Polish Uruguayans

Polish Uruguayans
Polscy-Urugwajczycy
Polco-Uruguayos
Total population
497-5,000 Poles reside in Uruguay; 50,000–70,000 Uruguayans with Polish ancestry (%4) of Uruguay's popoulation
Regions with significant populations
Montevideo
Languages
Spanish, with minority speaking Polish
Religion
Roman Catholicism and Judaism
Related ethnic groups
Polish Argentine, Polish Brazilians, Polish Chileans, White Latin Americans
Ioannes Paulus II Chapel in Montevideo.

A Polish Uruguayan is a Uruguayan citizen of full or partial Polish ancestry.

The Polish arrived in Uruguay at the end of the 19th century. [1] The most recent figure is from the 2011 Uruguayan census, which revealed 497 people who declared Poland as their country of birth.[2] Other sources claim around 5,000 Poles in Uruguay. Similar to neighboring country Argentina, often, Poles came when the Germans and the Russians ruled Poland and so were known as "Germans" or "Russians".

Most Polish Uruguayans belong to the Roman Catholic Church; they have their own chapel in the Atahualpa neighbourhood. There is also a significant Polish Jewish minority.[3]

Polish Uruguayans have two important institutions: the Polish Society Marshal Joseph Pilsudsky (Spanish: Sociedad Polonesa Mariscal José Pilsudski), established in 1915, and the Uruguayan Polish Union (Spanish: Unión Polono Uruguaya), established in 1935,[1] both associated with USOPAL.[4]

  1. ^ a b "Centennial of the arrival of Poles to Uruguay". Correo Uruguayo. Retrieved 14 December 2014. (in Spanish)
  2. ^ "Immigration to Uruguay" (PDF). INE. Retrieved 6 March 2013. (in Spanish)
  3. ^ "100 years of Jewish institutional presence in Uruguay" (PDF). ORT Uruguay. Retrieved 21 May 2019. (in Spanish)
  4. ^ USOPAL Archived 2016-07-01 at the Wayback Machine (in Spanish)