Ethnic Origin, Race and Nation in the Argentine Censuses, 1869-1914

Abstract

Ethnic and socio-racial statistics constitute an essential aspect of the definition of nation in Latin American societies from the colonial period to the present. Based on the operational design of Argentina’s first three national population censuses (1869, 1895, and 1914) and a theoretical and methodological approach focused on both conceptual history and on the socio-political history of statistics, this chapter explores the measurement uses and forms of socio-ethnic, racial, and migration categories. A long-term view of this history highlights the political, ideological, and scientific foundations that guided the statistical construction of the Argentine population in each historical moment, the plurality of actors involved, and the conflicting interactions between forms of measurement, discourses, and demographic evidence.