Vertientes culturales

Cultural aspects

The colonizers who founded Montevideo in the 18th century and the subsequent waves of immigrants that followed one another throughout our history brought their customs, their culture, their art, their artistic expressions and their carnival with them.

The African ancestors who arrived in this territory as a result of the brutal slave trade beginning in the 16th century brought rhythms and languages ​​that, over time, were incorporated into the country’s social customs and carnival festivities, harmonizing the artistic and the traditional, reinterpreting its original meanings.

In the “tablados” (open-air theatres) at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, “criollo” (Uruguayan folk) and immigrant rhythms followed one another, which helped in forging a common identity for the budding society.

Since then, following various changes in society, successive generations of Uruguayans have been making their carnival an incomparable festival of popular, musical and street theater with a strong competitive profile. The festivity became the first massive space that Uruguayan society had to see and think of themselves on stage.