Published on and written by Cyril Jarnias
Uruguay occupies a discreet corner of South America, wedged between the Argentine and Brazilian giants. Yet its history reads like a concentration of all the continent’s major themes: contested colonization, rival caudillos, endless civil wars, mass immigration, bold social experiments, urban guerrilla warfare, dictatorship, and then radical democratic reforms. Tracing the history of Uruguay is following the transition from a marginal territory to a state that dreams of itself as a “model small country.”
From Indigenous Peoples to Colonial Covetousness
Long before the arrival of Europeans, the territory of present-day Uruguay had been inhabited for about 13,000 years by hunter-gatherer communities. At the time of contact, the number of Charrúas is estimated at around 9,000 and that of the Chanás and Guaranis at about 6,000, alongside other groups like the Aracháns. These peoples did not form large centralized states, which would weigh heavily in their confrontation with European empires.
In the 16th century, the Río de la Plata region was first explored by the Portuguese (1512-1513) and then by the Spaniards (Juan Díaz de Solís in 1516, Sebastian Cabot in 1526). The latter founded the first European settlement, San Lázaro, in 1527. However, the absence of precious metals and the resistance of the indigenous populations delayed massive colonization, making the initial European presence fragile.
A turning point came in the 17th century. In 1603, Hernando Arias de Saavedra introduced livestock: the herds, left to themselves, proliferated on the eastern grasslands. The basis of the future rural economy was in place. In 1624, Jesuits founded Villa Soriano on the Río Negro, the first permanent Spanish settlement in the territory.
At the end of the 17th century, to counter the Portuguese establishment of Colônia do Santíssimo Sacramento (1680) on the north bank of the Río de la Plata, the Spanish Crown strengthened its presence in the region. By royal order, twenty-five families from the Canary Islands were transferred to the Banda Oriental and participated, in 1726, in the founding of Montevideo. This new city was conceived as a military stronghold and trading port to face the Portuguese advance.
A key treaty, that of Madrid in 1750, confirmed Spanish control over the Banda Oriental. Then, in 1776, the crown created the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, with Buenos Aires as its capital, integrating present-day Uruguay into a vast administrative entity. On the eve of independence, Montevideo had over 10,000 inhabitants, the surrounding countryside about 20,000 more, and African slaves represented nearly 30% of the population: a fact often forgotten in the national narrative.
Artigas and the Gestation of the Oriental Nation
The break with the colonial order was born from the turmoil caused by the Napoleonic Wars. On May 25, 1810, Buenos Aires overthrew Spanish authority: this was the May Revolution, which paved the way for the independence of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata. On the other side of the river, a cavalry officer would play a decisive role: José Gervasio Artigas.
Born in 1764 in Montevideo into a wealthy landowning family, Artigas grew up in the countryside, in contact with gauchos and indigenous peoples. An excellent horseman and marksman, he first led a troubled life as a cattle smuggler before obtaining a pardon in exchange for his enlistment in the Blandengues corps. He fought the British during the invasions of 1806-1807 and participated in the defense of Montevideo.
Influenced by the Enlightenment, he sided with the revolutionary junta of Buenos Aires in 1810 but had his own vision of the break with the Spanish Empire. On February 26, 1811, he issued a call to war against colonial authority. A few months later, on May 18, 1811, he won the Battle of Las Piedras against the Spanish forces and laid siege to Montevideo.
José Gervasio Artigas, First Leader of the Orientales
Very quickly, interests diverged between Buenos Aires, centralist and distrustful, and Artigas, a proponent of radical federalism. When the capital concluded a truce with the Spanish representative Francisco Javier de Elío in 1811, in exchange for a Portuguese withdrawal, the Oriental caudillo felt betrayed. He chose internal exile, leading thousands of families in the “Exodus of the Oriental People” to the Argentine bank of the Uruguay River, near present-day Concordia. This founding drama left a deep mark on Uruguayan memory.
In 1815, José Artigas federated several provinces into a Federal League, proclaiming their independence from Spain and advocating a republican and federal model with broad provincial autonomies, civil and religious freedom, and a capital distinct from Buenos Aires. He also adopted a specific flag, striped with red to symbolize federalism.
His vision was not limited to institutions. In September 1815, a Provisional Regulation for the Eastern Province laid out one of the first attempts at agrarian reform on the continent: land redistribution, priority given to the most destitute, free blacks, Zambos, and indigenous people. This Artiguismo, nourished by readings of North American and French revolutionary thought, made him both the “apostle of federalism” and the “father of the Uruguayan nation.”
From the Cisplatine Province to the Independent State
This project, however, clashed with two converging forces: the hostility of Buenos Aires, an advocate of a centralized state, and Portuguese intervention. As early as 1816, the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil, and the Algarve invaded the Banda Oriental, with the benevolent passivity of the Río de la Plata authorities. General Carlos Frederico Lecor took Montevideo on January 20, 1817. Artigas continued the fight in the countryside for several years, but, defeated at Tacuarembó in 1820, he had to flee to Paraguay, where he would live in exile for three decades.
This is the number of patriots, the ‘Thirty-Three Orientales’, led by Juan Antonio Lavalleja, who rose up against Brazilian rule in 1825.
On April 19, 1825, this small group of exiles landed on the coast of the Río de la Plata, at Agraciada. Quickly joined by other leaders like Fructuoso Rivera, they seized several towns and, on June 14, established a provisional government in Florida. On August 25, 1825, an assembly there proclaimed the separation of Cisplatina from Brazil and its union with the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata. The act triggered the so-called “Cisplatine War” between Argentina and the Empire of Brazil.
This war, marked by land battles (Sarandí, Ituzaingó) and a Brazilian naval blockade of Buenos Aires, dragged on. Neither the Empire nor the United Provinces managed to secure a decisive advantage. London, worried about the paralysis of Río de la Plata trade, then entered the scene. Under the impetus of British diplomat John Ponsonby, the belligerents accepted a middle-ground solution: an independent buffer state. The preliminary peace convention, known as the Treaty of Montevideo, signed on August 27, 1828, recognized the birth of the Oriental Republic of Uruguay. Borders were set, with Brazil retaining some missionary territories to the east.
In exchange for this independence, Uruguay was drawn into a complex game of regional balances. The young republic became a pivotal space where Brazilian and Argentine influences regularly clashed, against a backdrop of internal rivalries.
The Birth of the State and the Shadow of the Caudillos
The first Uruguayan constitution, promulgated on July 18, 1830, was strongly inspired by French and United States models. It established a unitary republic with a presidential executive, within a classic framework of separation of powers. The president was elected by the General Assembly for four years; the territory was divided into departments, headed by appointed governors.
After independence, the young nation was led by military figures from the war against Brazil, the ‘Thirty-Three’.
Elected first President of Uruguay on November 6, 1830. Former comrade-in-arms of Manuel Oribe.
Succeeded Rivera as president in 1835. A central figure from the ‘Thirty-Three’.
Remained a major political reference for part of the rural elite, although he was not president in this first period.
Very quickly, the rivalry between Rivera and Lavalleja, then between Rivera and Oribe, escalated into armed clashes. As early as 1832, Lavalleja’s followers attempted to assassinate Rivera; the Montevideo garrison rose up to demand the appointment of their leader as commander-in-chief. Rivera reacted, defeated Lavalleja at Tupambaé and pushed him back towards Brazil’s Rio Grande do Sul.
In the mid-1830s, Uruguay’s enduring political cleavages emerged. In 1836, the rebellion of Fructuoso Rivera against President Manuel Oribe led to the creation of the two traditional parties. Oribe’s supporters adopted a white armband, becoming the Blancos. Those of Rivera first wore blue, then red, becoming the Colorados. These colors represented distinct socio-economic interests: the Blancos defended the large agricultural estates of the interior and protectionism favorable to landowners (estancieros), while the Colorados represented more the urban and commercial circles of Montevideo, in favor of free trade.
The first battles of this long internal confrontation marked the 1830s: Carpintería, Yucutujá, Palmar. With the support of Brazil and, soon, France, Rivera eventually overthrew Oribe, who took refuge in Buenos Aires in 1838. But this was only an episode in a civil war that would take on a whole new dimension: the Guerra Grande (Great War).
The Guerra Grande: Uruguay at the Heart of Atlantic Rivalries
The Uruguayan “Great War“, officially dated from 1839 to 1851, extended far beyond the country’s borders. It initially pitted the two Uruguayan parties, Oribe’s Blancos and Rivera’s Colorados, against each other, but it became entangled with the major regional confrontation between the Argentine caudillo Juan Manuel de Rosas and his federalist or unitary opponents, and with interventions by European powers concerned with controlling navigation on the Río de la Plata.
In 1842, Oribe, supported by Rosas, inflicted a heavy defeat on Rivera at Arroyo Grande. The following year, he laid siege to Montevideo. Thus began the famous “Great Siege” of the capital, which would last nearly nine years. The country found itself literally divided into two rival states: in Montevideo, the “Government of the Defense” presided over by Joaquín Suárez, dominated by the Colorados and protected by the British and French navies; in the rest of the territory, the “Government of Cerrito” led by Oribe, recognized by the Argentine Confederation.
Total population of Montevideo during the 1843 siege, only one-third of which was Uruguayan.
Montevideo Under Siege, Showcase of a Global Conflict
For London and Paris, the stakes were higher than the survival of a small republic: it was about guaranteeing free navigation on the Paraná and Uruguay rivers, vital for trade into the continent’s interior. The two powers imposed a naval blockade on Buenos Aires in 1845, protected Montevideo from the sea, while playing a complex diplomatic game with Rosas. Alexandre Dumas, fascinated by the siege’s heroism and duration, would speak of a “new siege of Troy.”
The conflict reached a stalemate. Rivera was finally put out of action, the finances of both sides were drained, and weariness set in even among the European supporters. In 1850, France and the United Kingdom, after negotiating a favorable agreement with Rosas, withdrew their fleets. The solution would finally come from within the Argentine Confederation itself.
Justo José de Urquiza, governor of Entre Ríos, rebelled against Rosas with the support of Brazil and the Uruguayan Colorados. In 1851, Oribe’s forces were defeated in Uruguay; the following year, the coalition army won the decisive Battle of Caseros, near Buenos Aires. Rosas fled into exile in Great Britain. The siege of Montevideo was lifted, Oribe withdrew. The Colorados emerged as masters of Uruguay, but at the cost of increased dependence on the Brazilian neighbor.
The Treaties of 1851: Independence Under Brazilian Guarantee
In recognition of the military and financial support received, the Montevideo government signed five treaties with the Empire of Brazil in 1851. These texts established a permanent alliance between the two countries. Uruguay agreed to hand over fugitive slaves and criminals who had taken refuge on its soil, even though, ironically, both Blancos and Colorados had abolished slavery during the war to enlarge their troops.
Uruguay’s area was set at approximately 176,000 km² following the renunciation of its territorial claims north of the Río Cuareim.
The economic consequences of the Guerra Grande were heavy: the bovine livestock, the pillar of the country’s wealth, fell from about 6.5 million head to 2 million. But the war also consolidated two lasting facts: the definitive anchoring of Uruguayan independence and the structuring of political life around the Colorado-Blanco duel.
A 19th Century Marked by Civil War and the Slow Construction of the State
Between 1830 and 1903, Uruguay experienced some forty uprisings, coups, and civil wars. The rivalry between the Colorados, generally in power, and the Blancos, often in revolt from the rural interior, regularly escalated into armed conflicts. The Guerra Grande was only the most spectacular of these crises.
After 1852, an attempt at reconciliation among elites failed. In 1864-1865, the Uruguayan War broke out: the Colorado caudillo Venancio Flores, supported by Argentina, revolted against the Blanco government. Brazil intervened militarily, citing the protection of its nationals (nearly 18% of the Uruguayan population). The alliance of Flores and the Brazilian Empire besieged and took several cities, including Montevideo, leading to the capitulation of the Blancos in February 1865. This victory established Colorado hegemony in Uruguay and indirectly contributed to the outbreak of the War of the Triple Alliance against Paraguay.
The end of the 19th century, however, saw the beginning of a compromise. After the bloody Revolution of the Lances (1870-1872), led by the Blanco chief Timoteo Aparicio, an agreement recognized Blanco control over four rural departments (Canelones, San José, Florida, Cerro Largo), while the Colorados kept Montevideo and the coastal strip. This system of sharing positions, called coparticipación, sought to defuse rebellions by guaranteeing a share of power to the opposition.
The last uprisings, notably led by Aparicio Saravia, ended at the beginning of the 20th century. The decisive defeat of the Blancos at the Battle of Masoller in 1904, where Saravia was mortally wounded, marked the end of armed conflicts. This period is considered by historians as the “second founding” of the Republic, with a gradual transition from arms to the democratic process and the ballot box.
Mass Immigration and Demographic Transformation
Alongside these internal divisions, Uruguay underwent profound demographic transformation. At independence, the population did not exceed 75,000 inhabitants. A century later, it approached one million, largely due to European immigration. Between the last third of the 19th century and the Second World War, the country welcomed more than 600,000 arrivals from the Old Continent, mainly from Spain and Italy, but also from France, Germany, Switzerland, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and even the Near East.
A simple table allows us to visualize some milestones of this transformation:
| Period / Marker | Key Indicator |
|---|---|
| Circa 1800 | Montevideo > 10,000 inhab., province +20,000, 30% slaves |
| Independence (circa 1830) | Total population < 75,000 |
| 1860 | Approx. 30–34% of population born abroad |
| 1889 (Montevideo) | 47% of population is foreign-born |
| 1908–1910 | Approx. 17% of population is of foreign origin |
| 1911 | Population ≈ 1.4 million |
| Today | 90–95% of population of European ancestry |
By the end of the 19th century, Montevideo was a truly cosmopolitan city. In 1889, nearly half of its inhabitants were born abroad; among adults over 20, immigrants represented more than 70%. Italians and Spaniards dominated, but the French formed the third largest community: as early as the 1840s, they represented nearly a third of the capital’s inhabitants. Swiss, German, and Austrian colonists founded Nueva Helvecia in 1862; Piedmontese Waldensians created Colonia Valdense; Basques, Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews, Maronite Lebanese, Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, and Armenians also settled.
The massive arrival of European immigrants in Uruguay in the 19th century fueled the image of a ‘little Europe’ in South America. This policy directly contributed to demographic whitening and the marginalization of indigenous populations, culminating in the massacre of the Charrúas in 1831 at Salsipuedes, ordered by President Rivera. Paradoxically, this cultural and social ferment also created the conditions allowing for the emergence, at the turn of the 20th century, of a singular political experiment in the country.
The Batllista Revolution: A Social-Democratic Laboratory
At the beginning of the 20th century, Uruguay remained an agro-pastoral country, but relatively prosperous thanks to the export of meat and wool. The international context – high demand during the world wars – and the absence of major ethnic or religious fractures favored a certain stability. It is within this framework that the work of José Batlle y Ordóñez, a major figure in the country’s history, unfolded.
A journalist by training, director of the newspaper El Día, Batlle entered politics under the Colorado banner, opposed the military dictatorships of the late 19th century, and became president in 1903. His first term was marked by the last civil war against the Blancos of Aparicio Saravia, but also by a vast program of reforms. Re-elected in 1911, he would shape what would be called Batllismo, an original mix of political liberalism, economic interventionism, and social reformism.
The Uruguayan Welfare State
Under his impetus, Uruguay adopted a set of measures that would earn it the reputation of the “Switzerland of America”:
These measures included the generalization of free, secular, and compulsory primary education, expanded access to secondary and university education (especially for women), and the establishment of fundamental social rights like the 8-hour workday, weekly rest, workers’ compensation for accidents, old-age pensions, and severance pay.
A short table summarizes some emblematic social milestones:
| Domain | Major Measure (Batllista period) |
|---|---|
| Working Hours | 8-hour day, mandatory weekly rest |
| Protection | Old-age pensions, workers’ accident compensation |
| Women’s Work | “Chair Law” requiring a seat to be provided for female employees |
| Family | Legalization of divorce (first by consent, then at the wife’s request) |
| Capital Punishment | Abolition of the death penalty |
In terms of individual freedoms, Batlle’s Uruguay was ahead of its time: the death penalty was abolished, divorce was legalized in 1907 and expanded in 1913, and the separation of Church and State was gradually implemented. Religious instruction was excluded from public schools, crucifixes were removed from hospitals, and references to God disappeared from official oaths.
Strategic Nationalizations and Regulated Capitalism
On the economic front, Batlle was not a socialist, but he refused to hand over key sectors to foreign capital. He encouraged the creation or nationalization of large public enterprises: the Bank of the Republic (BROU), the State Insurance Bank, the Mortgage Bank, electricity, tramway, and railway companies, telegraphs, and later, a public monopoly on fuels, alcohol, and cement. The objective was twofold: to offer low-cost services and to prevent profits from flowing abroad.
The proposed scheme, although compatible with private initiative, was based on an interventionist vision of the state, conceived as an arbiter and protector of the weakest. On the fiscal front, Batlle was inspired by Georgist ideas: he favored taxing land rent over taxing labor income, considering income tax a penalty on individual effort.
Finally, Batlle defended an original vision of institutions: to limit personal power, he campaigned for a collegiate executive, a National Council of Administration. This idea only partially triumphed: the 1918 constitution established a mixed system with a president and a council, which would later be modified over the decades. But it reflected a structural distrust of the caudillismo that had marked the 19th century.
At the end of this period, Uruguay displayed remarkable social indicators: a high literacy rate, one of the lowest infant mortality rates in the world, and a large urban middle class. The country earned its nickname “Switzerland of America,” and its image as a stable liberal democracy was consolidated. But this prosperity remained fragile, as it was highly dependent on agricultural exports.
Crises, Radicalization, and Authoritarian Drift
The shock of the Great Depression in the 1930s ended the long phase of export-led growth. Uruguay attempted a strategy of import-substitution industrialization, but the small size of the domestic market and dependence on agricultural prices limited the results. After World War II, favorable conditions in the world economy allowed for a new cycle of prosperity, but from the mid-1950s onward, the machinery began to falter.
Global demand for wool and meat declined, leading to near-zero growth, inflation exceeding 50% per year in the early 1960s, massive unemployment, and a drop in living standards. The state, employer of one in five workers, was also accused of sprawling bureaucracy and corruption.
In this context of economic frustration, Uruguayan political life long remained dominated by the two historic parties, Colorados and Blancos, engaged in a form of moderate social democracy. But on the margins, radicalization multiplied. An influential Communist Party held a revolutionary discourse, while among the youth, the example of the Cuban Revolution was fascinating. It was in this climate that an armed movement emerged in the early 1960s that would shake the myth of the “Switzerland of America”: the Tupamaros.
Tupamaros: Urban Guerrilla at the Heart of the “Switzerland of America”
The National Liberation Movement – Tupamaros (MLN-T) took shape around 1963-1965, under the impetus of Raúl Sendic, a lawyer and union organizer. Its name refers to Túpac Amaru II, leader of a major indigenous revolt in Peru in the 18th century, but it also echoes a nickname once used for Artigas’s followers. The group claimed allegiance to Marxism-Leninism and aimed for a socialist revolution, intended to “liberate” the country from a corrupt oligarchy and imperialist domination.
Notable particularity: many of its members came from the middle class or educated backgrounds – students, professionals, intellectuals – more than from the countryside. They adopted a strategy of urban guerrilla warfare, breaking with the Castroist rural model. Bank robberies, attacks on shooting clubs, hold-ups of businesses, and spectacular redistributions of food or money in poor neighborhoods forged their reputation as modern-day “Robin Hoods.”
Quickly, their methods hardened: bombings, sabotage, arms theft, political kidnappings. They created clandestine “people’s prisons” to detain and interrogate personalities: bankers, diplomats, foreign technicians. Among their most resounding actions were the kidnappings of Dan Mitrione, a U.S. agent specializing in training Latin American police officers, executed in 1970; Brazilian consul Aloysio Dias Gomide; American agronomist Claude Fly; banker Ulysses Pereira Reverbel; and British ambassador Geoffrey Jackson. In 1969, they orchestrated the largest heist in the country’s history and, on October 8, occupied the small town of Pando.
Words divide us, action unites us
The Tupamaros
The State’s Response: From State of Emergency to Dictatorship
Faced with this rise in political violence, successive governments gradually abandoned the country’s liberal traditions. As early as June 1968, President Jorge Pacheco Areco decreed a state of emergency, suspended constitutional guarantees, banned leftist parties and newspapers, and harshly repressed demonstrations and unions. Paramilitary police forces, like the Metropolitan Guard, were swollen to 20,000 men and trained by American and Brazilian instructors.
Elected in 1971 via the *lemas* system, President Juan María Bordaberry accelerated the militarization of the internal conflict. After the murders committed by the Tupamaros on April 14, 1972, the country was placed in a “state of internal war.” The army obtained full powers, leading a counter-insurgency marked by mass arrests, systematic torture, and military tribunals for political prisoners.
Within months, the guerrilla was crushed. Most of its leaders were killed or imprisoned. Nine of them – including Raúl Sendic and José Mujica – were designated as “hostages” and held under particularly inhumane conditions until 1985. But this military “victory” had a price: the army, now convinced of its tutelary role, no longer intended to return to the barracks.
In February 1973, the commanders of the land and air forces imposed on Bordaberry the creation of a National Security Council (COSENA), a body where military chiefs sat alongside a few ministers. On June 27, 1973, pretexting a subversive plot and the Parliament’s inability to deal with it, Bordaberry dissolved the General Assembly and established a non-elected Council of State. Unions launched a fifteen-day general strike, brutally repressed. The civilian-military dictatorship was in place.
Twelve Years of Dictatorship and Resistance
From 1973 to 1985, Uruguay lived under an authoritarian regime inspired by the Brazilian national security doctrine and integrated into the regional Operation Condor apparatus, which coordinated repression among the Southern Cone dictatorships. Formal power initially remained in the hands of civilian presidents – Bordaberry, then Demicheli, then Aparicio Méndez – but major decisions emanated from the COSENA and the junta of general officers. Starting in 1981, General Gregorio Álvarez directly assumed the presidency.
Number of people sentenced by military tribunals in Uruguay, giving the country the world’s highest rate of political prisoners per capita.
On the economic front, the dictatorship sought to break with the statist model inherited from Batllismo. Under the guidance of ministers like Alejandro Végh Villegas, it liberalized prices, widely opened the country to foreign capital, limited wages, and crushed union rights. For a time, Montevideo regained a regional role as a financial center and manufacturing exports increased, but the strategy resulted in massive debt and a severe crisis in the early 1980s. External debt quadrupled between 1981 and 1982, GDP declined, unemployment rose to 17%, and real wages collapsed.
The attempt to legitimize this system with a new constitutional text failed: in 1980, a plebiscite organized by the junta on a draft authoritarian constitution was rejected by 57% of voters. This “no” opened a breach. Gradually, traditional political forces (Colorados, Blancos, but also the leftist Broad Front), unions, and social organizations managed to impose a negotiated transition.
In 1984, after general strikes and a large demonstration in Montevideo, agreements like the “Naval Club Pact” prepared the return to democracy. Elections in November saw the victory of Colorado Julio María Sanguinetti, despite the ban on the candidacy of Blanco leader Wilson Ferreira Aldunate. Legitimacy was ensured by the participation of the main parties. Sanguinetti took office on March 1, 1985, after a brief transition led by a civilian appointed by the military.
One of the transition compromises was the adoption in 1986 of an amnesty law for crimes committed by the armed forces during the dictatorship, validated by referendums in 1989 and 2009. This “Expiry Law” remained at the heart of memory debates into the 21st century. Under the presidency of former guerrilla José Mujica, a shift occurred: the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled the amnesty incompatible with the country’s international obligations, Parliament adopted a law effectively voiding it, and several former dictators, including Gregorio Álvarez and Bordaberry, were convicted.
Economic Crises and the Reinvention of a Model
The restoration of democracy did not mean the end of turbulence. In the 1990s, Colorado and Blanco governments implemented policies of openness and deregulation, in line with the Washington Consensus. The economy partially deindustrialized, refocusing on an agriculture increasingly oriented towards monoculture and services like finance and tourism.
Percentage of bank deposits withdrawn in Uruguay between March and July 2002 following the Argentine crisis.
Once again, the solution came through international negotiation: the government obtained emergency aid from the United States via the Exchange Stabilization Fund, and a package of nearly three billion dollars from the IMF, the World Bank, and the Inter-American Development Bank. A law strengthening the banking system rescheduled term deposits, and a debt swap avoided default. Uruguay ultimately honored all its commitments and repaid the IMF.
The crisis profoundly reshaped the Uruguayan banking landscape, leading to the disappearance of most national private banks. The system is now dominated by the large public bank BROU and subsidiaries of foreign groups like Santander or Itaú. The severe social trauma (soup kitchens, migratory exodus, loss of confidence) also triggered a political shift.
In 2004, for the first time in history, a left-wing coalition, the Broad Front (Frente Amplio), won the presidential election with Tabaré Vázquez. It would govern for fifteen years, until 2020, combining macroeconomic prudence with ambitious social reforms. During these years, Uruguay experienced sustained growth, a strong reduction in poverty and inequality, and a diversification of its trading partners: the share of exports to Argentina and Brazil fell from nearly half in the late 1990s to about 20% in 2017, while China and Asia became major clients.
A Country of Social Pioneers in the 21st Century
In continuity with its Batllista history, democratic Uruguay distinguished itself in the 21st century with social reforms that struck international opinion. Under the presidency of Mujica, a former Tupamaro, the country legalized abortion up to the twelfth week of pregnancy in 2012, opened marriage to same-sex couples in 2013, and then implemented that same year a unique system for the complete regulation of cannabis: state-regulated production, sale, and consumption, to drain the black market.
Uruguay is cited as a global example for its energy transition, thanks to policies promoting renewable energy. At the same time, the country pays strong attention to human rights, as evidenced by the official recognition of Uruguayan Sign Language in 2001 and the implementation of memory policies concerning the dictatorship period.
Politically, however, the bipartisan tradition is not dead. The Colorado and National (formerly Blanco) parties remain important actors. In 2020, Luis Lacalle Pou, of the National Party, acceded to the presidency, ending the long cycle of the left in power. The electoral system, refined by various constitutional reforms, preserves peaceful alternation.
A Singular Trajectory in the Latin American Concert
The history of Uruguay can be read as a constant pendulum swing between violence and compromise, external dependence and the search for autonomy, rural conservatism and urban reformism. A territory disputed between Iberian crowns, then between Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro, it managed to wrest its independence at the price of a neutralization orchestrated by British diplomacy. Plagued throughout the 19th century by civil wars between Blancos and Colorados, it transformed this rivalry into a negotiated two-party system.
Thanks to the impetus of Artigas, the country carries in its genes a federalist and democratic tradition that, although betrayed in the short term, permeates the national narrative. With Batlle y Ordóñez, it experimented as early as the beginning of the 20th century with an advanced welfare state, vigorous secularism, and pioneering social rights. The Tupamaro guerrilla and the dictatorship showed that even the most “European” of South American republics was not immune to the authoritarian tornadoes that ravaged the region. But the vigor of civil society, the strength of institutional culture, and the capacity for self-correction ultimately prevailed.
Historical Analysis of Uruguay
Emerging from the economic and political crises at the turn of the century, Uruguay chose to reconnect, each in its own way, with the Batllista legacy: a robust social state, respect for public freedoms, prudent foreign policy, and economic diversification. While challenges remain – persistent inequalities, vulnerability to external shocks, memory tensions – the country’s journey, from the disputed Banda Oriental to the 21st-century social reforms, illustrates the possibility for a small state wedged between giants to forge an original political identity, based both on the memory of struggles and on institutional experimentation.
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Cyril Jarnias is an independent expert in international wealth management with over 20 years of experience. As an expatriate himself, he is dedicated to helping individuals and business leaders build, protect, and pass on their wealth with complete peace of mind.
On his website, cyriljarnias.com, he shares his expertise on international real estate, offshore company formation, and expatriation.
Thanks to his expertise, he offers sound advice to optimize his clients' wealth management. Cyril Jarnias is also recognized for his appearances in many prestigious media outlets such as BFM Business, les Français de l’étranger, Le Figaro, Les Echos, and Mieux vivre votre argent, where he shares his knowledge and know-how in wealth management.
