This painting by an unknown artist provides the conceptual key to understanding a well-worn trope in Argentine textual and visual discourses: that of the “pobre negro,” or pitiful Black man. The painting purports to depict an Afrodescendant man known as Eusebio (ca. 1810-1873), the most famous of several Afrodescendant entertainers—or “buffoons”—to serve Juan Manuel de Rosas, Argentina’s ruler for most of the period between 1828 and 1852. Eusebio appears in a sumptuous military dress uniform, white trousers, and bicorn hat. The military uniform appears, at first glance, to dignify its wearer.

The persistence of the “pobre negro” trope becomes clear in this image of an Afrodescendant man in Buenos Aires taken nearly a century later. It is a photo of Raúl Grigera (1888-1955), a dandy and nightlife celebrity in early twentieth-century Buenos Aires. Its resemblance to Eusebio’s pseudo-portrait is eerie: like Eusebio, Grigera also sports footwear inappropriate to be styled in public by a person of status—in his case, bedroom slippers. The photographer, working for a newspaper or magazine in the 1930s, chose as their subject a Black man who was once famous, fashionable, and well-funded, tightly framing him in his present circumstances: fallen to infamy, raggedness, misery, and homelessness.

No less eerie in its restaging of the centuries-long visual trope of the “pobre negro” is a second image of destitution. This time the camera captures Max Higgins (?-?), a Jamaican businessman who sought his fortune in Buenos Aires in the 2000s, almost a century after Grigera. Just like that fallen dandy, the Higgins of this photo seeks refuge in a liminal space: one of the elegant urban doorways that once welcomed him now offers him the barest of shelters. Both images, which so crudely expose these men’s vulnerability, are framed to inspire a range of emotions in an Argentine reading public imagined as uniformly White: pity, disgust, rejection, and above all, schadenfreude, or the feeling of pleasure or satisfaction in another’s torment or failure.

In each case, the men wear clothing that was once elegant and fashionable: Grigera a wool overcoat embroidered at the cuffs; Higgins a black leather blazer with a contrasting red pocket square. Both garments are presently in tatters, analogous to Eusebio’s worn–out jacket and shoe. 

Moreover, Grigera and Higgins hold items that typically function as signs of urbanity, civility, and modernity—a notebook or diary in Grigera’s case, a locked leather briefcase for Higgins—yet are rendered superfluous in the men’s current circumstances. 

These objects, like Eusebio’s opulent walking cane, become markers of the outrageousness of these men’s outsize aspirations to social mobility, symbols of pathetic self-delusion or even fraudulence. The visual trope of the “pobre negro” expels Afrodescendants from belonging in the modern city and nation, naturalizing their dispossession and abandonment. ■

This painting by an unknown artist provides the conceptual key to understanding a well-worn trope in Argentine textual and visual discourses: that of the “pobre negro,” or pitiful Black man. The painting purports to depict an Afrodescendant man known as Eusebio (ca. 1810-1873), the most famous of several Afrodescendant entertainers—or “buffoons”—to serve Juan Manuel de Rosas, Argentina’s ruler for most of the period between 1828 and 1852. Eusebio appears in a sumptuous military dress uniform, white trousers, and bicorn hat. The military uniform appears, at first glance, to dignify its wearer.

Yet far from seeking to dignify this Afrodescendant servant of Rosas, the pseudo-portrait of Eusebio embodies the perspective of Rosas’s fierce Liberal opponents, who labeled him a “tyrant” for his strongman tactics and his alliances with Afrodescendants and other plebeians. Read in this light, the dignity conferred by the military uniform dissipates as its tears and tatters come into view: an unsightly hole at Eusebio’s left elbow is aligned almost directly above a shoe whose missing toecap leaves a foot partially exposed. More than casual signs of poverty or deprivation, these are racialized markers: the exposed toes, in particular, recall traditional representations of enslaved people in bare feet.

The persistence of the “pobre negro” trope becomes clear in this image of an Afrodescendant man in Buenos Aires taken nearly a century later. It is a photo of Raúl Grigera (1888-1955), a dandy and nightlife celebrity in early twentieth-century Buenos Aires. Its resemblance to Eusebio’s pseudo-portrait is eerie: like Eusebio, Grigera also sports footwear inappropriate to be styled in public by a person of status—in his case, bedroom slippers. The photographer, working for a newspaper or magazine in the 1930s, chose as their subject a Black man who was once famous, fashionable, and well-funded, tightly framing him in his present circumstances: fallen to infamy, raggedness, misery, and homelessness.

No less eerie in its restaging of the centuries-long visual trope of the “pobre negro” is a second image of destitution. This time the camera captures Max Higgins (?-?), a Jamaican businessman who sought his fortune in Buenos Aires in the 2000s, almost a century after Grigera. Just like that fallen dandy, the Higgins of this photo seeks refuge in a liminal space: one of the elegant urban doorways that once welcomed him now offers him the barest of shelters. Both images, which so crudely expose these men’s vulnerability, are framed to inspire a range of emotions in an Argentine reading public imagined as uniformly White: pity, disgust, rejection, and above all, schadenfreude, or the feeling of pleasure or satisfaction in another’s torment or failure.

In each case, the men wear clothing that was once elegant and fashionable: Grigera a wool overcoat embroidered at the cuffs; Higgins a black leather blazer with a contrasting red pocket square. Both garments are presently in tatters, analogous to Eusebio’s worn–out jacket and shoe. 

Moreover, Grigera and Higgins hold items that typically function as signs of urbanity, civility, and modernity—a notebook or diary in Grigera’s case, a locked leather briefcase for Higgins—yet are rendered superfluous in the men’s current circumstances. 

These objects, like Eusebio’s opulent walking cane, become markers of the outrageousness of these men’s outsize aspirations to social mobility, symbols of pathetic self-delusion or even fraudulence. The visual trope of the “pobre negro” expels Afrodescendants from belonging in the modern city and nation, naturalizing their dispossession and abandonment. ■