Visitors to Uruguay often remark on a few things, not least of which are the differences between the country and its other South American neighbors. The level of freedom, of economic and cultural development, is unmatched anywhere in Latin America.
Yet glance in another fashion and you may see a place of exile and a battleground between rival nations, fierce and abrupt changes of weather, a land of political conflict with economic upheavals and emergency military rule.
What is the true picture of Uruguay? Is it in Montevideo’s resemblance to a city in Western Europe, a city from which the young tend to emigrate and the middle-aged tend to be middle-class? Is it in the fields of cattle, the north country where Spanish and Portuguese merge into one tongue and the border with Brazil is no longer drawn clearly?
Perhaps it is in the communications system, advanced beyond anything in Latin America, the fully digital network which connects the country and the world, often to the Universidad de la República.
Uruguay is ahead of the curve for technology, and there no wonder that the “Facultad de Medicina” runs Debian, and the Facultad de Ciencias
runs Debian woody
on more than 20 servers, including the main Internet Linux server ( firewall, mail, ftp, DNS) and a computing center utilizing scientific software that runs “woody” with student workstations. The university is bustling and lively, world-class in terms of quality of minds and advancement of curriculum.
You’ll find football (soccer to the Yanks) and Italian food, Asado and Choripán, mate and Dulce de Leche in abundance. In cold weather, you’ll find people starting the day with Grappamiel to warm the body and spirit. You won’t find much religion (other than an entrenched and lightly-observed Catholic culture, Uruguay is remarkable for its secularism) but you will find distinguished poetry, literature, theatre and dance…the tango, after all, is claimed by both Montevideo and Buenos Aires, a nearby neighbor.