BUENOS AIRES (CN) – In 2015, when Loy Joseph, 29, spent her first Christmas in Argentina, she cried most of it. The following year was not much different. Haiti felt far removed from Río Negro, the Patagonian province where he had landed, speaking little Spanish and unsure if he would stay.
By December 2024, home goods had changed shape. Joseph first directed the gospel choir she now directs. The room was filled with harmonies that sounded both Caribbean and Patagonian.
“Art saved me from the depression that came with realizing the reality of being an immigrant,” she said from her home in southern Argentina.
For years, Argentina became an unlikely destination for Haitians fleeing political collapse, gang violence, earthquakes and economic hardship. Unlike the United States, Chile or Brazil, Argentina never accepted Haitians in large numbers. The country’s 2022 census counted only 1,524 Haitian-born residents, a smaller community than immigrants from Japan or Portugal.
Yet Haitian immigrants built lasting communities across Argentina’s interior provinces—from a gospel choir in Patagonia to a stand-up show in Mendoza, a commemoration of the Haitian Revolution in Córdoba, and a written memoir in Rosario.
Many Haitians who arrived about a decade ago say attitudes toward immigrants across the region have hardened in recent years, making daily life feel more precarious. However, many of them continue to build cultural spaces and support networks rooted in shared music, language and traditions.
“We feel expelled, but this is home for us,” said Eddyson Damas, a 30-year-old activist and founder of the Haitian cultural organization KONBIT in Córdoba. He arrived in Argentina in 2016, shortly after graduating from high school in Haiti. Like many Haitians who arrived during that period, he arrived to attend university.
At the time, Argentina had one of Latin America’s most progressive migration systems. A 2004 law declared migration a fundamental human right and guaranteed access to health care and education regardless of immigration status.
That framework mattered, said Pablo Ceriani Cernadas, an expert on migration and human rights. “But she tried to make regulation easier and recognize the rights of immigrants.”
After the devastating Haiti earthquake of 2010, migration routes expanded across South America. Brazil offered humanitarian visas, Chile’s economy was booming, and Argentina, though poorer and more geographically distant, offered public universities and relatively accessible residency procedures.
Many Haitian immigrants bypassed Buenos Aires altogether.
“They are very dynamic migratory communities,” said Carina Trabalón, a CONICET researcher who studied migration from Haiti to Rosario and Córdoba, and noted that access to public universities was a big incentive for those looking to build a future abroad.
In Córdoba, Damas found other Haitian students struggling with the same bureaucratic hurdle: Validation of high school diplomas required passing exams in history, geography, civilization, and Argentine Spanish.
So they started studying together. From these meetings came KONBIT Club Cultural Haitiano, founded in 2017. Its first public event commemorated the anniversary of the Haitian Revolution.
“We needed a welcoming space for newcomers,” Damas said.
The organization eventually expanded into language exchanges, cultural seminars, and legal aid for recent arrivals.
In Rosario, another group of Haitian students built similar support networks after discovering they had been cheated.
Even before the 2010 earthquake accelerated migration from Haiti, students had already begun arriving in Argentina. In December 2008, Maxonley Petit arrived believing his medical school enrollment and immigration paperwork had already been arranged. Instead, he and dozens of other Haitian students found themselves stranded, without housing or a university.
“At the airport, you get on the plane with hope,” Petit said in an interview. “But the displacement is always there.”
Petit eventually stayed in Argentina for years, living in Rosario, Resistencia and Córdoba. He later published “La travesía de los olvidados” (“The Journey of the Forgotten”), a book that mixes testimonies and memories about immigrants from Haiti to Argentina.
“We’re kind of an invisible community,” he said. “That’s why we’re the forgotten ones.”
Invisibility cuts both ways. Argentina never experienced the same level of anti-Haitian political mobilization seen elsewhere in the Americas. Some migrants interviewed said that daily life in Argentina’s provinces often felt suddenly familiar.
For Jasmine Daphinis, an anti-racist activist and stand-up comedian who lives in the central city of Mendoza, the similarity was emotional rather than cultural.
“Mendoza feels like my country because it feels like a city,” she said. But Mendoza’s arid wine landscape is a far cry from the Caribbean warmth of her homeland. “Once you earn their trust, you become more of a Mendocino.”
Daphinis said Argentine feminist groups helped her rebuild her life after surviving violence and sexual abuse.
Today she teaches French, performs stand-up comedy about racism and migration, and runs the Haitian Migrant Network of Argentina. Through humor, she said, she tries to expose “the absurdity of racist practices.”
“I know the preamble of the Constitution, I drink bitter fellow, I make my own grill,” she said jokingly. “I even have the classic photo of Cerro Arco.”
However, migrants describe a growing climate of insecurity. In 2018, Argentina imposed visa requirements on Haitians, ending years of relatively open entry policies. Researchers and activists say airport denials already began before formal visa restrictions, often through arbitrary decisions that disproportionately affected black travelers.
Laura Paredes, a coordinator at the migrant rights organization CAREF, said the newer residency requirements have made it harder for some migrants to adjust their status.
“More people are being pushed to remain undocumented,” she said. “Therefore, more vulnerable.”
Paredes said immigrants also face growing fears about police checks and threats of deportation. Haitians often face additional barriers because they are not covered by the Mercosur residency agreements available to many South American migrants.
“And there’s an intersection in it — because they’re racialized, because Spanish isn’t their native language, they’re often more vulnerable to mistreatment by security forces,” she said.
For many Haitian migrants, movement across borders has become increasingly difficult in recent years.
“We are not only targeted as immigrants,” Damas said. “There is also a racist frame.”
“There are people who stay not because they necessarily want to,” said Trabalón, “but because international mobility itself has become unattainable.”
Uncertainty is evident in everyday life. Many migrants struggle to renew residence documents, obtain formal employment, or reunite with family members abroad.
In Rosario, Haitian immigrants organized Creole-Spanish language exchanges and cultural festivals. In Córdoba, students turned study groups into institutions. In Patagonia, Joseph turned solitude into music.
The communities remain small enough that many Argentines have never knowingly met a Haitian – or are unaware that they have. But their trail stretches silently across the country’s provinces.
For Joseph, Christmas no longer comes only with sorrow. “Now, we all get together to celebrate,” she said. “We want to keep that spirit alive.”
Lucía Cholakian Herrera is a Courthouse News correspondent based in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
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