusion of explicit Afro-descendant self-identification questions |
The 1871 yellow fever outbreak struck the southern neighborhoods of Buenos Aires, including San Telmo, claiming roughly 14,000 lives out of a city population of roughly 190,000. Black families lived in cramped tenements (conventillos) and lacked access to private physicians, driving up infection rates. Wealthy families evacuated northward to Recoleta and Palermo, leaving poorer districts to weather the outbreak.
Mortality was high across all working-class groups, including recently arrived Italian immigrants. Attributing the total disappearance of an entire racial collective to a single four-month epidemic served as a convenient social fable, absolving the state of political responsibility for subsequent marginalization.
