Punte del Este. There’s not much else and what there is looks pretty white bread to me. Everyone knows PdE. It’s Aspen, Martha’s Vineyard, South Beach, and St. Tropez all in one. On weekends during the season, globetrotters of all stripes settle in on their yachts, condo’s, villas, or hotel suites for a weekend or several weeks of luxurious fun in the sun. Wealthy Argintines and Portenos from Rio swarm the place much like the French on the Cote d’Azure in August. Lot’s of bodies glistening with oils and ungents, cold whites from Mendoza and caviar from god knows where. You get the idea. It was logistically out of reach for us this trip, but the reports I got resonated with all I had previously heard.
Uruguay, as you may know, is that little piece of land squeezed between the South American behemoths Brazil and Argentina. It has no particular reason to exist other than the fact that England didn’t want either Brazil or The Argentine to get control fearing it might tip the balance of power in one direction or the other. How they pulled this off is still a mystery to most.
Uruguay, or La Republica Oriental de la Uruguay, was first touched by Europeans circa 1530, but upon discovery that the land substantially defined by the “Rio de la Plata”, or as we would say River of Silver, contained none, left it for a couple of hundred years. Then for the next thirty years or so the Spanish, Portuguese, and English gave the place a good tussle and it finally wound up independent in 1828. Uruguay is not first in anything as far as I can figure out, but it comes second in at least two catagories. It’s the second smallest country in South America after Surinam (surely you know Surinam) and is adjudged by a division of the United Nations as the 2nd least corrupt country on the continent. That’s a little like being second in an ugly dog contest. BTW Chile is first.
As I mentioned in an earlier piece, Uruguay and Paraguay share nothing in common except the ‘guay’ in their name and the fact that Teddy Roosevelt visited both on his post presidential exploratory trek through South America in 1913. In fact, Uruguayans get pretty techy if you relate the two in any way. Demographically, Uruguay is 88% European bloodstock and even after 200 years there is less social integration than one would expect. Certainly there is far less than we found in Brazil and Argentina. Our young female guide whose ancestors arose from the Italian peninsula admitted that her family would disown her if she did not marry “Italian”. She also offered the observation that their were no blacks in Uruguay even though they had their share of African slaves at one point. She did not elucidate on their absence, and I was afraid to ask. As for the indigenous peoples, the monument to the Charruas pretty much says it all. By 1839, two years after independence, all except the final four had been eliminated. These last four were transported to Europe where they were shown around the major cities as curiosities until they died of shame and white men’s diseases.
Montevideo, which we visited for a day, was worth the days visit but not more. It was notable only for it’s lack of character. It was bland to the point of boredom saved only by a few tree lined avenues and the human scale of its governmental edifices. We wandered around their capital building at leisure, and I even poked my head in the Senatorial cloak room looking for the loo. Except for a couple of bored ceremonial soldiers, I could see nothing of security precautions. Perhaps they didn’t care, or maybe security isn’t an issue in this small backwater of a capital city. Uruguay’s system of government, like many other of the Latin countries has produced a sign wave of democratic institutions, individual freedoms, tin hatted despots and out and out fascism. We all should remember the flux of military juntas (what a word that is) that washed over the southern half of the continent in the 70’s and beyond. My reading suggests a cross between Mussolini style fascism/egoism/greed and soviet style hard line dictatorship of the proletariat, latin style. Lots of dissidents disappeared and lots of friends and neighbors ratting on their friends and neighbors.
By the end of the day both S. and I were looking over our shoulder to make sure we weren’t being observed by unnamed agents, and I had a strange premonition not to be seen with my Blackberry unlimbered. We asked about shopping and were advised to wait for Buenos Aires. We asked after good restaurants, and were advised to wait for Buenos Aires. We asked about wines and were told to wait for Argentina. We did, and they were right.
But then there is Punta del Este.
