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Meridional. Chilean Journal of Latin American Studies is pleased to invite you to participate in the dossier “Relevance of Latin American Marxism: Thinking from, with, and beyond Michael Löwy’s work”, which consists in our 21st volume, to be published in October 2023. 

Perceptions about class in the Afro-Uruguayan press (1872-1929)

Authors

  • Mónica García Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

Abstract

Some of the most recurrent forms in the Afro-descendant press in the Río de la Plata to refer to itself as a collectivity were allusions to the working class. A tour of the publications in the transition from the nineteenth century to the first decades of the twentieth century, during modernization, shows the course that the concept of class was taking, although it has not necessarily been explicitly explained. The idea of class in the nineteenth century was expressed in comments on everything that the socio-economic and cultural situation implied. In the twentieth century, Afro-Uruguayan newspapers began to write some texts with a certain theoretical analysis of class at the same time that the labor movement in Uruguay began to strengthen and anarchist and socialist ideas were gaining diffusion. In one way or another, the conception of class was explained by historical conditions in conjunction with other variables such as “race” or culture. In this sense, the category “intersectionality” raised from black feminism explains how several regimes of oppression are articulated within capitalism at the same time. The article searches in the texts of the Afro-Uruguayan publications of the period 1872-1929, the different perspectives they had on the class.

Keywords:

Afro-Uruguayan, working class, press, modernization, Afro-descendant