‘We entered as blacks and we left as Afro-descendants’: tracing the path to affirmative action in Uruguay

ABSTRACT The path to successful passage of affirmative action legislation is quite narrow in Latin America, and has been especially challenging for black populations that cannot make territorial or exclusive cultural claims. Yet Uruguay, like Brazil, bucked these trends, coming to the position that racism is a problem about which something should be done. The passage of race-specific, national affirmative action legislation was the determined remedy, the first of its kind in any Latin American country. What explains this outcome? I trace the logic of argumentation that led from successful introduction to unanimous passage, finding that the path to legitimacy convened on three approaches. The argument positioned affirmative action as a form of reparation, designated it for a group whose existence as a conceptually identifiable and discrete population was not in question, and limited its temporal scope. This article contributes an analysis of the Uruguayan case, and outlines an alternative path to affirmative action in a region where such legislation remains uncommon. It speaks to the theoretical question of where, and under what conditions, specific group rights for an Afro-Latin population can accrue, and antipathy to racial recognition and treatment of inequity might be superseded.