Season 3, Episode 05: ’A Story of Absence’: South Asian Migration in 1910s Argentina

Argentina is known for its history of European immigration in the 20^th century. It’s also been critiqued for the accompanying violence it wrought against Indigenous and other non-white people as it tried to establish itself as a white nation. But a UBC historian has found that in the 1910’s, Argentina used additional mechanisms to keep Asian migrants out of the country, without ever putting an exclusionary law on the books. That’s one reason these racial exclusions have been largely invisible in the historiographic record, until now. They are what historian Ben Bryce calls, ‘a story of absence.’ What can the account of one boatful of Punjabi laborers, stranded in the port of Buenos Aires in 1912, tell us about Argentina’s efforts to transform itself through immigration? And how might this relate to present-day Argentina and the enduring myth of whiteness?