It is often forgotten that Nuestra Raza, perhaps the most well-known amongst all of the Afro-Uruguayan publications in the first half of the twentieth century (and discussed at length in our section on the Black Press and Afro-Descendant Organizations), was cofounded by Maria Esperanza Barrios, the sister of Pilar, Ventura, and Feliciano (Young 34). The publication did not gain a substantial following until 1933, after her death, however it has been said that she “was ‘the something within’ that shaped Nuestra Raza” (34). According to Young, it was her written works that began “to define the black feminist movement in the struggle for racial, gender, and social equality” (34). During our research on Nuestra Raza, we found that she is often only briefly mentioned, if at all. However, researchers who focus on Afro-Uruguayan females, such as Caroll Mills Young, whose work we have used throughout our research, have written incredibly detailed accounts of Maria Esperanza Barrios, along with many other Afro-Uruguayan feminist writers. We highly recommend you take a look at our Bibliography and Further Reading sections to read more about Afro-Uruguayan women and their contributions to Uruguayan history and society.

Another woman who made an impact on Afro-Uruguayan history was Adelia Silva de Sosa, an educator from the department of Artigas, near the border of Brazil. She is known for her resilience, and fighting back against the discrimination she faced when she first moved to Montevideo in May 1956, after being awarded a federal scholarship to work as a student teacher while studying for her teaching certification (Andrews 85). She was turned away from three separate schools, all on the basis of her race causing problems for the school, either because the principals believed parents would pull their students out of school once they found out there was an Afro-Uruguayan teacher, or because her Spanish was said to be too accented and influenced by Brazilian Portuguese (85).

It was only after she returned to Artigas and spoke with other people that she realized the problem was not in fact her own fault, but that she had been the target of racial discrimination (86). Taking the matter into her own hands, “she wrote to the national teachers’ federation and to the National Council of Primary Education to protest the treatment she had received and to request an investigation of what had happened to her in Montevideo” (86). Her case gained national attention and she received support from many organizations and news outlets. The National Council of Primary Education eventually found one principal guilty of racial discrimination, while the other received ‘negative evaluations’ for her actions by some of her teachers, however the evidence was not sufficient enough to charge her with racial discrimination (87-8). Sosa did not stay in Montevideo after the verdict, but instead went back to Artigas to be a teacher and the principal of her local rural school (88).

According to Andrews, Sosa’s case gained such high levels of national attention for several reasons, the main one being “the stark and painful contradiction between Sosa’s charges of racial discrimination and Uruguay’s official doctrines of civic and social equality” (88). Her case was also strongly supported by the Asociación Cultural y Social Uruguay (ACSU) (for more information on the ACSU, please read our section on the Black Press and Afro-Descendant Organizations), which increased its visibility in the national spotlight (88).

Despite Sosa’s story being one of the more well-known legal battles against discrimination in the national spotlight, there are very few academic resources on the topic. Most of the sources we have been able to use throughout our research failed to mention her, even in their sections on racial discrimination in Uruguay. The sources we found which mention her have used (almost exclusively) magazine and newspaper publications from 1956 and 1957, or Blackness in a White Nation by Andrews.