The Allure of Modernity: Afro-Uruguayan Press, Black Internationalism, and Mass Entertainment (1928–1948)

Abstract

This article explores the ways in which the Afro-Uruguayan press forged an internationalist agenda between the 1920s and the 1940s, the most active and radical period in the history of the Afro-Uruguayan movement. While previous scholarship has focused on the literary exchanges and political causes that created networks of Black internationalism, this article proposes that the world of mass entertainment played a key role in shaping a sense of belonging to the larger African diaspora. By focusing on La Vanguardia (1928–1929) and Nuestra Raza (1933–1948), the essay examines how Afro-Uruguayan intellectuals negotiated their symbolic relationship with the African diaspora and disputed the meaning of Blackness through their relationship with new forms of urban entertainment that arose during the first half of the century – the performing arts, cinema, illustrated press, and sports. Thus, the article proposes that the Afro-Uruguayan press harnessed the allure of the emergent entertainment culture to situate Blackness at the core of modernity, challenging the historical place that the Uruguayan state offered to its Black population.

Keywords:

• Afro-Latin America
• Afro-Uruguay
• internationalism
• mass entertainment
• diaspora
• Josephine Baker
• Paul Robeson
• cinema
• media
• sports

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their detailed and insightful suggestions. Also, I am indebted to those who read and commented on earlier drafts of this article: María Alejandra Aguilar Dornelles, María Elena Oliva, Alejandro Gortázar, and Akiko Tsuchiya.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Afro-Uruguayans represent today around 8% of the Uruguayan population, but it is difficult to know precise data for the decades studied in this essay given that from the 1860s until the end of the twentieth century the State did not include questions on race in its census and official statistics, oriented by an assimilationist paradigm that tended to affirm the supposed racial homogeneity of the population (Frega et al. 2008, 51). Between the 1780s and the first decades of the nineteenth century, Montevideo was a key port for the slave trade in the region (Borucki 2015), so at the beginning of the nineteenth century the Black population constituted one-third of the total population of Uruguay (Frega et al. 2008, 9). According to Alex Borucki (2015), the social life of Africans and their descendants in the River Plate region took place in several overlapping arenas: religious confraternities, militias, and African “nations”. Through these forms of organisation, the Black population was able to create social networks and delineate identities within the limits allowed by the colonial order. After the abolition of slavery (1842), the Black population integrated into the lower classes of the Uruguayan society, and despite legal equality they faced lesser opportunities in their access to jobs and education. This situation was denounced in the prolific Afro-Uruguayan press, which since the 1870s had become a key factor in the struggle of Afro-Uruguayans, constituting the second-largest Black press in Latin America after Brazil (Andrews 2010, 5).

2 On the idea of this period as a “Golden Age”, see Cordones-Cook (1999, 655).

3 The other two were the Partido Independiente de Color (Cuba, 1908) and the Frente Negra Brasileira (Brazil, 1931). See Andrews (2004, 127–131). On the Partido Autóctono Negro, see Andrews (2010, 96–106), Burgueño (2015), Rodríguez (2006, 125–145), Gascue (1980).

4 For an analysis of Ansina as an Afro-Uruguayan hero, see Frega et al. (2008, 95). For an account of the “Centenario” and the historiographical debate around it, see Demasi (2004), Caetano (1999).

5 My discussion here builds on Paul Gilroy’s argument in The Black Atlantic (1993) about how Black cultures have always moved beyond national boundaries and ethnic essentialisms. By “Black internationalism”, I refer broadly to the transnational exchange of ideas and representations that forged a diasporic sensibility between different groups of Afro-descendants across national borders. On the internationalism of the Afro-Uruguayan movement, see Andrews (2010), García (2019), Oliva (2019), Burgueño (2015), Rodríguez (2006).

6 According to Bouret and Remedi, the expansion of the publication industry, as well as radio, records, and film, contributed to the creation of a “national public sphere” in which readers and viewers massively share interests and references (2009, 106). By “mass culture”, I refer to a particular organisation of culture that fully emerged during the second half of the nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth, as the result of the convergence of several forces such as of the modernisation of daily life (the separation between labour and leisure time as autonomous spheres), the formation of a market for cultural goods, and the emergence of a unified yet fragmented audience. For a historical account on the emergence of mass culture, see Maase (2016).

7 Nuestra Raza had a brief life in 1917 in the eastern city of San Carlos – edited by siblings Ventura, Pilar, and María Esperanza Barrios – and then reappeared in Montevideo in 1933. Nuestra Raza also had a significant participation of Afro-Uruguayan women such as Iris Cabral and Maruja Pereira, who published texts on several social and cultural topics. Projects such as those of La Vanguardia and Nuestra Raza were carried out by a group of Afro-Uruguayan journalists who understood their editorial work as part of their activism against local and international racism. Despite exercising roles of intellectual leadership within the Afro-Uruguayan community, they were non-professionalised intellectuals, mostly self-taught, and occupied a marginal position in the cultural field of the time (Gortázar 2012). Except for Salvador Betervide, the rest of the journalists who wrote for both publications did not have access to higher education, and frequently had to support the papers with their own resources. See Gascue (1980); Burgueño (2015, 9–16).

8 Originally from St. Louis (Missouri), Baker was part of a larger group of African-American performers – especially jazz musicians – who engaged in cosmopolitan practices of travel and overseas living due partially to the jazz craze after World War I (Gillett 2010, 473).

9 Some of these groups, such as the famous Trouppe Ateniense, were integrated into the burgeoning Argentine culture industry, recorded their performances with Buenos Aires orchestras like the Jazz Carabelli, and performed regularly in both countries (Fornaro and Sztern 1997, 54).

10 The use of pseudonyms was a tradition in the Afro-Uruguayan press. In La Vanguardia and Nuestra Raza sometimes writers alternated pseudonyms and real names for different articles in the same issue.

11 “Nuevo ídolo”, La Vanguardia 10, 30 May 1928: 3.

12 La Vanguardia 29, March 1929: 2.

13 bell hooks has analysed the performance of Baker within a long history of white European fascination with the bodies of Black people, particularly female bodies. hooks understands the representation of Black female sexuality as “part of the cultural apparatus of 19th-century racism” (1992, 62) that still continues to shape contemporary culture.

14 La Vanguardia 29, March 1929: 2.

15 “He visto a Josefina Baker”, Nuestra Raza 69, May 1939: 1.

16 La Vanguardia 22, 30 November 1928: 2. It also included another performance, by singer Oscar Rorra, known as the “Black Caruso”, who at that time had a repertoire of tangos, maxixes and lyrical arias, but later developed a career in Europe as a singer of Afro-Caribbean styles. In his case as well, the creation of an Afro-diasporic identity, and even the plasticity to move from Afro-Uruguayan to Afro-Caribbean, is processed through the entertainment industry.

17 According to Woods Peiró, the character of Peter Wald, a cosmopolitan and successful Black star, threatened Spain’s imperial imaginary, so his death at the end of the film – paralleled with Emma’s rise to stardom – is the way in which “whiteness establishes itself as the emblem for a modern Spain struggling to negotiate the different meanings of stardom” (2006, 60). On the figure of the “tragic mulatto”, see Fojas (2008).

18 In fact, the blackfacing of Raymond de Sarka is not mentioned in the articles published in La Vanguardia, and the name of the actor is referred to as “Pedro Baker”, which could have been a commercial strategy of the local exhibitors of the film trying to exploit the association with Josephine Baker.

19 “Inconcebible”, La Vanguardia 11, 15 June 1928: 1.

20 “Apuntes de mi cartera: ‘El negro que tenía el alma blanca’”, La Vanguardia 12, 30 June 1928: 2.

21 On the campaign, see García (2019).

22 The Committee also tried to put pressure on the Uruguayan government to file a complaint and intervene in the case.

23 One of the leading figures that organised these connections was the British writer Nancy Cunard, who in 1934 edited the anthology Negro, including poetry, essays, and art from Black artists from both Africa and the Americas. In Uruguay, the key link was the (white) poet and anthropologist Ildefonso Pereda Valdés, who connected the editors of Nuestra Raza with Cunard, Hughes, and Guillén. See García (2019).

24 Nuestra Raza 12, July 1934: 4. The announcement includes a commercial poster of the film that points out the leading role of the “Black famous actor Paul Robeson”.

25 The play was extremely popular in the New York theatre scene during the 1920s, which led to the film version and to an opera in 1933 (Corbould 2011, 262).

26 See Saxena, Weissman, and Cozart (2003).

27 Cinestrenos. El cine en Montevideo desde 1929. http://www.uruguaytotal.com/cgi-bin/estrenos/buscar.cgi.

28 Nuestra Raza, 110, 30 October 1942. Robeson’s activism against racism in the USA is recognised again in September 1946: “Todavía está allí”, Nuestra Raza, 157.

29 “A los suscriptores”, La Vanguardia 29, 15 March 1929: 1.

30 Cleanto Noir, “Léanos, señor!”, Nuestra Raza 80, 30 April 1940: 8.

31 “Una esperanza que se agranda”, Nuestra Raza 27, 24 October 1935: 6.

32 Nuestra Raza 58, June 1938: 7.

33 Nuestra Raza 154, June 1946.

34 See Bouret and Remedi (2009, 294). On the origins of Uruguayan football and the connections between football, politics, and national identity, see Mazzucchelli (2019).

35 “La emoción del triunfo”, La Vanguardia 11, 15 June 1928: 1.

36 For example, the journalist Gabriel Hanot, in Le Miroir des sports, complimented Andrade not only for his athletic skills but also for his talent as a “champion of the tango from South America”. See Hanot (1924).

37 Part of the Afro-Uruguayan community offered a tribute banquet to Andrade in 1924, which the player did not attend. Andrade’s disdain was understood as an insulting attitude towards the Black community, and this conflict resurfaced again in 1928 after the Amsterdam Olympic Games. The polemic – which resulted in the resignation of some members of La Vanguardia – could be followed in the pages of the newspaper between August and October (issues 16 to 19).

38 The connections with Afro-Cuban writers increased during the 1940s and had its peak when Nicolás Guillén visited Uruguay in 1947.

39 The white writer Pereda Valdés, who published frequently in the Afro-Uruguayan press, had strong connections with the currents of Black internationalism, and his texts mention the work of Du Bois as well as of several writers from the Harlem Renaissance. According to the testimony of the Afro-Uruguayan writer Alberto Britos – collected in 1980 by Álvaro Gascue – the members of Nuestra Raza did not read the books of contemporary European and North American authors that addressed racial issues, not only because of the circulation limits but especially due to a preference for classical and canonical texts (Gascue 1980, 21).

40 See Rodríguez (2006, 108). The indifference towards traditional Afro-Uruguayan cultural practices could explain the obstacles they faced in gaining the support of the majority of the Black population, as well as the electoral failure of the Partido Autóctono Negro in the 1938 elections.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rodrigo Viqueira

Rodrigo Viqueira is a PhD Candidate in Hispanic Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, also completing a Graduate Certificate in Latin American Studies. He holds an MA in Latin American Literature from Universidad de la República (Uruguay). He has published the book Negrismo, vanguardia y folklore (Rebeca Linke Editoras, 2019), and his current research examines the intersection of labour, working-class cultures, and media in Latin America, focusing on the Southern Cone and Brazil.