Progressive Uruguay: Between Sovereignty and Biocontrol

Abstract

Since having carried out a long ethnographic research process with extremely poor drug users, I outline the paths of treatment provided by different Uruguayan State sectors to citizens who are marginally situated: extremely impoverished, imprisoned or problematic drug users. On the one hand, Uruguay is a country considered liberal and progressive, during the last years laws that regulate the access to cannabis, same-sex marriage and voluntary interruption of pregnancy have been passed. On the other hand, the country has a tutelary and watchful facet that demands obedience from subjects in order to actually habilitate their exercise of some rights and the access to care. Likewise other countries do, the Uruguayan State debates whether to submit to sovereignty threats, or to the practicing of contemporary forms of biopower control.