something from Uruguay You can read the letters when you get off. One of the smallest and least densely populated countries on Earth, the country consists almost entirely of a single grassland, loosely spread out and virtually uninterrupted by cities and landmarks. Hmm. Its highest point, Cerro Catedral, reaches 1,685 feet. The cow to human ratio is 4 to 1. Its official name, República Oriental del Uruguay, or Republic east of the Uruguay River, seems to understate its relationship with Argentina. From Montevideo, like a funhouse that reflects a bustling metropolis. Flat, quiet and often overlooked, this country has been called the ‘fat cow’s paradise’.
The sky was full of low clouds when we landed in early December. In Montevideo, a sea breeze blew through boulevards lined with eucalyptus trees and old Art Deco apartments. After a year of restrictions, cafes were open and busy, and the wealthy were already leaving for the summer resort of Punte del Este. People walked along the Rio de la Plata, the Atlantic Ocean to the east of the city, on what is called Las Ramblas, separated from the beach by a crumbling brick seawall.
In the Cerro neighborhood west of downtown, I sat under a painting of a jaguar in Maria Esther Francia’s living room. Francia was thin, she was 71, she wore matching patterned pants and a blouse, and her dark hair was held loosely by oversized glasses. Her former activist and health worker has been a close observer of her Uruguayan past and wanted to know what she thought of Uruguay’s future. Her paintings, mostly landscapes and animals, were displayed throughout her small apartment. They suggested an undercurrent. Emerald prairies stretched across the bright horizon, and ghostly figures struggled in the muddy caverns below. Francia told me that she did not know what direction Uruguay would take in the future.
Francia grew up in Salto, on the Argentinian border, before moving to Montevideo in the 1960s. At that time, Uruguay was prosperous but troubled. The nascent social democracy was so unequal that a Marxist-Leninist group called the Tupamaros began robbing banks to distribute money to the poor. “What I worked and earned was not enough to eat,” said Francia. Focus (about half of its 3.5 million population lives in Montevideo) has long provided Uruguay with a collective sense of purpose. rapid boiling. One of his famous Tupamaros slogans is “Either everyone dances or nobody dances.”
In 1969, just three months after Francia got married, her husband, Alfredo Curtelli, was murdered in the so-called Pando robbery. Four years later, during her time in prison, Francia learned that her army had dissolved Parliament. The ruling military junta, which has suspended voting rights, has adopted a neoliberal economic agenda inspired by the Chicago School and began conducting a widespread terrorist campaign. The twin policy almost destroyed the small country. Industrial productivity initially surged as the military cut tariffs and social rights. But all this growth came at a price. As the writer Eduardo Galeano once said, “In Uruguay people were in jail so that prices would be free.” Exiled and an estimated 1 in 500 he was imprisoned. It was the highest rate of political incarceration in the world, and many were tortured, including Francia.
Then, in 1982, the economy bottomed out. The peso collapsed and the economy shrank by 16% in two years. When Francia returned from her 1985 Swedish political asylum, she found the once-prosperous country unrecognizable. The streets were so deserted that residents joked that “the last man in the country turned off the lights.” Unemployment and poverty fluctuated wildly in the decades that followed, as Brazil and Argentina struggled to free the nations from the weight of their collapsing economies and past.
In 2009, Uruguay elected an unexpected leader, José Mujica. A former baker’s assistant and flower merchant, Mujica was infamous as one of his leaders of the Tupamaros guerrillas, who carried out at least one bank robbery until he was shot and arrested in 1970. I was having a good time. Twice he suffered torture and long suffering in deep-well solitary confinement. After being elected, the populist folk Mujica’s image as his hero was further honed by his deep dedication to social welfare and simplicity. Abandoning his homeless-opened presidential palace, he chose to continue living on his chrysanthemum farm, donating 90% of his salary to charity, and driving a 1987 Volkswagen his Beetle. I drove up to the Houses of Parliament. Today, he is considered quintessentially Uruguayan, not only in Uruguay, but around the world.