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INTRODUCTION

The commemoration and celebration of Montevideo's 300th anniversary cannot be imagined without the leading role played by social organisations and residents of the city's various neighbourhoods. Citizen participation is therefore essential, based on the understanding that society as a whole is the author of history, the construction of memory and historical reparation. Similarly, decentralisation is another fundamental aspect of the celebrations.

That is why, from the outset, everyone participated in and helped to organise the activities proposed to commemorate the city's anniversary. It was them, who made the decision to create their own events, to understand this commemoration as a space to introduce invisible debates, to recover collective memory, and to reclaim acquired rights. In this way, they made visible the threads that make up Montevideo’s rich social weave.

As a result of this dialogue, which involved a large number of meetings and exchanges, each of the social movements was able to identify “places of memory”, significant to the history of their respective collectives, anchored in the territory through commemorative plaques which offer key introductory information about each of them.

French historian Pierre Nora defined “places of memory” as physical or symbolic sites that embody the history and identity of a community, including both material aspects such as forms of construction and transmission of memory, and even intangible events that have left a mark on the collective memory. Each “place of memory” thus becomes a symbol that encapsulates and represents important aspects of a society's past. These places can act as reference points for cultural identity, historical memory and continuity over time.

They serve as physical witnesses to the past, providing a tangible connection to historical events, allowing individuals to feel part of a cultural heritage, as well as facilitating the transmission of identity, in so far as they represent values, achievements and challenges that social movements have faced over time. Identification with these places can strengthen the sense of belonging and solidarity among community members by offering a shared narrative that unites generations.

It is clear that any memory operation is fraught with omissions and always reflects an unstable and contingent present. Things considered meeting points for dialogue and reflection by a social movement which chooses to highlight or transform, reflect the current values and visions of the future held by each of the four movements addressed. Places of memory are not only witnesses to history, but also actively shape the way a society perceives, interprets, and relates to its past. For this reason, this proposal will continue to draw on new places and even relegate some already identified ones, confirming how memory is a living and dynamic process, in dialogue with a changing society and its relationship with the past.

Finally, this initiative ultimately seeks to rescue these social memories that were key in the forging of our city, promoting both the appreciation of cultural heritage and social and cultural tourism, while connecting in the process different generations and enriching the understanding of Montevideo's transformation and growth over time.

HUELLAS FEMINISTAS (FEMINIST TRACES)

Feminist footprints in the territory.

Women have been the driving force behind change in all the processes undergone by our city.

How can we pay tribute to those who fought before us?

Montevideo is a city of change. Over its 300 years, the space has fluctuated, forcing ways of life to adapt to multiple situations. In each of these revolutions, women were the driving force behind change. They were the ones who organised, coordinated, and wove support networks. They were always there, despite being repeatedly relegated from spaces of visibility.

In these 300 years, with Montevideo as a witness to the coordinations of those who came before us, we want to leave a mark on the entire territory of those scenarios of change. How did women organise themselves in a city that oppressed them but also managed to liberate them?

We cannot think of the women of Montevideo as a single group, therefore diversity is part of this story: women from all social strata, all professions, neighbourhoods, ideals, and ethnic and racial identities. It is necessary to understand the mapping of the history of feminism from its plurality and to get a glimpse of the links that have been generated between all the spaces in Montevideo, creating a great constellation.

To this end, we will begin to think about places of memory, spaces where memory crystallises and anchors itself in the territory, condenses and expresses something that happened, refreshing the memory of the city in the voices of its protagonists. Only by recalling can we inhabit our city to its full potential, walking through the places that witnessed women's encounters. This process of marking feminist footprints in the territory is an exercise in heritage recovery, placing those who led great processes of change at the center of our imagination.

So we have only mentioned a few events from these vast 300 years.

How many stories remain to be recovered?

Let us explore our city thoroughly, for those who are no longer here and for those who are yet to come.

MEMORIAS DISIDENTES (Dissident memories)

MONTEVIDEO HAS ALWAYS BEEN DIVERSE

Amidst silences and forgetfulness, diversity appears and reappears throughout Montevideo's 300 years history and its territory.

Montevideo has always been diverse, although that diversity is rarely the focus of its history. In its 300 years, the city has witnessed both repression and growing acceptance of dissent. It has witnessed persecution, hatred, and ostracism, and it has seen those who have confronted them, reversing serious inequalities and gaps in access to basic rights.

Little is known about this facet of Montevideo's past. But oral tradition, newspapers, judicial, police, and hospital archives, private correspondence, and photographs confirm that sexual and gender dissidents have always been fighting for a place, struggling from the margins to queerize the space, to make it their own based on their own logic and feelings.

These acts of resistance and struggle left their mark on the community. It was precisely this indolent and stubborn memory that resisted the erasure and symbolic annihilation of the presence of sexual and gender dissidence in the city, and which today, through various participatory and consultative bodies with the sexual diversity movement and community leaders, has defined these places of memory.

Each of these places tells us about episodes and spaces that allowed identities and bonds to be forged, building a “we” and a collective struggle that, over the decades, has positioned this city as a pioneer in Latin America in the recognition of the human rights of the LGNTNBIQA+ population.

With democracy on the horizon, in September 1984, Escorpio was founded, the first of many social organisations focused on LGBTIQ+ identities in Uruguay. Since then, these groups have been calling for care, visibility, and inclusion for dissidents.

The fruit of this work, in addition to the rights acquired and growing social acceptance, is evident in the prominent place that the March for Diversity now occupies in Montevideo's social and cultural agenda. What began as a small gathering in 1992 and a march of 500 people in 1993 is now a massive celebration of the diversity of our society, still calling attention to the problems that persist.

Clearly, the journey did not begin in 1984, but what came before? Silence and secrecy. Previously, meeting places were movie theatres and café bathrooms, beaches, private parties, boarding houses and motels, and in general, Montevideo's avenues and nightlife. There was a certain tolerance, as long as dissent remained behind closed doors. They recognised each other, some formed couples, but they kept that side of their lives a deep secret.

Not everyone stayed in the closet. There were those who decided to challenge the cisheteronormative norm when acceptance was not yet commonplace, some even when “sodomy” was a crime. Naturally, cultural figures stand out. Writers, dancers, actresses. Some are already well known, others whose dissidence seems to have been silenced by critics and art historians.

There is a dark side to this, a side of both social and state repression of dissent. As early as 1923, the chief of police declared his intention to rid the city of “effeminate men.” Even after “sodomy” was decriminalized, dissident populations continued to be victims of ‘sanitary’ arrests in the name of “public order,” and were also caught up in the persecution of clandestine prostitution, which many had to resort to as their only means of earning a living.

Oppressive tolerance opened the door to extortion and the publication of lists in magazines and newspapers, as well as hatred and sensationalism. Many lost their jobs and homes, while others were victims of hate crimes. Things got worse with the arrival of the dictatorship, which once again proposed to “clean up” the city of “the pernicious activity of homosexuality.” The first cases of HIV in 1983 contributed to stigmatisation and persecution once democracy had returned.

Against this backdrop and reality, the first social organisations emerged in 1984, which in the recent past, and especially since the turn of the millennium, would not only increase social acceptance but also achieve a series of political and legal victories.

Much of the memory of Montevideo's diversity has already been lost. The further back in time one goes, the more it appears just as vestiges, as assumptions. There is no doubt, however, that our history is much more diverse than we tend to believe.

LATIDO AFRO (Afro beat)

Montevideo: A territory that is recovering its memory, building its identity, and pulsating with its own protagonists, such as the Afro-descendant population, through their contributions and ancestral legacy.

Let yourself be carried away by the beat and roar of the drum that makes bodies vibrate, just as every past and/or present story still invisible in the places that witnessed the resistance and resilience of the Afro community in Montevideo.

Afro culture and its contributions as part of Montevideo's identity for the construction of a collective memory are indispensable for promoting justice, recognition, and the development of Afro descendant people.

The population dynamics generated encounters and disagreements. People and their culture shaped what is now part of our Uruguayan identity.

The commercial interests of 18th-century Europe led to contact between people who were geographically distant and had diverse cultures. Forced exchanges, a consequence of human trafficking, established a system of enslavement for the trade of Africans who were brought in through Montevideo´s port. This trade fundamentally enriched the European powers, their descendants, and Creoles from aristocratic families in Montevideo´s society through its dual activity: the transatlantic trade of enslaved Africans who were sold to other American regions and those who remained as slaves in eastern territory to perform various tasks, putting their bodies to work in order to meet the demands of their masters and mistresses.

The Africans who remained in the eastern territory had to perform various tasks such as: the construction of forts and dwellings, participation as soldiers in the armies of the eastern revolution, street vending, domestic tasks in homes and the care and feeding of European and Creole children.

Invisible groups in Uruguayan society, such as Afro-descendant social organisations, have managed to vindicate their cultural contributions to our country's identity through collective and organised struggle. This is how they have gained recognition in the capital city spaces through places of memory.

From the port of Montevideo as a place of entry and distribution of enslaved Africans, passing through the hamlet of Filipinas (or hamlet of the blacks) as a quarantine area, and stopping at the Plaza Matriz (today Plaza Constitución) opposite to the Cabildo with its prison for punishments; we can learn about the fundamental aspects to which these people were subjected as a result of the transatlantic slave trade, which today is recognized as a crime against humanity under international law and Uruguayan national legislation (Art. No. 1 Law 19.122). On the tour along Montevideo´s eastern coast, we find: the “Cubo del Sur”, a meeting place where art, culture, and religion came to life for exchange, resistance, resilience, and enjoyment among the different African nations in the territory; then the Sur and Palermo neighbourhoods, where the rhythms of candombe crystallized their identity and became the most important cultural expression of the Afro-Uruguayan community, as well as the sites that were designated for Afro-Uruguayans in the so-called tenements such as Medio Mundo (Barrio Sur) and Reus al Sur (Ansina). Leaving what was once the walled city in colonial times, we find the Pocitos beach where the stream of the same name (now piped) flowed into the sea: a place for washing clothes, a task performed by Afro descendant women since colonial times until the appearance of laundries run by entrepreneurs. This route along Montevideo´s coastline has an educational, historical, and touristic significance for the Afro community that has made history in the city.

On the way along Wilson Boulevard between Parque Rodó and Punta Carretas, Nelson Mandela Park reaffirms the awareness and vindication of an anti-racist society where public policies toward Afro-descendant populations have long been overlooked, as have their contributions to the construction of Uruguay's identity.

MONTEVIDEO OBRERA

In Montevideo, throughout its 300 years of history, we will always find labour traces . Out of these traces emerges, far from fading away, the memory of its protagonists.

In Montevideo's 300 years, labour has been an inescapable thread of continuity. Its history has been accompanied by an enormous tradition of labour organisation of workers who built Montevideo with their labour and continue to do so today.

The labour movement emerged in Montevideo in the last third of the 19th century with experiences that consolidated in its bosom solidarity as the initial matrix of its genesis. The various forms adopted by its organisations and the different tactics that led them, in many cases, to achieve their objectives, were an essential part of a process that, in the mid-1960s, after the creation of the National Confederation of Workers (CNT), had already marked the long road towards union unification.

This process, far from being linear, began in the early years of the 20th century with the formation of various federations and trade union confederations, and continued until the commemoration of May 1st, 1984. Reaffirming ideological pluralism as one of its defining characteristics, that International Workers' Day synthesized the union between the PIT (Plenary Inter-Union Workers' Council) and the CNT, under the slogan “One union movement.”

Resistance to the dictatorship in the historic general strike of 1973 saw Montevideo mobilised in response to the coup. The occupation of workplaces throughout the city was immediate, as was the persecution initiated by the armed forces in response to the workers' response.

Assemblies, strikes, occupations, mobilisations, and conflicts; resistance and persecution; victories and defeats—Montevideo witnessed all of these, and its inhabitants were its protagonists. Thus, for more than a century, the streets, corners, squares, industrial establishments, factories, and workshops were the scenario of one of the most significant movements—in terms of the scope of its demands—in our entire country.

Although we can identify the intersection of 18 de Julio and Libertador avenues as the nerve centre of the workers' protests, the entire city is inhabited by these memories, which are condensed in specific places on the map of Montevideo and spread to all its corners. On the ‘industrial itinerary’ that we can trace across Montevideo, we find smokeless chimneys that immortalise the changing face of our neighbourhoods.

Trams connected different parts of Montevideo, forming a network that linked the ‘expanding Montevideo.’ Entire neighbourhoods were built, driven by the industrial development that characterised the first half of the 20th century. As it expanded its boundaries, the city underwent a transformation. Meat processing plants, textile factories, tanneries, and major industries such as the Ancap refinery in La Teja, the Funsa tyre company in Villa Española, and the railway workshops in the Peñarol neighbourhood, established in 1890, set the pace for its inhabitants and served as unifying elements for the labour movement. Thus, to mention just a few examples, every part of the city tells the story of the labour movement. What remains of that memory today? What can those who lived and were an active part of this history tell us?