Between Foreigners and Heroes: Asian-Argentines in a Multicultural Nation by Chisu Teresa Ko

Argentina's economic crisis of 2001 triggered a crisis in national identity that cast doubt on the nation's long-held beliefs about its racial and cultural exceptionalism as a white and therefore modern nation. In the decade after the crisis, Argentina experienced a major shift in racial discourse, redefining itself as a multiracial and multicultural nation. The newly adopted multiculturalism does not entirely displace older understandings of race and nation – as Gastón Gordillo demonstrates in Chapter 9 of this volume, the increased visibility of nonwhites has heightened racial violence in contemporary Argentina – but it does mark a radical departure from previous official discourses that insisted on the nation's homogeneous whiteness. Argentina's rather abrupt multicultural turn has to do in part with the expediency of multiculturalism, which helps articulate both populist and elite reconfigurations of the national narrative. In one sense, the multicultural discourse that focuses largely on Afro-descendants and indigenous peoples disavows previous claims of Europeanness to adopt a populist Latin-Americanist position as an antidote to the globalization of neoliberal capitalism. It is within this context that a contestatory working-class coalition using the racial marker "negro" also arose.$^1$ Simultaneously, however, multiculturalism is often seen as a sign of neoliberal globalization – as the transnational flow of capital triggers migrations and diversifies cultural consumption – and as a marker of first world status in a global climate in which the notion of development encompasses the "preservation – or even cultivation – of ethnoracial diversity. "$^2$ In this context, a vast network of institutional, academic, political, and cultural discourses along with popular ethnic activism dismantled notions of white homogeneity to establish Argentina as multicultural. Afro-Argentine and indigenous peoples – who had been considered "disappeared" – claimed their legitimate space within the nation; Argentines of European descent who [10] had melted into the *crisol de razas* [melting pot] began to assert their ethnicities; and diversity became a key measure of social justice.$^3$

This proliferation of ethnicities has more recently extended to Asians in Argentina, as evidenced by their changing position in cultural discourses. In the context of Argentina's incipient multiculturalism, cultural manifestations featuring Asians as protagonists, rather than as exotic or awkward peripheral characters, have gained popularity. But unlike Afro-Argentines and indigenous peoples whose existence and *argentinidad* [Argentineness] are legitimized through a multiplicity of projects on the ground and at the institutional level (ethnic activism, inclusion in the national census and history textbooks, academic research, and cultural representation), the position of Asian-Argentines within the nation remains uncertain, as their representation appears to be limited to cultural manifestations (literature and film) that intersect little with academic and political treatments of multicultural nationalism.

Asians in Argentina have alternated between hyper-visibility and invisibility. Hyper-visibility has often been negative, particularly for people of Korean and Chinese origin who have been targets of racism and xenophobia. For example, during the 1980s and 1990s, the increasing size of the Korean-Argentine community and its members' success as small-business owners attracted accusations by the media and the general public of tax evasion, taking away jobs from Argentines, and exploiting the cheap labor of other immigrant groups such as Bolivians.$^4$ More recently, the growing Chinese community has been accused of widespread mafia connections and of unethical business practices – it is widely rumored, for example, that Chinese grocers (the iconic niche occupation of the Chinese-Argentine community) turn off their refrigerators at night.$^5$ Public sentiment also reflects an assumption that people of Asian descent are physically, culturally, and linguistically too different to belong to Argentina or less prone to "become" Argentine compared to other immigrant groups. The hyper-visibility of their difference, in a sense, justifies the group's invisibility – or its irrelevance – vis-à-vis the nation, since their perceived difference disqualifies Asian-Argentines from debates of nationhood even as multiculturalism gains currency.

Scholarly and anecdotal evidence suggests that the denial of racial and cultural citizenship to people of Asian descent is not particular to Argentina but rather widespread in countries whose national identity is based primarily on Western cultures.$^6$ In fact, indigenous, European, and African peoples have the longest history in Argentina, but the routine exclusion of Asians is at odds with Argentina's newfound multiculturalism. While Asian-Argentines likely represent a smaller minority than other racial groups, Argentina's multi-culturalism rejects the argument that numerical insignificance justifies the historical marginalization and effective erasure of indigenous and Afro-Argentine populations. Moreover, no official statistics quantify the Asian-Argentine population; the idea that they represent a tiny minority cannot hold ground if the state's policy has been not to count them. As we will see, Argentina's Asian population has been altogether excluded from sustained, institutionalized forms of counting, which renders them officially invisible.