MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Uruguay: Mujica on a most ambitious mission to China after investments for ports and railways
Uruguayan President Jose Mujica begins on Wednesday the longest and most ambitious of his overseas trips hoping to convince China to invest in infrastructure projects that are crucial for the development of the country and its foreign trade: a deep water port and recovering the rail cargo network. Read full article
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Disclaimer & comment rulesGo fdor it Pepe, but dont give too much away
May 22nd, 2013 - 07:19 am - Link - Report abuse 0Good to see Uruguay to looks for investment abroad time to grow up...
May 22nd, 2013 - 08:43 am - Link - Report abuse 0Good luck to Pepe =)
May 22nd, 2013 - 10:15 am - Link - Report abuse 0Good luck Pepe!!
May 22nd, 2013 - 11:28 am - Link - Report abuse 0It will be good for Uruguay not to have to rely on cooperation from Argentina.
BK, @3
You seem supportive. Can you ask CFK to lend Pepe the 'family jet'?
I hope for Uruguays sake he's had a shave and a bath!
May 22nd, 2013 - 01:03 pm - Link - Report abuse 0didn't realise he was an in plant from Spain
May 22nd, 2013 - 01:21 pm - Link - Report abuse 0@6
May 22nd, 2013 - 01:34 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Well he didn't get that chorizo breath from eating French fancies. They are all imposters, there is nothing indigenous about any of them.
@ Britworker, I was being sarcastic after all if you speak to most Argentine trolls they seem to have a clouded memory of there past of where they come from
May 22nd, 2013 - 03:38 pm - Link - Report abuse 0He's a fucking Basque! Troublemakers the lot of them.
May 22nd, 2013 - 04:06 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Well, that explains a lot.
There will be utter disdain from the Chin if he turns up looking like his usual tramp in hiding outfit, and quite rightly too. Disrespect for your hosts is never a good play.
Despite the poor outlook I hope at least he gets the deepwater port.
Uruguay is an awesome country and more investment will just make it better. No indigenous population thank god. Very European.
May 22nd, 2013 - 05:27 pm - Link - Report abuse 010 Hands Off
May 22nd, 2013 - 07:48 pm - Link - Report abuse 0I think you will find that there are Amerindians still in Uruguay, I have seen a family myself in Maldonado.
I have no idea what the population by percentage is but it must be tiny.
ChrisR They must be recent immigrants from some other South American country then as all the natives were killed off by the European diseases etc. At any rate there is no native population to worry about here.
May 22nd, 2013 - 09:12 pm - Link - Report abuse 0#9 “He's a fucking Basque! Troublemakers the lot of them”
May 22nd, 2013 - 10:24 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Yet again showing your humanist values?! (And I'm not actually a supporter of the Basque seperatist movement, but this racial generalising is somehing I learned to avoid quite early in childhood!)
Chris, I'm afraid you've put your foot in your mouth. I have Basque blood, as do well over 50% of Uruguay's population, Perhaps you've come to the wrong country! Well, I prefer to think you're a fundamentally decent man who shouldn't post before breakfast.
May 23rd, 2013 - 05:48 am - Link - Report abuse 0Hands Off, most of the Amerindians in Uruguay were killed off by the likes of General Rivera in the 19th Century. I'm not proud of it. Just as bad as Argentina, actually.
China will prefer to build 'dedicated' ports (like they do in Brasil) ... dedicated solely to moving food and raw materials to China.
May 23rd, 2013 - 07:05 am - Link - Report abuse 0They will need some persuading to build a general infrastructure for Uruguay, but, if there is sufficient in it for the Chinese, who knows?
The interesting dimension is the dredging of the estuary/river.
If one of the ports is located where the dredging is part of the package, it is likely that CFK will allow it to happen, but she will extract the highest cost from Uruguay to enable it to happen. By then, however, China may have already started the process of exerting pressure on Argentina, so CFK might just have to suck it up.
14 ynsere
May 23rd, 2013 - 12:55 pm - Link - Report abuse 0“Chris, I'm afraid you've put your foot in your mouth. I have Basque blood”
Foot extracted from mouth! You have my sincere apology, I most certainly did not intend to offend anyone at all in Uruguay.
I have to say though that the seperatist movement was on par with the IRA and the Spanish government handled them like the prats in the UK did.
At one time there were only 25 'power' families in the IRA before the insurgence and the SAS wanted to kill them all. Pity our cowardly Labour government did not do it as many hundreds of innocent lives could have been spared.
So who were the family I saw in Maldonado: fairly dark skinned with rounded faces and prominent noses, black hair. The women were dressed in floor length matching colourful skirts, drawn into the waist and had the same type of hat and wore black jackets. The children were a miniature of them. There were two adult females and four children and everybody (near Cabral and close to the IMM office) moved out of the way but looked at them closely?
I most certainly have not come to the wrong country, please forgive me as I learn the ropes. :o)
ChrisR Sounds like they are from Chile or Peru. A family like that really stands out in Uruguay where most of the population looks Italian.
May 23rd, 2013 - 03:11 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Chris & Hands Off
May 23rd, 2013 - 08:12 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Gypsies perhaps? Plenty in the Maldonado/Pan de Azúcar/Punta del Este area.
Not long ago a friend and I were reminiscing about when we were kids, Amerindian-looking “peones” used to be common on estancias in the Paso de los Toros region and other parts of the country. No longer. Presumably these families have mixed with the descendants of Europeans. I doubt whether there is a single full-blood Uruguayan Amerindian in the country, although the number of Uruguayans with some Amerindian blood must quite large.
With regard to the ETA terrorists, in Uruguay they have been in cahoots with trade unions and the Tupamaros. Witness the events outside Montevideo's “Hospital Filtro” a few years ago. Perhaps a few pesos changed hands at the time. However, I'm quite sure that the great majority of Uruguayans of Basque extraction doesn't support ETA. True, Mujica has Basque blood, but then again so does Pedro Bordaberry.
18 ynsere
May 23rd, 2013 - 09:17 pm - Link - Report abuse 0“True, Mujica has Basque blood, but then again so does Pedro Bordaberry.”
Thanks, I get the point! :o)
Uruguay has a lot of blacks, compared to Argentina (not Brazil) that is. 4% I read somewhere, mostly in Monte no doubt. Not necessarily related - why is it that the tiny and cramped Fiat taxis in Montevideo have the drivers so securely isolated by a solid fibre-glass partition? Something tells me all is not well there, although I have had no bad experiences in my half-dozen short stays.
May 23rd, 2013 - 11:10 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Ernest Shackleton @ 20
May 24th, 2013 - 12:27 am - Link - Report abuse 0Apparently in colonial times Buenos Aires had a large black community; I always wonder what happened to them.
Some Uruguayan blacks are the descendants of slaves escaping from Brazil, where slavery wasn't abolished until 1888.
Of course there had been African slaves here, but in comparatively small numbers because our cattle ranching was not nearly as labour-intensive as Brazil's cotton and sugar cane plantations.
The “mampara” or thick glass partitions in Montevideo taxis, according to conventional wisdom, are a vestige of corruption many years ago. They were meant to prevent holdups, but have not been effective. Of course at that time the taxis were larger Mercedes-Benzes. Today's Fiat Unos are probably the smallest taxis Uruguay's ever had. Personally I never take taxis in Montevideo because they're so dangerous due to the partition. I prefer to pay a little more for a “remise” which will be roomier, cleaner and safer.
Outside Montevideo, taxis do not have partitions.
#18,19 WHat do you think of Bordaberry then? He wanted to set up a fully fascist state didn't he?
May 25th, 2013 - 07:13 pm - Link - Report abuse 0The father, Juan, was doubtlessly extreme right wing as well as a traitor to his country. A man very much in the mold of Spain's Franco, not a Perón-like neo-fascist. I have the impression that his son, Pedro, is not like that. But I don't expect to vote for him.
May 25th, 2013 - 09:59 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Commenting for this story is now closed.
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