Uruguay

25 August is Declatoria de la Florida in Uruguay! Yes, let’s celebrate Uruguayan Independence, and perhaps thinks about the fact that apparent Uruguay is the second smallest country in South America after Suriname—French Guiana is also smaller, but it’s still an overseas department of France. And that also makes it the smallest of the Latin South American countries. Oh, and they like soccer in Montevideo, or so I hear.

Hey—Uruguay is not corrupt by South American standards! Only Chile is less corrupt these days. That’s a nice index to have. There’s also an index that lists what it considers the 28 full democracies in the world—Uruguay might come in last on that list, but it makes the list, and that’s something.

So we don’t have the legacy of the Incas. We don’t have tangos and sambas emerging from the streets. (Well, actually, there is Uruguayan tango… though it’s not as well-known as its Argentinian cousin.) The Charrúa were one of the better known tribes of native Americans, but they were pretty small, as were other hunter-gatherer tribes. With a lack of gold and silver lying around, the Europeans weren’t terribly interested for a while either. Then the Spanish thought they’d bring in a few cattle, and that took on. Nice stuff. Later the Portuguese built a fort.

Montevideo? It dates from the early 1700s. Its natural harbour made it a natural competitor with Buenos Aires back in the day.

And independence? Well, it took longer to come to Uruguay than to other areas of the Americas. The movement started in earnest in 1811, but it took till 1828 to gain it’s formal recognition. The official declaration came on 25 August, 1825—the delay on recognition was because of the Argentina-Brazil war, then underway. When Britain brokered peace between the countries, it led to formal proclamation of Uruguay’s nationhood. I’ll drink to that.

Today’s poem, “For Tonight” is by Roberto Echavarren and comes from the Anthology of Contemporary Latin American Literature 1960-1984.


For Tonight

Lovers do not speak to each other
when they listen to the radio.
They listen in silence.
They say what they do not say.
A gush of mercury
trembles on open lips. Smoke is forgotten.
Trills gather in corners of the piano bar
open to the phosphoric beach in stillness.
The music said what they had to hear
to let their abandon grow.
They are a single scene without a fixed limit.
Now a haunch curves
as much as the other wants but did not expect,
as much as the radio
prescribes.

—Roberto Echavarren
translated by John Neyenesch
from Anthology of Contemporary Latin American Literature 1960-1984