George Reid Andrews’s Blackness in the White Nation is a welcome addition to the scholarship on Afro-descended peoples in Latin America. Having now published four books on Afro-Latin America, Andrews has cemented his place at the center of this growing field. In this book, Andrews approaches the related but contradictory histories of people of African descent in Uruguay and of the widespread embrace of African culture by Euro-Uruguayans. The contradiction lies in the fact that Euro-Uruguayan interest in African music and culture exploded during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when the black Uruguayan population declined precipitously. Andrews explores this contradiction in a clearly written and impeccably researched monograph that offers valuable insight into race and racism in modern Uruguayan history.
Uruguay may seem a strange location for studying Afro-Latin America. It is a country — like neighboring Argentina — largely defined by the overwhelming whiteness of its citizenship,...
