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Virginia Brindis de Salas (September 18, 1908–April 6, 1958) was an Afro-Uruguayan activist, writer and poet. She was the first published Black woman writer of Uruguay.

Biography by Jaedyn Griddine

Español: Imagen que acompaña la única edición del libro "Cien cárceles de amor", de Virginia Brindis de Salas (1908-1958), de 1949.
English: Image that accompanies the only edition of the book "One Hundred Prisons of Love", by Virginia Brindis de Salas (1908-1958), from 1949. Public Domain. Wikipedia.

Uruguay, the site of years of struggle by Afro-Latinx people against colonialism and racial and ethnic inequality, is where Virginia Brindis de Salas’ story takes place. What took place during her early years remains mostly unknown, but her Afro-Uruguayan identity and extensive career as a writer-activist are well-known and cherished by the global African Diaspora.

Virginia started her career as a writer for Nuestra Raza (1917-1948), an Afro-Uruguayan magazine in which she disseminated many of her poems. This magazine was more than a creative outlet, it was also part of a greater Latin American political movement known as the Negritude movement. This movement was an extension of the Pan-African movements taking place around the globe at the time, thus it was characterized by the production of media and theory, such as Virginia’s work, which sought to instill a sense of pride in Black communities and counteract white hegemony by reconnecting Black communities across state borders under a singular “Black” identity. The purpose of Nuestra Raza was two-fold, and this could be said of the Negritude movement as well: 1) to create a Black-owned intellectual hub for Black politics and culture, and 2) to speak out against oppression and critique postcolonial society. In addition to her contributions to the magazine, Virginia was politically and culturally active both on a community level and in a larger sense with her co-founding the anti-fascist political party Partido Autóctono Negro (PAN), which was the last pro-Black political party in the country. She then published her first book of poetry, Pregón de Marimorena (The Call of Mary Morena), in 1946, making her the first published Black poet in all of South America; in 1949, she published her second and final book Cien Cárceles de Amor (One Hundred Prisons of Love), and hinted at a third, Cantos de Lejanía (Songs from Faraway), that was never released. Her works were largely ignored by her country, but have become more largely recognized thanks to the work of Black researchers, archivists and activists.

Virginia’s poetry can be described as a declaration of her fervent pride in her Black identity, an homage to Afro-Uruguayan tradition, and an assertion of her position outside the norm of poetry at the time, which strayed away from discussions of race. Her Black consciousness materialized in her words; she wrote of the unequal conditions of Afro-Uruguayans and of the necessity for change, of Black womanhood, of the beauty of Blackness, structured around the prégon, a form of communication practiced by Black workers during colonial times, and free verse. Her rebellious nature set her apart from her contemporaries and ostracized her from her country, but her voice was found in other places around the world; there is evidence that her works were read in the United States during the era of the Pan-African movement, and even in Germany in the 1950’s. She undoubtedly was influential in the Pan-African and Negritude movements, in the lives of her Afro-Uruguayan community, and in the collective Black consciousness of the African Diaspora.

Sources:

Black Native Party: The Political Party That Once Gave Afro-Uruguayan People Hope by Parker Diakite
Biography of the Afro-Uruguayan writer Virginia Brindis de Salas by archyde
Virginia Brindis de Salas by Joy Elizondo for Oxford African American Studies
Virginia Brindis de Salas by Juliette Maiorana

Virginia Brindis de Salas

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GRAPHICS TO SHARE ON SOCIAL MEDIA: VIRGINIA BRINDIS DE SALAS