Tango has a controversial and complex history, highlighted by the fact that tango was illegal at some point in its history.

Answer to the question: When was tango illegal?

The words “tango” and “tambo” around the River Plate basin were initially used to refer to musical gatherings of slaves, with written records of colonial authorities attempting to ban such gatherings as early as 1789.

Tony adds: ’The United provinces of the Rio de la Plata’, which included Argentina, declared independence from Spain in 1816, significantly related to Napoleon’s earlier takeover of Spain. Up until then Argentina was part of the ‘Vice Royalty of Peru’, and then briefly the ‘Vice Royalty of the Rio de la Plata’.

So in 1789 ‘Argentina’ as we now call it was very much under the administrative and cultural umbrella of Peru and Spain. The ‘Argentine Confederation’, which did not include Buenos Aires at that moment, ended slavery with their ‘Argentine Constitution’ of 1853.

Look up this famous painting:-

Candombe federal, época de Rosas by Martín Boneo  (1829–1915) This depicts an event in 1838, but the painting was done maybe over 60 years later