The predecessors of anarchism appeared as early as June 1841, in which author Marcelino Pareja published an anti-capitalist article in a Montevideo newspaper that cited William Godwin.
In 1851 the botanist and friend of Proudhon José Ernesto Gibert was exiled to Uruguay from France due to his participation in the revolution of 1848.
[1] In 1875, the "Regional Federation of the Eastern Republic of Uruguay" was founded in Montevideo on the initiative of French and Spanish revolutionaries, exiled following the destruction of the Paris Commune and the Cantonal Revolution respectively.
However, the FORU began to lose strength after the Russian Revolution in 1917, as the newly founded Communist Party of Uruguay divided the workers.
During the Spanish Civil War, Pedro Tufró (1904–1937) was executed by the communists for his membership in the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT).
[1] Several Uruguayan anarchists were victims of Operation Condor in Argentina and Uruguay (1975–1983) such as Alberto Mechoso, Elena Quinteros, Lilián Celiberti and María Emilia Islas.