How Did Africans Come to Arrive in Uruguay?

In 1527 Diego García Hernández, along with some African captives, arrived in the Río de la Plata region on an expedition for the Spanish Crown (Chirimini 256). More Africans arrived with Sebastian Cabot on his expedition in 1530 (256). Some sources state that these Africans were originally intended to be brought to Spain after the explorers completed their expeditions in the Americas, while others state that they were “ladinos (slaves who had been Hispanicized in Spain rather than being brought directly from Africa)” (Appiah 2005 Vol. 2, 288). Either way, their labor was obviously needed in the region, as in 1534 the Spanish Crown “licensed commerce of African captives in the Viceroyalty of Rio de la Plata — which included modern Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia — with Buenos Aires as the capital” (Chirimini 256-257). Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, contraband trade of goods, including slaves, was common, in order to avoid taxation from the Spanish Crown. A small number of would-be slaves also managed to escape their captors and settled as free people (257).

After Montevideo was founded in 1724, the first arrival of Africans to the newly established port city is estimated to have been in 1743 (257). When slave traders began shipping slaves not just from Northern Africa but also Angola, they realized they would lose far fewer captives if they were transported first by sea, from Africa to the Rio de la Plata region, and then by land to their ultimate destination in the northern portion of the Americas (Appiah 1999, 1928). Many Africans continued on to the northern colonies, some were sold to owners in Argentina, while others became slaves in Uruguay. Quickly Montevideo became a major port of call in the slave trade, and the city grew rapidly (Chirimini 257).

Afro-descendants were also brought to Uruguay through Brazil at several points in time. According to Appiah’s Africana, it is very likely that African slaves, along with numerous other forms of contraband, were traded and sold illegally between Rio de Janeiro and Montevideo between the late seventeenth and early nineteenth centuries (Appiah 1999, 1929). When Uruguay won its independence from Brazilian forces in 1828, Brazilian landowners “continued to hold large properties in Uruguay that they worked with slaves brought from their Brazilian estates” (Andrews 8). Between 1829 and 1841 it is estimated that around 4000 slaves were illegally brought to Uruguay (Appiah 1999, 1929). Former Brazilian slaves also fled to Uruguay on their own in search of freedom. The northern parts of Uruguay which border Brazil “are today the ‘blackest’ regions of Uruguay”, where the population is nearly 25% Afro-Uruguayan, however the region is sparsely populated (Andrews 9). The majority (54%) of all Afro-Uruguayans today live in Montevideo (9).