American Lectures On Argentina a Week After First Thinking About It

Overview

BadEmpanada argues that Argentina has a real, longstanding history of racism, as do societies shaped by colonialism. However, he criticizes online claims that portray Argentina as uniquely or exceptionally racist, saying they often flatten its history into a US racial framework.

He criticizes YouTuber Elliot Sang for first making a video based on social-media clips and then returning about a week later with confident conclusions that, in BadEmpanada’s view, exceeded the research and repeated misleading claims.

Different Colonial Histories

BadEmpanada’s central argument is that Argentina and the United States developed under different colonial systems, producing different racial and class dynamics. He says Spanish colonial rule concentrated land in the hands of a small elite, while US expansion gave many white settlers more direct material incentives to dispossess Indigenous people.

In Argentina, he argues, many ordinary people—including European immigrants—had interests closer to those of Indigenous, Black, and mixed-race communities than to those of the landowning elite. This, he says, helped foster more class-based political alliances and less rigid legal racial segregation than in the United States.

He stresses that these differences do not mean racism was absent or that Argentina’s history was benign.

Afro-Argentine Population Decline

BadEmpanada challenges Sang’s use of the decline in the Afro-Argentine share of the population as evidence of deliberate genocide. He agrees that the decline requires explanation, but argues that it does not, by itself, establish intentional extermination.

He says that claims about disease and military deaths rely on old or disputed interpretations, and that some sources cited by Sang later revised their conclusions. He also points to limitations in historical census data, military desertion, migration, and population growth as factors that complicate the statistics.

BadEmpanada maintains that racism and exclusion shaped Afro-Argentine lives, but says the available evidence does not support presenting a coordinated genocide as settled fact.

Mapuche Resistance Claims

BadEmpanada disputes Sang’s portrayal of an alleged “Mapuche Hamas” or armed Mapuche resistance group in Argentina. He says the organization is largely an inflated or fabricated threat promoted by right-wing political forces.

He distinguishes Argentina from Chile, where Mapuche armed groups do operate. He also points to Argentina’s 1994 constitutional recognition of Indigenous rights to ancestral lands and to successful legal land claims, arguing that the two countries’ different legal contexts should not be treated as interchangeable.

Historical Figures and Political Alliances

BadEmpanada argues that leaders such as Juan Manuel de Rosas and José de San Martín operated in a context where non-white people could be significant political constituencies. He says Rosas drew support from Black and working-class residents of Buenos Aires, while San Martín abolished racial classifications in Peru and supported Indigenous-led political ideas, including the restoration of an Inca monarchy.

He contrasts this history with the stronger legal exclusion of non-white people in the United States, while acknowledging that these Argentine leaders were not necessarily egalitarian by modern standards.

The Late-19th-Century Elite

BadEmpanada rejects describing Argentina’s late-19th-century elite as the country’s “founding fathers” or its export-led prosperity as a broadly shared golden age. In his account, political power was dominated by oligarchic landowners, and the profits from agricultural exports and Indigenous dispossession largely accrued to that elite.

He says Indigenous conquest and land concentration were central to the period, while arguing that land distribution and the interests of ordinary settlers differed from the US model.

Contemporary Comparisons

BadEmpanada criticizes the trend’s selective focus on Argentina, particularly when, in his view, it overlooks US intervention and contemporary conditions. He cites US government financial support for Javier Milei’s government, Argentina’s social and legal provisions for migrants, and figures he gives for police killings in Argentina and Brazil in 2025.

He uses these comparisons to argue that racism should be assessed in context, and that concern about racism in Argentina should not become a vehicle for uninformed social-media outrage.

People Discussed

• Presenter: BadEmpanada
• Discussed creator (not a participant): Elliot Sang