The Invocation to God in the Preamble of the Uruguayan Constitution

Historical development

Abstract

This article addresses the issue of the invocation to God in the Preamble of the Constitution in the Eastern Republic of Uruguay. To do this, through constitutional history, we analyze how this invocation was forged in the first confessional Charter of 1830, and how it was eliminated in the reform that gave rise to the Constitution of 1918, which separated the State from the Catholic Church. Different historical moments and political and ideological contexts caused the name of God, along with the entire constitutional Preamble, to be suppressed. The discussion in the Constituent Convention, which gave rise to this decision, and which has as its background a long and profound process of secularization, clearly manifests the intention to marginalize the religious factor and segregate it from the public sphere.