This introduction presents the historical and social context of Argentina in the nineteenth century, as it relates to the local Afro-descendant population. It explains the building-nation conceived by the dominant groups toward the end of the century. The project sought to create a national imaginary founded on the notion of a culturally and racially homogeneous country of white European descent. This project necessarily entailed the disappearance of the population of African (and Indigenous) descent as part of the nation. The strategies used to achieve this project (census, cultural appropriation, official history) are mentioned. In this sense, it is proposed that the construction and recurrent use of visual stereotypes throughout the nineteenth century (concentrated in specific iconographic nuclei) was one of the strategies used in the process of invisibilization of the descendants of enslaved Africans in Argentina. It also explains the state of the art on the subject, the theoretical framework, and the methodology used in the research.