Uruguay: The Reification of Innocence
Uruguay often presents itself as a peaceful, orderly, European-style democracy, but the story that sustains this self-image is the product of careful selection. In this paper I trace how the national narrative was assembled from a handful of luminous scenes that smooth over a far more turbulent past. The landing of the Thirty Three, the figure of Artigas, the Batllista social state, the idea of a country without Indigenous people, and the flattering comparison to Switzerland all became polished symbols of who Uruguay wished to be. Drawing on the insights of writers such as Michel Foucault, Pierre Nora, Hayden White, Eric Hobsbawm, Benedict Anderson, and Michel Rolph Trouillot, I show how power, memory, and imagination shape the archive itself and determine what a nation chooses to remember or forget. Uruguay’s history is filled with contradiction, including extermination, civil war, foreign intervention, and two twentieth-century coups, yet these ruptures were later woven into a narrative of resilience that leaves little room for doubt or discomfort.
I argue that this myth of innocence is now a barrier rather than a source of strength. The country that once led Latin America in social rights and education now faces constitutional rigidity, intellectual stagnation, and a persistent reluctance to confront racial and historical exclusion. By recovering the silences that surround the Charrúa, Afro descendants, and the victims of dictatorship, the paper calls for a narrative that is both more truthful and more generous. The goal is not to discard Uruguay’s foundational stories but to understand how they were built and to imagine a national identity that can hold complexity rather than hide from it. A nation can renew itself only when it allows its history to speak with more than one voice.
Full paper is here.
