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Uruguay’s Quiet Democratic Miracle

Friday, February 12th 2016 - 07:10 UTC
Full article 22 comments
Uruguay ranks as the least corrupt and most democratic country in Latin America, and along with Chile, is rated as a “high income” country by the United Nations. Uruguay ranks as the least corrupt and most democratic country in Latin America, and along with Chile, is rated as a “high income” country by the United Nations.
Uruguay used to be known as the “Switzerland of South America,” in part because of its banking regulations, but mainly for deep respect for the rule of law. Uruguay used to be known as the “Switzerland of South America,” in part because of its banking regulations, but mainly for deep respect for the rule of law.
 “‘Nation’ is not a word we often use,” says the Uruguayan historian Gerardo Caetano. “We prefer republic.” “‘Nation’ is not a word we often use,” says the Uruguayan historian Gerardo Caetano. “We prefer republic.”
“I didn’t go to Pope Francis’ inauguration,” said ex president Mujica. “Why should I? Uruguay is a lay country. I respect Francis as a person and religious leader” “I didn’t go to Pope Francis’ inauguration,” said ex president Mujica. “Why should I? Uruguay is a lay country. I respect Francis as a person and religious leader”

By Uki Goñi -


”Because here nobody is better than anybody else.” The phrase, one of this small South American country’s most cherished sayings, dates back to the 19th century and is often repeated by its thinkers, presidents and everyday citizens. As a simple expression of the democratic spirit, it sums up how Uruguayans feel about their homeland.

 With only 3.3 million inhabitants, Uruguay is the smallest nation by population in Latin America. Its giant neighbor Brazil, by contrast, has a population of more than 200 million. But what it lacks in numbers, Uruguay makes up for by ranking as the least corrupt and most democratic country in Latin America — as well as only one of two, along with Chile, rated as a “high income” country by the United Nations.

Uruguay used to be known as the “Switzerland of South America,” in part because of its banking secrecy regulations. But the phrase also speaks to a deep respect for the rule of law.

In a region where democracy is increasingly tested by economic mismanagement, political corruption, drug cartels and environmental crises, Uruguay is the only Latin American country ranked among the world’s 20 “full democracies,” according to The Economist’s 2015 democracy index — ahead even, by one place, of the United States.

The passionate nationalism prevalent elsewhere, often whipped up by populist leaders intent on clinging to power beyond their allotted presidential terms, is refreshingly absent in Uruguay. It is a preference some of Uruguay’s neighbors would do well to emulate.

“‘Nation’ is not a word we often use,” says the Uruguayan historian Gerardo Caetano. “We prefer republic.”

Perhaps because of this, Uruguay scores perfect 10s on the indexes of civil liberties and electoral process, a feat equaled only by Norway and New Zealand. Argentina and Brazil, on the other hand, are far below, at 50th and 51st — among the world’s “flawed democracies,” a sorry indictment for the two proud but unruly economic powerhouses.

There is a flaw in Uruguay’s record, one that has left a historic mark. During the colonial period, the port of the capital, Montevideo, was a hub for the slave trade in South America. Today, the country has a large Afro-Uruguayan community — about 10 percent of the population is descended from slaves.

Fernando Nuñez, a percussionist, lives in the same house that his forebears, freed African slaves, moved into way back in 1837. He loves to talk about playing with the Berlin Philharmonic or with his drum orchestra come carnival time. But his passion is also aroused by the racism he still sees here. Even though he is a well-known artist in Montevideo, Mr. Nuñez says he notices white Uruguayans crossing to the other side sometimes when he walks down the street.

That blemish aside, “we are an extremely liberal society,” says Fernando Cabrera, one of Uruguay’s leading artists. “It’s our inheritance. During the first half of the 20th century, Uruguay was a unique marvel, even more progressive than it is today.”

He refers to the liberal reform program led by President José Batlle y Ordóñez, who helped create a uniquely egalitarian society on a continent where a steep contrast between the haves and have-nots is the norm. His Uruguay powered through social advances unthinkable elsewhere at the time, including, in 1913, a divorce law that granted a couple a divorce at the sole request of the woman.

To say other countries in the region lagged behind would be an understatement. Chile legalized divorce only 12 years ago.

This legacy shaped modern-day Uruguay. In 2012, in a landmark move, it became only the second country in Latin America (besides Cuba) to legalize abortion. Three years ago, Uruguay became the first country in the world to legalize the sale of marihuana.

This utopia is possible only because of what Professor Caetano calls the “social contract” that sets Uruguay apart. Uruguayans seem to have a tacit agreement to resolve differences at the voting booth, instead of by packing masses of people into city squares to test the weight of opposing factions, as happens in Argentina.

“In Uruguay, the political parties are more important than the social movements,” he says. Uruguayans have a healthy mistrust of charismatic, messianic leaders, which preserves them from the bane of presidents dubiously extending their term limits, as we have seen in Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia in recent years.

“We don’t have that sense of epic politics, we just have a boring democracy,” says the professor.

The same temperance is evident also in Uruguay’s relationship with religion. Ask anyone here what distinguishes their country from the rest of South America, and their answer is almost invariably “our laicism.”

Despite forming part of the world’s most populous Catholic continent, Uruguay takes a different view of religious holidays: Christmas is known officially as “Family Day,” Easter Week is referred to by almost everyone as “Tourism Week,” and the holiday of Dec. 8, celebrated elsewhere as the feast day of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, is “Beach Day,” by virtue of the 1919 Constitution and a law passed that year to sever colonial-era ties between state and religion. Even the wave of enthusiasm that greeted the election of a South American pope, when Argentina’s former cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio became Pope Francis three years ago, did not alter Uruguay’s secular instincts.

“I didn’t go to Pope Francis’ inauguration,” José Mujica, Uruguay’s former president, told me in an interview in 2014, when he was still in office. “Why should I? Uruguay is a lay country. I respect Francis as a person and religious leader, I visited him privately afterward. But I had no official business there.”

As I drove by the port at Montevideo, endless stacks of wind turbines awaiting assembly caught my eye. In less than a decade, Uruguay has become a continental leader in renewable energy — last year producing 95 percent of its electricity from renewable sources and sharply reducing its reliance on foreign oil, which once made up 27 percent of imports.

It is a concrete illustration of how tiny Uruguay, pulling itself up by its bootstraps, has morphed into one of the most progressive nations on earth. Its neighbor, Argentina, whose windswept Patagonia region cries out for wind farms, is plowing ahead instead with hydraulic fracturing and new nuclear power plants.

Latin America has a lot to learn from little Uruguay.

(*) Uki Goñi is the author of “The Real Odessa: Smuggling the Nazis to Perón’s Argentina” and a contributing opinion writer to the New York Times

Categories: Politics, Latin America, Uruguay.

Top Comments

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  • CapiTrollism_is_back!!

    As expected, this article has NOTHING to do with Uruguay, and it is just another veneer to expand the “Argentina and Argentines are inferior sub-humans” narrative.

    If it was up to Mercopress and most of the posters here, all Argentines would have the “Star of Juan Domingo”, tatooed to their arms.

    I will continue to point out the NAZI ideology that pervades in most people's minds here. That Argentina is inferior in everything, and that everyone else just by birth is superior as long as they are not Argentine. That is the definition of racial supremacism.

    Argentina will continue to build nuclear plants, thank you very much. Wind farms are an absolutely joke and destroy the environment by killing all the birdlife. They are also a massive eye-sore. Until they can generate much more energy per turbine, can me made far smaller or thinner, they are pointless. Thank GOD Uruguay, or the UK, or Chile, or Brazil, or the USA, or any European nation controls Patagonia, it would have been destroyed by utter environmental mismanagement long ago it would seem.

    Feb 12th, 2016 - 10:44 am 0
  • HansNiesund

    @1

    Apparently Tobi once came second in the World Hyperbole Championships

    Feb 12th, 2016 - 10:59 am 0
  • pgerman

    I have Uruguay, and Uruguayan people in my high steeme, but we also must be fair and balanced. The income per capita is low in Uruguay and the crime rate is very high in Montevideo. Uruguay, as Argentina, was not able to keep on economically growing during the last 4-5 decades. This must be changed.

    An Argentine journalist wrote a couple of years ago: “Uruguay has quite an advantage against Argentina: Uruguay has no peronism at all. Let's imagine an Argentine where peronism has never appeared: Argentine would be a sort of big and large Uruguay,”

    Feb 12th, 2016 - 12:16 pm 0
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