Depending on the place and period, yes. In Argentina there were definitely genocides against indigenous people and also mass immigration, but it’s also complicated because even here we have considerable indigenous blood and too many Argentinians don’t wanna reckon with it. Depending on the region some folks have 1/4 or 1/2 indigenous heritage, about a third is estimated to be mixed like that.
All that said Argentina is quite racist, not talking about online trolls or some dumb shit that isn’t representative of the country, people are generally friendly to foreigners, but we’re still a racist country because there’s racial profiling of indigenous people, our elites identify as white European, our media would have you believe that everyone here is white, you get better opportunities if you’re white, etc. Some Argentinians believe that just because our police doesn’t terrorize people exclusively on grounds of race we have no real racism and we only have classism, but most of those Argentinians are white.
I do believe we’re a settler colony, we benefit from living in stolen land, even if the vast majority of us are recent arrivals, poor and never owned people, we do benefit from being treated better than the original inhabitants of this place, and we benefit more the whiter we are. But this is just about Argentina and my experience, I don’t think it’s universal for all of Latin America, just a part of it.
Interesting so I guess still colonized but not genocided.
Depending on the place and period, yes. In Argentina there were definitely genocides against indigenous people and also mass immigration, but it’s also complicated because even here we have considerable indigenous blood and too many Argentinians don’t wanna reckon with it. Depending on the region some folks have 1/4 or 1/2 indigenous heritage, about a third is estimated to be mixed like that.
All that said Argentina is quite racist, not talking about online trolls or some dumb shit that isn’t representative of the country, people are generally friendly to foreigners, but we’re still a racist country because there’s racial profiling of indigenous people, our elites identify as white European, our media would have you believe that everyone here is white, you get better opportunities if you’re white, etc. Some Argentinians believe that just because our police doesn’t terrorize people exclusively on grounds of race we have no real racism and we only have classism, but most of those Argentinians are white.
I do believe we’re a settler colony, we benefit from living in stolen land, even if the vast majority of us are recent arrivals, poor and never owned people, we do benefit from being treated better than the original inhabitants of this place, and we benefit more the whiter we are. But this is just about Argentina and my experience, I don’t think it’s universal for all of Latin America, just a part of it.