De los Diamantes Negros a las Mulatas de Ébano. Mujeres afroargentinas, arte y la construcción de espacios de negritud públicos en Buenos Aires (1950 a 1980)

Abstract

This article focuses on the artistic trajectories of two Afro-Argentine women who led two Afro-Argentine musical groups based in Buenos Aires. Tina Lamadrid was the voice of “Los Diamantes Negros”, who performed during the 1950s and 1960s. Carmen Yannone, Tina’s niece, was the founder of “Las Mulatas de Ébano”, who performed with different formations from the late 1960s to the early 1990s. Following the trajectories of two generations of Afro-Argentine women thanks to oral memory, we propose not only to recount their lives and choices according to the constraints of race, class and gender they had to deal with, but also to review how, despite the extreme racism, sexism, stereotyping and foreignization they had to endure in that period, these musical shows opened up spaces that allowed blackness to be publicly reinstalled and discussed, and for Afro artists to reencounter it, organize Afrodiasporic exchange networks, chart professional trajectories, forge a representational place in the public sphere claiming authority and lay the foundations for the Afro activism that emerged in the country from the 1990s onwards.