Argentina under Milei: Denying slave history and the 'white' myth

Late last March, the United Nations General Assembly passed a landmark resolution initiated by Ghana and backed by the African Union and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). The resolution recognized the transatlantic slave trade and slavery as 'the most serious crimes against humanity' and called for concrete steps toward reparations.

123 member states supported the initiative. Most former European colonial powers abstained. Only three countries voted against: the United States, Israel and Argentina under President Javier Milei.

Argentina's vote made clear which side the current government has chosen. Analysts say the decision reflects a deep historical continuity: Argentina's rejection of reparations is part of a state-sponsored tradition that has organized the nation around specific racial hierarchies since independence.

The 'white Argentina' myth

Argentina's state formation was marked by the elite's overt project to 'whiten' the country's demographics and culture. Their vision saw European immigration as the privileged vehicle of civilization and progress. Juan Bautista Alberdi, the main intellectual architect of the 1853 Constitution, famously summarized this: 'To govern is to populate.'

This logic is embodied in Article 25 of the Constitution, which requires the state to actively promote European immigration. The article has survived every constitutional reform to this day. 'Neither the social constitution of 1949 nor the democratic reform of 1994 altered the principle linking Europe to the nation's desired horizon,' noted an article on Al Jazeera.

This institutional structure reinforced one of Latin America's oldest national narratives: that Argentina is a white and European society. The myth that Argentines 'descended from ships' has shaped public policy, school discourse and knowledge production, while Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities have been pushed to the margins.

The result is a particular form of racial denial. The Argentine state built a national identity that erases and denies parts of its own population, elevating whiteness as the universal representation of the nation. Even today, a country largely composed of mixed-race majorities continues to be institutionally portrayed as a homogeneous European society.

The erasure of Afro-Argentines

The erasure of Afro-Argentines is one of the clearest manifestations of this process. At the beginning of the 19th century, people of African descent made up about a third of the population and played a decisive role in the country's economic, social, cultural and military structures. Yet school curricula, censuses and mainstream historiography have promoted the idea of their natural disappearance, turning a history of exclusion into a demographic inevitability.

Indigenous peoples have undergone a similar process, portrayed as residual minorities despite their ongoing significant demographic, territorial and cultural presence.

Milei administration deepens denial tradition

The current libertarian administration has deepened this tradition through dismantling state structures meant to provide recognition and redress. The closure of the National Institute Against Discrimination, Xenophobia and Racism (INADI) eliminated the Commission for the Recognition of the Afro-Argentine Community's History – one of the few institutional spaces dedicated to anti-racist public policy.

That commission was created to promote recognition and reparative measures for a population segment historically excluded from full citizenship. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) had identified its creation as a significant institutional advance. Its dismantling reflects a political decision to destroy the limited institutional tools built over decades of Afro-Argentine activism.

Alignment with the 'West' defense movement

In recent decades, Western governments, monarchies and institutions have increasingly acknowledged historical crimes through symbolic gestures. This regime of symbolic recognition is often seen as a 'ritual of forgiveness': it acknowledges historical injustice, condemns its most extreme manifestations, but leaves intact the material structures that benefited from those injustices.

The demand for reparations breaks this boundary by shifting the debate from memory to the contemporary distribution of wealth, power and citizenship. In this context, Javier Milei has aligned Argentina with a political bloc centered on the leadership of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu – leaders who do not even engage with symbolism.

This convergence goes beyond diplomatic affinity. It reflects a shared understanding of the international order, in which defending historical hierarchies – racial, geopolitical and economic – is central. These leaders repeatedly invoke the 'West' as a civilization under threat that must be protected.

The March vote reveals a historical continuity that extends beyond Milei himself. As the international community moves toward a new consensus on the contemporary legacy of slavery, the Argentine state continues to act through a tradition that identifies the nation with whiteness and renders its mixed-race majorities invisible. This is the deep logic of Argentine racial denial: a form of power that continues to speak in the name of a European Argentina that exists far more robustly in the state’s imagination than in the social reality of its people.