Deuda, trabajo y coerción. Las experiencias de colonización canaria en el Estado Oriental del Uruguay (1830-1843)

This article analyzes the experiences of colonization from the Canary Islands driven by private entrepreneurs and backed by the Uruguayan State during the 1830s. This was a special type of immigration, close to indenture servitude, where individuals moving across the continents signed a contract that forced them to keep working in Uruguay until the debt they had incurred (the cost of their maritime passage) was repaid. The Uruguayan State, through the police, was both the guarantor and enforcer of these contracts