Gloria Rodríguez, an Afro-Uruguayan in the Uruguayan Senate

Text by: Théo Conscience

At 60, Gloria Rodríguez Santo became the first woman of African descent to be elected to the Senate in Uruguay. She hopes that her election will advance the fight against racial and sexual discrimination in politics.

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With our correspondent in Montevideo,

His swearing in of the Senate sparked thunderous applause from all ranks. Gloria Rodríguez Santo, all dressed in white, became the first Afro-Uruguayan to be elected to the Senate last month. " Unfortunately, I am the first black senator ", she tempers to recall that beyond the symbol, her election underlines the road which remains to be covered so that the descendants of Africans have right of city in the Uruguayan politics .

Even though they represent 8% of the population, Afro-Uruguayans are almost invisible in politics. " Socially, there is still this idea that the black is there to serve others, denounces the neo-senator, whose ancestors arrived in Uruguay from the Congo. It has taken me decades to assert myself, because we blacks have to constantly demonstrate our worth. So many prejudices that this 60-year-old woman with laughing and benevolent eyes overcame thanks to her close commitment against poverty and racism.

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A committed adolescence

Very early on, Gloria Rodríguez rebelled against racism. As a teenager, she decided to defy the segregation that still existed in some nightlife establishments in her hometown of Melo, 50 kilometers from the Brazilian border. “ I have always been animated by a rebellion in the sense:“ why couldn't I do that? ”, But my parents raised me without resentment towards the other . "

Coming from a very modest family, she claims to have never lacked anything, " neither love nor food ". His parents, a police officer and a domestic worker, also passed on to him the taste for activism at the Partido Nacional. A commitment that she continues when she has to come and settle in Montevideo in 1991, so that one of her sons can undergo medical treatment. " When I arrived, I was hopeful," she recalls. But campaigning in a small town in the interior of the country and in the capital are two very different things. "

"Being one more neighbor"

When she disembarks in Montevideo accompanied by her 96-year-old great-grandmother and her sons Claudio and Christian, she settles in the underprivileged district of Malvín Norte. " It was a place where it was difficult to speak politically if you didn't claim to be from the left," she recalls. People were hiding a bit . ” The activist of the Partido Nacional, classified on the right , then begins a work of undermining to prejudice " by living in the same district, living the same reality as the others, by being one more neighbor ".

It is also committed to helping the most disadvantaged. In 2002, Uruguay was hit hard by the economic crisis from Argentina. Over 40% of the population finds itself below the poverty line. Many in Malvín Norte lose their jobs, and families often struggle to feed themselves. “ We removed the“ Partido Nacional ”sign from our political office, and we transformed it into a free canteen. We served up to 300 meals a day. It was open to everyone, there was no question of asking the people for whom they had voted. We all had to be united to get out of it. "

This proximity and this ability to transcend partisan affiliations made her known and respected in Malvín Norte. So much so that in 2014, she was elected member of the constituency, already a first for an Afro-Uruguayan. Now a senator, she is campaigning for her party, which won the last presidential election, to appoint Afro-Uruguayans to key executive positions. “ There are lots of black people who would be up to it, you just have to give them the opportunity. "

Breaking glass ceilings

The problem of under-representation in politics also affects women. And this is the other big fight of Gloria Rodríguez. In her office in the Senate, she hung a painting representing the poet Juana De Ibarbourou, born in Melo, like her. " A great woman, a feminist activist, who transcribed the feminine condition through poetry, " explains the senator, contemplating the portrait of the first woman that Uruguay honored with national mourning when she died in 1999.

Gloria Rodríguez is also a pioneer. On March 10, she became the first woman to be elected Deputy Speaker of the Senate. But here again, she does not want her case to overshadow the lack of parity in Uruguayan politics. With only 19.2% of women elected to Parliament, Uruguay is one of the poor students of the Latin American continent . And if for the first time in the country's history, a woman was elected to the Vice-Presidency of the Republic last November, only two out of 12 ministries are headed by women in the new government.

A draft law on parity in politics

For Gloria Rodríguez, such a situation is unworthy of a country where the right to vote for women has been enshrined in the Constitution since 1919. This is why on March 10 she tabled a bill aiming to impose parity on all women. electoral lists. “ I myself entered politics thanks to the law on the participation of women [which guarantees them a third of the places on the electoral lists], but it is time to go further. "

The other challenge ahead is to improve the application of the positive discrimination law, which is supposed to reserve 8% of public jobs for people of color. In both cases, the neo-senator intends to use her position so that " the election of a woman or an Afro-Uruguayan woman will never be news, be it natural." It is my mission . ”

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