History of Afro-Descendants in Uruguay

In this section of our project we will give a critical overview of the history of Africans and Afro-descendants in Uruguay, with a concentrated focus on Montevideo. We will begin by explaining the controversy surrounding the topic of Afro-Uruguayans, and giving some data about Afro-descendants in Uruguay for you to keep in mind while reading the rest of our overview. Our history portion begins with the arrival of Africans in Montevideo in 1527 and ends with a critique of where the Afro-descendant population stands in Uruguayan society today. We aim to explain how Africans and their descendants have helped build the foundations of Uruguayan society as we know it today, and show why their importance to Uruguay should be celebrated. The topic of Afro-descendants in Uruguay is a burgeoning academic field, and as stated in our Project Limitations, we only had a short timeframe in which to do our research. After reading our overview, we highly recommend taking a look at our Further Reading section, where we have included authors who have written more in-depth about this topic.