Domingo Sosa Domingo Sosa ( 1788 – May 1866 ) was an Afro Argentine soldier who became an army colonel and took part in the wars of independence and in the Argentine civil war . Biography . Born a slave and he had no education , though he subsequently managed to learn to read and write . He was enlisted into the Regimiento de Castas ( a mixed - race regiment ) of the city in 1808 . From 1811 he took part in the two sieges of Montevideo until their end , taking part in the attack in the Battle of Cerrito , with the toughest part of the conflict borne by the " blacks " in the regiment of Colonel Miguel Estanislao Soler . On being mentioned in dispatches he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant . In April 1813 he took part in a campaign under the orders of Domingo French , to secure the frontier area of the river Yaguarón against incursion from Portuguese forces entering from Brasil . In early 1815 he was sent to the Army of the North , and participated in the Battle of Sipe Sipe . He was sent back to Buenos Aires , where he was commissioned instructor of black soldiers . In 1817 he applied for retirement at the rank of captain , but instead of agreeing , he was commissioned head of custody of the prison - really a concentration camp - Las Brusas , near present Dolores ; anyway he was promoted to the rank of captain . He actively participated in the disorder of the Year Anarchy XX , under the orders of Soler , Pagola and Dorrego . In 1822 he was retired by the military reform of Bernardino Rivadavia , which damaged him greatly . He became a laborer and foreman in various jobs He returned to the service in 1828 , and at the end of that year he joined the forces of Dorrego , although it is not known whether he fought in the Battle of Navarro . The following year he was in the army of Juan Manuel de Rosas , under whose orders he fought as officer in command of an infantry battalion in the Battle of Puente de Márquez , his immediate superior was Colonel Mariano Benito Rolón . In 1831 he was in the army in the campaign against the League of the Interior , under the orders of Juan Ramón Balcarce . In 1833 he defended governor Balcarce from the Revolution of the Restorers . As a result , he was retired later that year , and decommissioned in 1835 . During the following years he served in several offices , and served several times as a police officer in the city . He rejoined the army in 1845 and was posted to command of a battalion of black soldiers from the city and its outskirts . He was promoted to the rank of colonel , and as such he participated in the Battle of Caseros , in which he was seriously injured . His life was saved only by chance , because the victorious army ' s doctors ( almost all from the Rosas Army were killed ) cared for non - white injured soldiers only after white soldiers had been cared for . After serving in personal guard of the Governor Vicente López y Planes , he supported the revolution of September 11 , 1852 and was elected a member of the province in October . He served with distinction in the defense against the siege of Buenos Aires with Hilario Lagos ' s federal troops , and he was promoted to the rank of colonel on March 1 , 1853 . He was a provincial conventional constituent in 1854 , the most important political office that a black man has held in Argentina . He was also , along with Lorenzo Barcala and José María Morales one of the few black colonels in Argentina ' s history . Also , he returned to being an elected member of the province in 1856 . His first wife was Pascuala de la Roza Contreras , who died in 1851 ; he then married an older woman , Petrona Mauriño , who died in 1859 . For the rest of his life he commanded a regiment of black militias , but did not fight in the Battle of Pavón , forming part of the defense of the city of Buenos Aires . He died in Buenos Aires in May 1866 .