ABSTRACT
Examining the history of Africans and their descendants from colonial times to the end of the nineteenth century in Uruguay requires transnational lenses to chart the coerced and free migrations that shaped the building of the Black communities of this country. This chapter provides a timeline of the ways in which Africans and their descendants arrived and departed from colonial and nineteenth century Uruguay. Beyond the traffic of captives, this chapter examines how larger political events and individual decisions led Africans and their descendants in the move across the Río de la Plata, and more broadly, the South Atlantic littoral connecting this region with Brazil. This chapter also decenters the history of Africans and their descendants from Montevideo, given the significance of Colonia del Sacramento for the first permanent Black populations in the territory of what became Uruguay. Following this same goal, this chapter examines the eastern and northeastern countryside, spanning today's municipalities from Rocha to Artigas, during the renewal of rural slavery in the mid-nineteenth century Uruguayan-Brazilian frontier.
