Argentina's UN Vote Against Slavery Reparations Reflects Historical Pattern of Racial Erasure

In March 2026, Argentina voted against a landmark UN General Assembly resolution—backed by 123 member states—that recognized the transatlantic slave trade as a crime against humanity and called for concrete reparations measures. Argentina's opposition, alongside only the United States and Israel, reflects deeper historical patterns rooted in the nation's founding ideology. Since the 19th century, Argentina's state institutions have promoted a narrative of European whiteness as synonymous with progress and civilization, embedded in the 1853 Constitution's Article 25, which explicitly encouraged European immigration. This ideology systematized the erasure of Afro-Argentines, who comprised roughly one-third of the population in the early 19th century but were written out of official historiography as having naturally disappeared. Indigenous peoples similarly underwent marginalization despite their continued demographic and cultural presence. The current libertarian administration under President Javier Milei has intensified this tradition by dismantling institutions like INADI (National Institute Against Discrimination, Xenophobia and Racism), eliminating one of the few spaces for antiracist public policy and recognition of Afro-Argentine history.