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Uruguay RELIGION
Roman Catholicism was the dominant religion in Uruguay,
but
Uruguay had long been a secular society. In 1981 the
nation was
divided into 221 parishes and had 204 diocesan priests. In
addition, there were 374 monks and 1,580 nuns. About
threequarters of all babies were baptized in the church. In the
1963
census, 62 percent of Uruguayans had declared themselves
Catholics. However, according to data compiled by the
Uruguayan
Bishops Conference in 1978, only 105,248 citizens
regularly
attended mass. This figure represented less than 4 percent
of the
population. Attendance at mass was, however, slightly
higher in
the interior of the country and substantially higher among
women.
There was also evidence that religious observance was
higher
among the upper classes than among the middle and lower
strata of
society. In the late 1980s, an estimated 66 percent of
Uruguayans
were professed Roman Catholics, but less than half of the
adult
population attended church regularly.
Uruguay's secularization began with the relatively
minor role
of the church in the colonial era, compared with other
parts of
the Spanish Empire. The small numbers of Uruguay's
Indians, and
their fierce resistance to proselytization, reduced the
influence
of the ecclesiastical authorities. After independence,
anticlerical ideas spread to Uruguay, particularly from
France,
further eroding the influence of the church. In 1837 civil
marriage was recognized, and in 1861 the state took over
public
cemeteries. In 1907 divorce was legalized, and in 1909 all
religious instruction was banned from state schools. Under
the
influence of the radical Colorado reformer José Batlle y
Ordóñez
(1903-07, 1911-15), complete separation of church and
state was
introduced with the new constitution of 1917. Batlle y
Ordóñez
went as far as to have religious holidays legally renamed.
Even
as of 1990, Uruguayans referred to Holy Week as "Tourism
Week."
Nevertheless, the separation of church and state ended
religious conflict in Uruguay, and since that time
Catholic
schools have been allowed to flourish. A Catholic party,
the
Civic Union of Uruguay (Unión Cívica del Uruguay--UCU),
was
founded in 1912 but never won more than a low percentage
of the
national vote. By the 1960s, the progressive trend in the
worldwide church was strongly felt in Uruguay under the
influence
of Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI. Particularly
influential was
the 1968 Latin American Bishops Conference in Medellín,
Colombia,
at which the concept of "structural sin" was put forward.
By this
doctrine, evil was seen as existing not only in the
actions of
individuals but also in the unequal organization of entire
societies. The second Latin American Bishops Conference,
held in
Mexico in 1979, also had an important dynamizing and
radicalizing
impact in Uruguay. This time, the bishops called for a
"preferential option for the poor." Sections of the
Uruguayan
church in fact became quite radical: when members of the
National
Liberation Movement-Tupamaros (Movimiento de Liberación
NacionalTupamaros --MLN-T) were given amnesty in 1985, for a time
they
were housed in a Montevideo monastery while they
readjusted to
normal life.
One symptom of the growing progressive trend in the
Uruguayan
Catholic movement was the decision of the UCU to adopt the
name
Christian Democratic Party (Partido Demócrata
Cristiano--PDC) in
1962. The new-found social conscience was strongly
influenced by
French Catholic philosophers--first Jacques Maritain and
later
Father Lebret. During the 1960s, the PDC moved further and
further left, eventually espousing a form of
"communitarian
socialism" under its brilliant young leader, Juan Pablo
Terra. In
1971 the PDC allied with the Communist Party of Uruguay
and the
Socialist Party of Uruguay to form the so-called Broad
Front
alliance. That caused conservative Catholics to form the
Civic
Union (Unión Cívica--UC) to offer religious voters a
nonradical
alternative, but the UC scarcely achieved any influence
(see Political Parties
, ch. 4).
During the twentieth century, Protestant sects began to
grow
in importance. Estimates put the Protestant proportion of
the
population at 2 percent or a little higher in the late
1980s.
From 1960 to 1985, the number of Protestants is estimated
to have
increased by 60 percent. Over the same period, the number
of
Protestants grew 500 percent or more in many Latin
American
countries. Uruguay was thus considered a "disappointment"
by
evangelical crusaders.
Jews constituted a small proportion of the population
(about
2 percent), with most living in Montevideo. The size of
the
Jewish community had dwindled since 1970, primarily
because of
emigration.
* * *
Very little has been published in English on Uruguayan
society in recent years. Simon Gabriel Hanson's Utopia
in
Uruguay, published in 1938, provides a detailed
history of
social and economic reforms in the first three decades of
the
twentieth century. Russell H. Fitzgibbon's Uruguay:
Portrait
of a Democracy paints a rosy picture of Uruguay in the
golden
years of prosperity and social peace prior to the
mid-1950s.
George Pendle's Uruguay: South America's First Welfare
State examines this period more concisely.
English-language
works discussing the crisis of Uruguay's welfare state in
the
1960s include Marvin Alisky's Uruguay: A Contemporary
Survey and M.H.J. Finch's more detailed and scholarly
A
Political Economy of Uruguay since 1870. Martin
Weinstein's
1975 book on the rise of authoritarianism, Uruguay: The
Politics of Failure, and his more recent volume on the
return
to democracy, Uruguay: Democracy at the Crossroads,
provide ample information on the social situation.
Many of the most useful recent sources are journal
articles
or chapters in edited volumes. Arturo C. Porzecanski
contributed
a chapter on the problems of the Uruguayan welfare state
to
Carmelo Mesa-Lago's Social Security in Latin
America.
Lauren Benton discusses the evolution of housing and
planning in
Montevideo under military rule in "Reshaping the Urban
Core."
Alejandro Portes, Silvia Blitzer, and John Curtis examine
the
growth of the informal economy in Montevideo households in
"The
Urban Informal Sector in Uruguay." Graciela Taglioretti
traces
the increasing participation rate of women in the labor
force in
Women and Work in Uruguay. Among many important
works,
distinguished Uruguayan sociologist Aldo Solari and young
colleague Rolando Franco have published an article on
higher
education, "Equality of Opportunities and Elitism in the
Uruguayan University." The same authors contributed a
chapter on
"The Family in Uruguay" to Man Singh Das and Clinton J.
Jesser's
The Family in Latin America.
An extremely valuable source is Finch's Uruguay.
Statistical data are available in various editions of the
Uruguayan government publication Anuario
estadístico. (For
further information and complete citations,
see
Bibliography.)
Data as of December 1990
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