National Pleasures: The Fetishization of Blackness and Uruguayan Autobiographical Narratives

Abstract

This article examines the autobiography of white Uruguayan artist Carlos Páez Vilaró, read contrapuntally with the autobiographical accounts of several Afro-Uruguayans contained in the book Historias de Exclusión: Afrodescendientes en el Uruguay, including that of late painter Ruben Galloza (1926–2002). I argue that the fetishization of the black figure–evident in Páez Vilaró, but speaking of and through a larger context–constitutes whiteness and circumscribes the experiences of those who embody blackness.

Keywords:

• Blackness
• whiteness
• Uruguay
• Latin America
• fetishization
• subjectivity
• candombe
• Carlos Páez Vilaró
• Ruben Galloza

Acknowledgements

This research was made possible by funding from the Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The author would like to thank Peter Wade, Sherene Razack, and the anonymous referees for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. The author would also like to thank Carolina Ricarte, Celina Mazuí Sztainbok and Víctor Sztainbok for their help in obtaining documents.

Notes

Notes

[1] This book was initially published in 1994 as Historias de vida: Negros en el Uruguay, eds T. Porzecanski & B. Santos, EPPAL, Montevideo.

[2] There are varying opinions on Páez Vilaró and his relationship to Barrio Sur, but there are many who undoubtedly consider him to be an ally of Afro-Uruguayans. This paper neither supports nor disputes these claims.

[3] All translations are my own.

[4] The demolition of Medio Mundo during the military dictatorship has been denounced as an act of racism (see, for instance, Rodríguez, 2006) and cited as an example of the housing agenda of an authoritarian regime (Benton, 1986).

[5] I am not suggesting that Páez Vilaró made up this visual language all on his own. His work was influenced by an earlier Uruguayan painter, the Italian born Pedro Figari (1861–1938), who painted his childhood memories of black life in Montevideo. Páez Vilaró's paintings of Medio Mundo also draw on modern art traditions, which have their own relationship to blackness, as noted by Wade (2001, p. 856).

[6] I am using Farley's spelling of the term.