The Economist February 26th 2022 33
The AmericasPoliticalstability
Why Uruguay?
A
visitor’s lastingmemory of Monte-
video, the capital of Uruguay, may be
that it’s not very memorable at all. Unlike
the fashionable beaches of Rio de Janeiro
or the splendour of Buenos Aires’s poshest
districts, few parts of the city stand out.
The centre (pictured) is pleasant but many
buildings look in need of a lick of paint.
The most famous feature is the Rambla, a
coastal avenue which is possibly the lon-
gest continuous pavement in the world.
Montevideo’s dullness, however, is a
symptom of Uruguay’s quiet success. The
country boasts Latin America’s largest
middle class, comprising almost two-
thirds of the population, compared with an
average of around a third elsewhere. It has
the region’s highest income per capita,
some of its lowest levels of inequality, and
has more or less eliminated extreme pov-
erty. In 2019 just 0.1% of the population
earned less than $1.90 a day, according to
the World Bank. Its capital may lack glam-
our, but it is short of corruption, too.
And whereas other Latin American gov-
ernments floundered during the pandem-
ic, Uruguay’s took a sensible middle
course. Luis Lacalle Pou, the centre-right
president, focused on vaccinations and
testing rather than long lockdowns. Fully
70% of the country of 3.5m received two
jabs in six months. It was the first country
in the region to reopen schools. According
to official statistics, Uruguay has suffered
just under 7,000 deaths from covid-19.
What can such an unassuming place teach
its worse-run neighbours?
Uruguay has some structural advantag-
es. Spanish colonialists called it the “land
of no profit”, as it had neither precious
metals nor cheap indigenous labour. These
seeming flaws actually turned out to be
strengths, however. A lack of easy rents
helped ward off oligarchs. A fairly homoge-
nous population prevented the stark racial
inequality of places like Brazil.
Uruguay is also strikingly secular. In
2014 fully 37% of its citizens were agnosticor atheist, compared with 20% in the re-
gion as a whole, according to the Pew Re-
search Centre. In the same survey it was
the only country in Latin America where a
majority said religious leaders should have
no influence at all in politics. Partly as a re-
sult, divorce was legalised in 1907, a full 97
years before Chile made the same move.
Same-sex marriage, abortion and the sale
of cannabis are all legal.
But Uruguay’s good fortune is not sim-
ply the result of historical circumstance.
The constitution weakens the power of the
executive and forces whomever is in power
to negotiate with opposition parties. Uru-
guay has an unusual administrative model
in which the boards of public entities,
from the water company to the state bank,
include members of the opposition as well
as the ruling party.
After an economic crisis in Argentina in
the early 2000s, Uruguay began to decou-
ple its economy from that of its sclerotic
neighbour. Between 2001 and 2021 the
share of exports going to Brazil and Argen-
tina fell from 37% to 24%. The economy is
still dependent on agricultural exports and
tourism, but successive governments have
tried to boost tech, too. Uruguay is now one
of the biggest exporters of software in the
world, relative to its population. In 2006 it
pioneered a policy that gave each student a
laptop. That made remote learning easier
during covid-19.MONTEVIDEO
What Latin America’s success story can teach its neighbours
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