Candombe National Day, Uruguay

The National Day of Candombe, Afro-Uruguayan Culture and Racial Equity is celebrated in Uruguay every December 3, since 2006. The date recalls December 3, 1978 when, spontaneously, the candombe drums in "llamada" sounded for the last time in the famous Conventillo Mediomundo in Montevideo, condemned to demolition by the civic-military dictatorship that ruled the country.

According to the exposition of the Law 18059 that instituted this celebration, "what happened that day was a spontaneous act with much of homage of farewell to one of the inspiring cradles of candombe, of commitment with its legacy, and also with much of rejection and resistance to an arbitrariness loaded with the racism of those who maintained that the blacks and their drums impoverished the city, and could not live in the center of Montevideo damaging its particular tourist and real estate attractiveness". It had the decisive support of Afro-Uruguayan legislator Edgardo Ortuño.