Religion
The Uruguayan State is secular, with absolute freedom of religion. The Church-State separation was established in the Constitution of 1919 as the culmination of a process of secularization that had begun in 1861 with the secularization of cemeteries and continued in 1877 with the approval of the Common Education Decree Law drafted by José Pedro Varela that established the non-compulsory nature of religious education in schools. There is in society a broad climate of tolerance towards different cults. The Constitution and the law prohibit discrimination on religious grounds.
Sports
The sport with the most followers in Uruguay is soccer. Basketball, cycling and rugby are also very popular.
Soccer
Soccer is by far the most popular sport in Uruguay. Despite being a small country in size and population, its teams have achieved great achievements in international competitions, the greatest achievements for this country being the two World Championships of 1930 (the first World Cup, played in Uruguay) and 1950 (played in Brazil, who was the favorite and lost the last game) and the gold medals obtained in the 1924 and 1928 Olympic Games. More recently, it is worth mentioning fourth place in the World Championship held in South Africa 2010. In addition, Uruguay has won the America’s Cup fifteen times and is the current champion of the 2011 America’s Cup.
Soccer is a lifestyle in Uruguay. The vast majority of Uruguayans are identified with a soccer team, mainly with one of the greats (Club Nacional de Fúbtol and Club Atlético Peñarol). Sundays are par excellence the days to practice this sport. Throughout the country, soccer matches are played, which are the subject of discussion in the streets throughout the week. Soccer is a culture in Uruguay, and its practice is usually seen almost anywhere in the country, from the Centenario Stadium to the streets of urban areas.
Basketball
At the national team level, Uruguay is the third team that has won the South American Tournament of this sport in the majors the most times, behind Brazil and Argentina, with a total of 12 titles. He also won two bronze medals at the 1952 Helsinki and 1956 Melbourne Olympics.
Cycling
It is a popular sport, which takes place in all departments. As route competitions, the Vuelta Ciclista del Uruguay and Rutas de América are traditional, which run throughout the country, with great adhesion from the public that receives them in each city. Various clubs from Uruguay and also from other American countries participate.
Tennis
According to physicscat.com, the most successful Uruguayan tennis players have been Diego Pérez (tennis player) Marcelo Filippini and Pablo Cuevas. Facundo Collete reached number 27 in the world ranking, Filippini for his part reached the 30th position on the world list in 1990 and reached the quarterfinals of the 1999 French Open. Cuevas was in 45th position in the world in 2009 and won the Roland Garros 2008 men’s doubles tournament reaching the 14th place in the doubles ranking.
Montevideo
Starting in 1750, the city of Montevideo began to receive from Africa an innumerable number of slaves who, although they came from the same continent, did so from very different ethnic groups. They were mostly from East Africa, Equatorial and Bantu, but also other areas of West Africa suffered the loss of their best young men and warriors.
From those years, millions of men of color became part of the repertoire of slaves and servants that the good families had, both in the city of Montevideo and in neighboring Buenos Aires (Argentina). All forced labor in America came to be carried out by slaves, men who were not only humiliated for centuries, but also lacked identity on the new continent.
Sad, lonely and aimless, they longed for their music, their religion, their customs and, above all, their land. Their masters, who many times even believed they were doing them a favor by allowing them to serve them, harshly punished any nostalgia or memory of that happy past.
Carnival was the only thing that helped them resist. From time to time, the slaves would recall their old African drums with which they performed their hunting, social or religious rites. This is how what today is called candombe would emerge: drum rhythm and dance whose origin we owe to these ethnic groups who arrived in the lands of the River Plate in Spanish and English boats. Before slavery was abolished, these men and women, with the permission of their masters, met in houses in the oldest part of Montevideo and there they reconnected with their own.
When freedom arrived, they began to gather in the poorest neighborhoods of the city, such as the neighborhoods of the South and Palermo, where the ancestral Calls were already being celebrated.
The presence in the Calls of the black lubolos was the best idea that the white man came up with to publicly apologize to his colored brothers for such barbarism and genocide. It is about white people who dress up as black to experience Carnival as they do.
