The Black Dandy of Buenos Aires

In an old wooden card catalog that no longer stands in Argentina’s National Archive, under the entry titled “negros”, there was, for many years, an index card for someone called “el negro Raúl”, or Black Raúl. I happened upon that card, and the collection of photographs to which it pointed, in 2010 while searching for sources for a twentieth-century history of Argentina’s African-descended population.