Black Legend
The Many Lives of Raúl Grigera and the Power of Racial Storytelling in Argentina

The gripping story of Afro-Argentine celebrity Raúl Grigera that also tells the untold history of Black Argentina.

Paulina L. Alberto (Author)

9781108845557, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 6 January 2022

410 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 3.5 cm, 0.89 kg

'… the book is much more than a biography - it is historical revisionism at its best. … a must-read for scholars of Afro-Argentine studies …' Prisca Gayles, Journal of Latin American Studies

Celebrities live their lives in constant dialogue with stories about them. But when these stories are shaped by durable racist myths, they wield undue power to ruin lives and obliterate communities. Black Legend is the haunting story of an Afro-Argentine, Raúl Grigera ('el negro Raúl'), who in the early 1900s audaciously fashioned himself into an alluring Black icon of Buenos Aires' bohemian nightlife, only to have defamatory storytellers unmake him. In this gripping history, Paulina Alberto exposes the destructive power of racial storytelling and narrates a new history of Black Argentina and Argentine Blackness across two centuries. With the extraordinary Raúl Grigera at its center, Black Legend opens new windows into lived experiences of Blackness in a 'white' nation, and illuminates how Raúl's experience of celebrity was not far removed from more ordinary experiences of racial stories in the flesh.

Introduction: Racial Stories
1. Ancestors (1850–1880)
2. Community (1880–1900)
3. Youth (1900–1910)
4. Celebrity (1910–1916)
5. Defamation (1916–1930)
6. Deaths (1930–1955)
Epilogue: Afterlives (1955–Present).

Subject Areas: Slavery & abolition of slavery [HBTS], Colonialism & imperialism [HBTQ], Social & cultural history [HBTB], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], History of the Americas [HBJK], African history [HBJH], Biography: arts & entertainment [BGF]