El Tambo Afro, a space where black women undertake and make community in Buenos Aires

The country offers in the open America section for its daily and global informative contribution to sustainable development. If you want to support our journalism, subscribe here. GOOD AIRS EXHALS EXHAZA ART AND CREATIVITY Afro. It is an autumn and sunny Saturday in the historic neighborhood of San Telmo. People walk the cobbled streets, shoot their cameras to pre -colonial buildings, to the old areas of commerce and convents. There are tango and candombé references. Each corner breathes Afro -Argentine roots erased for centuries. A few meters from the Central Market of San Telmo, a discreet glass door opens to El Tambo Afro, a new creative store and study dedicated to Afro -descendant entrepreneurs and creators. There are pieces of art, clothing, cosmetics, colorful blown glass necklaces, earrings, links and scarves with original prints. His marked logo synthesizes everything: the image of a house-home that appeals to the idea of ​​community and belonging to Afro-descendants, with African aesthetics and elements of curves and symmetries of the Buenos Aires fillet, a decorative and popular art of the late nineteenth century of Buenos Aires. «We want it to be a place of reference and that the community will appropriate and continue to have much more life,» says co -founder Julia Cohen Ribeiro, daughter of Afro -Robrasileño father and Argentine Jewish mother. Julia is also director of Afro -Tourism at Lunfarda Travel, an entrepreneurship that organizes guided tours to rediscover the Afro roots of Buenos Aires. Julia Cohen Ribeiro, co-founder of 'El Tambo Afro', in Buenos Aires, on May 15, 2025.Mariana Nedelcuel Tambo Afro brings together a community of 24 artist entrepreneurs who roll an inclusive and transformative economy in a country in which there is no support for black entrepreneurship. This is shown by a study conducted by Caf-Banco de Development for Latin America and the Caribbean, Feira Preta and CDE plan on the Afro-Emprendimiento panorama in five Latin American countries, including Argentina. Although only 0.7% of the population of this country is recognized as Afro -descendant, the data are revealing: of that percentage, 73.3% are active in black ventures. And that economic activity reaffirms something else. «37% of that sector values ​​its identity in the products. So, it is much more to undertake, it is an anti -racist activity,» adds Brenno Barlach, director of CDE plane research. «It is very good that we have this visibility in numbers, because there is usually no,» says Angélica Machado, entrepreneur, Colombian artist and psychiatrist who lives in Buenos Aires since 2014. The study shows other information: women lead more than 80% of the Afro -Emprendimient Dominican, Venezuelan, Cuban, Colombian and Bolivians living in Buenos Aires. Therefore, touring it is like opening a Russian doll: in each piece of art, there is an artist; In each artist, a story and in each story, a woman who creates and undertakes, who maternally in many ways, who designs and makes her ancestral knowledge a source of income and autonomy. Angelica was born in the department of Chocó, in the Colombian Pacific and feels very comfortable living in Buenos Aires. «Here, art was like an exit. The experience of migrating strips us of a lot of things, including fears.» In his family, art was not seen as a possible path: he had to make academic career. But, in the midst to his migration crisis, he says that he began painting watercolors and during the pandemic he advanced more in his vocation: «I had a sacred work and research routine. I learned to use programs like Sketchbook and I passed my drawings to the digital. Thus the first patterns of my African venture were born,» he says while she gives her daughter Lucia, a girl with a small girl, a girl with a little girl.Angelica Machado with her daughter Lucia, on May 15, 2025. Mariana Nedelcuuno of her scarves wears a stamp with a figure of Afro's hair. «It is a format of silhouette lines that melt hair and body. And that game is given. In my work, my black woman story is present,» he says. Like Angelica, Vaneza San Martín, clothing designer, Afro -Robolivian Buenos Aires is crossed by her identity that describes as «a resource when designing.» Vaneza lives in Buenos Aires since the age of 4 and always wanted to be a textile designer. He joined the community of El Tambo Afro with his accessories of Casa Chuyma. «In Aymara, Chuyma means heart,» he explains. For many years, Vaneza managed a sustainable project with fabric pieces. «I worked in the wholesale area of ​​the neighborhood of Flores, where a lot of fabric is cut and every day I saw containers full of discarded pieces. And I thought something I have to do with that,» he says. Thus he began to collect fabrics that he kept at home with the idea of ​​transforming them into something new. «From the moment I decided to undertake, I was clear that I wanted to be part of the solution, not the problem,» he reaffirms. Vaneza San Martin poses with some of the bags that it produces and sells in 'El Tambo Afro'.Mariana Nedelcuuno of the bags he designs is made with superimposed pieces of denim -resistant tissue with which the jeans are made – in a network of reliefs and layers that transmit an emotional geography. Vaneza says he was born in the Yungas de la Paz. «It is a transition zone between the Andes and the Amazon, with a great biodiversity, of warm climate, of valleys, mountains,» he explains, where the Afro -Robolivian population is mainly concentrated. The connection with that story vibrates in your story. «There were enslaved people who worked in haciendas for the harvest of coffee, cotton and cassava,» he explains. The Sun falls on San Telmo. Visitors disperse. The neighborhood remains. Yaraianni by Sena Batista, another of the partners of El Tambo Afro, is Dominican, creator of content and model. «The reception of the neighbors was very good. From the beginning that we open the place, they pass and say: 'I want to meet'. At that time, I am like the carrier to tell the story, which is not only a commercial space, but also memory,» he says. When asked what they imagine for the future, artists do not doubt: that this community space is replicated in other cities of Argentina. Yaraianni by Sena Batista, partner of 'El Tambo Afro', in Buenos Aires, on May 15, 2025.Mariana Nedelcu