Political border

The notion of border shares many similarities with what Anderson (1983/2020) understands by “imagined communities”. Nation, like border, is a social construct that emerges from decisions that are taken largely at the political level. In the case of the border dividing the northern departments of Uruguay (Artigas, Rivera and Cerro Largo) with the Brazilian state of Rio Grande del Sur, the border can be considered “an imaginary line”. In fact, what is currently known as northern Uruguay is, as Elizaincín (1987: 33) describes it, “the product of a constant diplomatic and military struggle between Spain and Portugal”. The reasons for this situation, as well as the historical events that led to it, are numerous and can be consulted in the bibliographical references indicated below (cf. Carvalho 2003: 126 for historical references). However, it is worth mentioning two of the main measures taken by Uruguay to stop Portuguese expansion and to counteract the Portuguese-speaking presence here: the founding of cities on the border between 1853 and 1862, including those currently known as Artigas and Rivera; compulsory schooling and predominantly Spanish-based education (Coll 2009: 242-243; Elizaincín 1987: 39). This latter issue is crucial, because on the basis of the Ley de la Educación Común (Reglamento de Instrucción Pública) (Law of Common Education, Regulation of Public Instruction), promoted by Professor José Pedro Varela in 1877, education in the “national language” was imposed in all educational centres across the country. While Portuguese was not eliminated entirely, it is true that it began to be seen as less prestigious. On the social level, this led to a situation of diglossia (Ferguson 1959; Fishman 1967; 1972) in which Spanish came to be the language of the educational system, among other functions, while the northern varieties of Portuguese in Uruguay were relegated to situations of communicative immediacy (cf. Koch/Oesterreicher 2007), that is, mainly to family environments. It is, therefore, a young frontier if one compares it to the situation in the Iberian Peninsula, where the kingdoms were already delimited when linguistic development began (cf. Ossenkop 2012).

The seminal work of Rona (1965) reported the presence of varieties of Portuguese in the north and paved the way for numerous subsequent studies (cf. Hensey 1972; Elizaincín / Behares 1981; Elizaincín / Behares / Barrios 1987; Elizaincín 1992; 2008; Carvalho 1998; 2003; 2007; among others) that in general have limited themselves to discussing (a) possible terms (fronterizo – border, Dialectos Portugueses del Uruguay – Portuguese dialects of Uruguay (DPU), Uruguayan Portuguese; cf. Brovetto 2014) and (b) different typological classifications (bilingual or mixed dialect, dialect within a pre-pidgin continuum, a dialectal diffusion continuum between rural Uruguayan Portuguese and urban Brazilian Portuguese; cf. Carvalho 2003: 127-129). Most authors agree with what Steffen and Steffen (2022: 199) point out: “[…], the Portuguese of the area lacks an established norm and shows a high degree of instability and variability”.

For more information see: Garrido Sánchez-Andrade, Bárbara (2023): “La frontera de Artigas (Uruguay): hacia una propuesta de cómo abordar el estudio de perfiles sociolingüísticos fronterizos”, en: Revista Internacional de Lingüística Iberoamericana XXI, 2 (42), pp. 115-130, in addition to the following references: