|
Afro-Uruguayans |
|
|
|
1726: Montevideo Bay "...Under the protection of cannon and cross, the new city emerges. It blooms on a point of earth and rock beaten by the wind and threatened by Indians. From Buenos Aires come the first settlers, fifteen young people, nineteen children, and a few slaves who do not figure on the list - black hands for the ax, the hoe, and the gallows, breasts to give milk, a voice to cry wares." (Galeano, 21)
|
This was written by Eduardo Galeano,
an Uruguayan writer, from the second book
Faces and Masks of
his trilogy Memory of Fire. Although the author is not of
African decent, his writing about the beginning of the city where he
was born (over two hundred years later), gives them a place in the
history of Montevideo. He makes note of the ironic absence of
the slaves on the formal lists, even though they were
the ones who worked the lands and nourished the young.
|
Origins |
|
|
When we speak of Afro-Uruguayans origins, it is very difficult to avoid the mention of slaves. Unfortunately, our culturally rich and diverse Latin American countries came to be through much suffering and exploitation of human beings, one large group being African slaves. Although one cannot justify their suffering, the African influence is seen and felt in many of our countries.
"The Yorubas of Nigeria, the Bantus of the Congo and Angola, the
Ewe-Fon and Fanti-Ashanti tribes of Dahomey and Mali or the Mandinga
of Sudan are some of the ethnic groups of Africa who came to America
as slaves and had cultural influence on the whole continent."
"The Bantu area is
an enormous cultural region of Africa with an extremely complex mosaic of ethnicities, consisting of over 450 groups with a
linguistic heritage that overwhelms man's migratory limits: more
than 20 linguistic groups and 70 dialects."
|
In the novel by Gabriel García
Márquez
Of Love and Other Demons, Dominga de Adviento who took care
of the protagonist: Sierva María de Todos Los Angeles, "became
catholic without renouncing her Yoruban beliefs..."
This story is based in a coastal town of Colombia named Cartagena.
The influence of the Yoruba apparently reached many countries in
South America, so much in Cartagena that it seems that Gabriel
García Márquez decided to incorporated into his novel. (11)
|
What Is Candombe? |
|
One can not talk about Afro-Uruguayans without discussing Candombe. It seems to be an integral part of their lives, and has been since the introduction of slaves to what is now Uruguay. What is now Candombe, was not so more than two hundred years ago. In the book Afro-Uruguayan Literature: Post-Colonial Perspectives by Marvin A. Lewis, he quotes an educational notebook of Mundo Afro on this topic of Candombe."... [It] delineates three distinct eras in the evolution of this Afro-Uruguayan ritual. This first, and most authentic, was during slavery, when blacks came together on Sundays to renew African regional and national cultural links; the second was the era of African European syncretism; while the third is the era of the "comparsas" as we know them today."Many Afro-Uruguayans are a bit critical of the last stage (third), saying that its present day carnival scene has veered away from the meaning it had to their ancestors. Some say that it has lost the meaning since it became commercialized for monetary purposes, thus not belonging just to the Afro-Uruguayan community, but to the entire city of Montevideo. These people like to reminisce of the time before, when their ancestors came together to beat their tangós (drums) and move to its rhythm for solidarity or to remember their native land."The Candombe musically identifies Uruguay as the Samba does Brazil; as the Rumba, Cha Cha Cha and Son identify Cuba; the Bomba and the Plena, Puerto Rico; and the Merengue Dominican Republic." http://toquecandombe.tripod.com/intro_en.htm
|