Salas de Nación

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, mutual aid societies formed in many Latin American countries, including Uruguay, to support Africans who had been torn from their homelands and had little to no support system once in Latin America (Andrews 24). These “salas de nación (roughly translatable as ‘nation courts’)” also provided social networks which “helped make life in the New World endurable” and provided political representation for those who would have otherwise been powerless (24).

The names of these ‘nations’ help provide information about the possible African origins of Afro-Uruguayans today, as many of the association names represented countries, ethnic groups, and languages of the people in the groups (Chirimini 258). They were formed to enable Africans with similar backgrounds to create a “sense of identity and community based on old principles and new realities” (Walker 30). Tomás Olivera Chirimini explains in Chapter 15 of African Roots/American Cultures:

“The nations were associations created by Africans from the same or related ethnic groups or regions who, although their organizational structures and rules were formally determined by colonial authorities, attempted to keep alive their traditions and identities by functioning as mutual aid societies and organizing social activities” (258).

These nations, which “were recognized and supported by the local authorities,” also had their own monarchs, usually ‘kings’ or ‘governors’, who presided over proceedings which were held in salas (halls) (259). For the religious who had been “deprived of their gods and religions, the nations provided sanctuaries where those religions could be at least partially reconstructed and the gods worshipped. And wherever Africans worshipped, they sang, danced, and drummed at ritual events that Motevideans called Tangos and Candombes” (Andrews 24). (For further information on Candombe and its impact on Uruguayan society, please see our Candombe page.)