Black Legend

Celebrities live their lives in constant dialogue with stories about them. But when these stories are shaped by durable racist myths, they wield undue power to ruin lives and obliterate communities. Black Legend is the haunting story of an Afro-Argentine, Raúl Grigera ('el negro Raúl'), who in the early 1900s audaciously fashioned himself into an alluring Black icon of Buenos Aires' bohemian nightlife, only to have defamatory storytellers unmake him. In this gripping history, Paulina Alberto exposes the destructive power of racial storytelling and narrates a new history of Black Argentina and Argentine Blackness across two centuries. With the extraordinary Raúl Grigera at its center, Black Legend opens new windows into lived experiences of Blackness in a 'white' nation, and illuminates how Raúl's experience of celebrity was not far removed from more ordinary experiences of racial stories in the flesh.

La Brevísima: el fantasma y el árbol del crimen

This work essays an approach to the most radical work of fray Bartolomé de Las Casas —A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies— through Sade’s writing system and, particularly, through the enlightenment of Roland Barthes’ reading in his book Sade, Fourier, Loyola which paradoxically places Las Casas in the dark side of a tradition often confused with the so-called “black legend” that can be defined by the title Barthes initially gave to his essay: “The Tree of Crime”. This work about crime, mise-en-scene and cruelty is deeply rooted in the Baroque, and also shows its multiple connections with the techniques of the image and imagination of Ignacio de Loyola.

A French diplomat in the Russian Service. Missions of the Count d'Antraigues in Venice (1795–1797)

The article deals with the history of secret diplomacy of the time of the French Revolution. It aims to show unknown aspects of the French émigré сount d'Antraigue's activities as a councillor to the Russian embassy in Venice and as a personal representative of Louis XVIII in 1795–1797. Unpublished documents from the Archives of Foreign Policy of the Russian Empire and the memoirs of contemporaries form the source base of the research. The practice of appointing French royalists “under Russian protection” as employees of Russian diplomatic missions was proposed by the Russian court in 1794. The case of d’Antraigues, therefore, was not unique. D'Antraigues' duties in this post were related to the search for information on revolutionary France, the French army in Italy, the politics of the Italian states. His contacts with Swedish agents, French royalists, and French army officers were the most fruitful. At the same time, he was associated with British diplomats. Bonaparte used the errors of the diplomat to his advantage: сount d'Antraigues’s notes served as a pretext for the coup d'état of 18 Fructidor, Year V. Although he сount lost credibility in the eyes of the royalists yet, thanks to the support of A.K. Razumovsky, he continued his service as correspondent and honorary “pensionnaire” of the Russian court. It was after 1797 that a “black legend” developed around the name of the count, thanks, in particular, to former secret agents of the Directory and Napoleon Bonaparte, depicting him as an opportunist.

Inquisitorial process in Arturo Ripstein’s film: “El Santo Oficio”

Despite the great influence that the Black Legend of Spain has had on the cinema in the representation of the Holy Office in audiovisual content, it is possible to rescue some works with great historical rigor. One of them is The Holy Office of Arturo Ripstein. In this Mexican film, the story of the Carvajal family is narrated, which will be processed twice by this court.