The forgotten of the bicentennial: Feminism and Afro-American cultures behind a mural in Dolores

Abstract

Oblivion - the opposite mask or reverse of the plot of historical memory - is a form of protection and camouflage because postulating a statement as the only valid one obviates the possibility of the emergence of other possible ones. Nevertheless, from the interstices, subaltern statements emerge to question the universality of hegemony and offer alternatives that allow us to remember that the social construction of reality is a complex process, full of contradictory voices and, therefore, open to multiple possibilities of answers and senses capable of opening up numerous shortcuts to the possible.

The mural "Las olvidadas del bicentenario" painted on the wall of a school in Dolores, a Buenos Aires city located halfway between Buenos Aires and Mar del Plata, despite its meager dimensions - 1.30 m by 1.50 - in the first place, promotes questions about the absence of the afrodescendant woman in the celebrations for the Bicentennial of the foundation of that village in 2017 and, secondly, invites reflection on the naturalization of the oblivion of Afro-American cultures in the narration of local history.

It is conjectured that such omission is the result of intellectual laziness that prevents the guardians of local memory from asking themselves new questions about meaning. But, at the same time, this suppression is articulated with another of greater importance: an absolute ignorance about the existence of the International Decade of Afrodescendants, which under the theme "Afrodescendants: recognition, justice and development", began on 1 January 2015 and will end on 31 December 2024 established by the United Nations General Assembly on 30/12/2013.