So You Say You Should Leave The USA? Or, Compare Before You Go
By: Robert Mirza
Tags: Best Meat In The World, Capitalism, Communism

So You Say You Should Leave The USA? Or, Compare Before You Go Robert Mirza May 3·31 min read

The Trauma of Leaving Your Country

Foreword

I don’t ask anyone to do my foreword. I have a good reason not to do so.

My reason behind writing this story about Uruguay is because one thing is to criticize a country without having been there and another thing is wanting to tell the good, the bad, and the seemingly perfect side of two countries. Learning to walk the walk of the natives, to think like a native, and to eat and sleep like a native. This is like being in the trenches and not like seeing things behind your binoculars, as a general would do. Don’t expect the typical from this atypical and very casual writing style.

I am writing about everyday life in the USA and abroad. About how we can enjoy every moment in life regardless of where we live if we give ourselves a chance to do so and not get caught in the vertiginous race to succeed at a career, even if that means not being happy. This writing reminds me of Lettres persanes, by Montesquieu. That was about how a writer from Persia interpreted things he was exposed to as a foreigner in France. My approach is what about if we see everything in life, small or big, from the eyes of a foreigner, and never as a person who takes everything for granted. Question everything, learn to enjoy everything. This style of writing has no genre because it is a mixture of everyday life with a sudden confession, discovery about right and wrong. Learn to appreciate everything. Not like someone who is “doing fine and dandy,” and doesn’t care about mankind but himself, never asking himself about the what if.

Sure. I left. To find romantic love. Of course, why not. You are with a person you know, but she lives in another country. But you are willing to jump over there, very far from all you call home. Away from a job in the USA, away from your family and friends. You suddenly get struck by lightning in the shape of an impossible dream and think that everything is possible, despite being in your golden years and wanting to be secure, risk-free. But you even sell your car and get rid of all your belongings, selling them for basically nothing through the app Let-Go. You meet interesting people at the supermarket across from your apartment and you sell them your slow cooker, your this, and that. You donate your Belgium carpet and espresso coffee machines to a Brazilian lady claiming she needs to sell lots of items at a garage sale to collect funds for her cancer-stricken 8-year-old daughter. You think you made a new friend, but you didn’t. You have people coming to your apartment, like a young mother, her sister, and her little son, to buy your mattress, your bed frame and you give her some of your food left. And a great friend from church comes to get all the kitchen utensils you collected after decades of collecting all possibly imaginable kitchen gadgets, which are the envy of most friends and relatives in the cosmos, like all kinds of palettes, all kind of glass cookware, of all sizes imaginable, as well as porcelain ones. Al kinds of funnels, basters, spices would be a head-turner even for the former Levant and Venetian spice traders and the Age of Discovery merchants. She also emptied all my assorted medications and restroom supplies to stock a whole pharmacy section at the shelves of your local Walmart. Also, all the assorted cookware to have a banquet. She took care of it all, and she even brought a friend to help too. It is incredible how much women do for us, and we seem not to be grateful enough. You promise you will invite your friend for dinner so you would cook your mom’s lasagna, but you never do, since you have only days before leaving the country. And it still doesn’t dawn on you that you are going away for a forced exile, without deserving it, and before ever having imagined that some people would attack the Capitol, just like that, but not exactly. They were not motivated and cheered by the crowd as at the Colosseum during the Roman Empire, but by the President of the most powerful country in the World, the United States. Did you act motivated by a premonition knowing what would happen on January 6th, 2021? Did you think it over through and through and you knew you rather not be in the USA to witness such an attack on the most sacred building of our democracy by our own citizens? Did you ever think that a semblance of the storming the Capitol by the British in 1814 would happen in your lifetime? People knowing this historical fact of more than 200 years back minimized the importance of this desecration.

They all come to America, from everywhere

Immigrants From Here And There

You also enlist the help of your afternoon school’s cleaning ladies, one who came with an accountant degree from El Salvador and the other from Mexico with a similar degree to work as cleaning ladies in Texas because there are not enough jobs in their countries, because they desperately needed a job, and one of them doesn’t speak enough English yet. But they gossip so much about all your decisions, as if they were your relatives, but they aren’t. So when they start making comments way out of line, you tell them you don’t need them anymore. They were making your life more painful. When you sell your car to a Turkish pilot and former diplomat, who used to represent his government abroad in full regalia, is now working at a pizzeria in Texas. No white gloves. No medals on his chest. Then you realize you are one foot out of the country that gave you always the freedom you always believed in. Against all odds, you still leave the USA. In pursuit of happiness. But when you leave, you already forgot that millions risked their lives coming to this country for the same pursuit.

But you still leave, regardless of family and friends

Friends, Bad Bosses And Nowhere To Die, But Paradise Found?

Stupid you, you still leave. You are also tired of bosses squeezing you like a lemon anyway and never appreciating your input. You also think, here it is all about money and big fish eating small fish mentality. Here you know that you cannot survive on social security alone and you will have to work till you die.

Then you ask yourself where could you go where you can retire and would not have to work till you drop dead, so you could enjoy life now and not years from now?

You would never have time for yourself here, ever. But you think that you will make friends there too, forgetting you already have the best friends you could ever have. Friends who stay at home with your mother while you go to work. And when your mother gets worse and even passes away, they come to pray, and more come to stay with you and help you in all they can. And when you have no money anymore for the burial, because you started paying for funeral arrangements too late, they all pitch in. You also had a busy, very rich, and entertaining social life with your mom’s friends, who were spontaneous and extremely gentle heart kind of people. When you were sick, they took you to the doctor and to the hospital. You were never abandoned. They were like your family. They put the money where their mouth was to help you and protect you. But you still left the USA. You even left your friend who helped you walk when you could not walk for a long time. She had nurtured you back to health.

Your three suitcases and your backpack had all your belongings, after you managed to get rid of two hundred boxes you had collected from fifteen years you took care of your mother and never had time to know which books, what kind of paperwork or items it all was all that time. You had a full life taking care of her and talking to your mom’s friends, and you had also carefully marked each box. Then you left, and some family members who did not understand at all why you were leaving the greatest country of all, said: “Don’t cry crocodile tears! You decided to leave, nobody forced you to leave!”

At the time I said goodbye to my brother at my apartment’s parking lot, after he took the last of my belongings he could keep or sell, my tears in my eyes made me think I was going to make the worst mistake of my life by leaving, still, I left. I was very happy of having gotten ridden of that horrible mountain of boxes. I was suddenly unemployed and I thought I would find happiness, peace, and well-being in a third-world country very far from the USA. So I left. There was nobody at the airport to greet me. I never felt so alone in my whole life. When I got to Uruguay, my cousin and my paradise new girlfriend were waiting for me. Immediately, I believed that is it. That is the beginning of the most joyous and happy time of my life, I thought to myself.

You found a new life, a new love, a new environment

Restaurants and people’s relationship with good food unlike the USA

Gradually I get to know how open the Uruguayans are and how easily you can make new friends like a domino effect, starting from your new girlfriend to all those wonderful people. I then get to savor the best meats of the world, since Argentina and Uruguay are the cattle of the world when it comes to the best quality meats. Of course, they export the best cuts, but still, an asado tastes 1,000 times better than a Texas BBQ, pardon for the offense. On the other hand, and most importantly, I was going to learn the meaning of all people in the Rio de la Plata kissing each other in the cheek, regardless if you are a child or an adult, a man or a woman, young or old. That kiss meant “I trust you and you trust me.” I never had that happen to me in the USA, where people shy away from each other and are paranoid about their personal space, and by the way, nobody trusts anyone, and lots of people carry guns. In Uruguay, instead, people love to eat, and you are more relaxed about needing to work once you are retired, but in Ford’s country, you work till you die if you made the mistake of retiring early because your income was never enough because you decided to keep working at what you like doing and because you needed job satisfaction rather than just money to pay bills. Strange enough, Uruguayans are not that overweight, in spite of most gatherings involve food, and lots of food. It is like a mystical experience where spending time with friends surpasses all material needs of wanting to make more money or writing the next book. People know how to relax and have fun. Everybody gets lunch breaks, when everything stops without the usual guilt feeling or nervousness familiar in the USA, except if you have to take the bus, a cab, or an Uber (much cheaper both than in the USA). Uber drivers are mostly Uruguayans, unlike in the USA, where most are from Nigeria or some other African country, and when you engage them they tell you their life’s story. In Uruguay they are just normal people, mostly young, just making a living, and if they are women, they are always elegantly dressed, and not just casual. Back to food, we know what a hot dog is or even a hot dog with chile, but in Montevideo, they call them panchos or frankfurters, which are boiled with a laurel leave for five minutes, and then nuked for less than a minute on top of mozzarella and put in a hot dog bun toasted or fresh, to give you an out of this world hot dog sanctification. You can add mayo or mustard to top it off, or you can try the tender bondiola, which tastes similar to tender lamb meat, which is also delicious in the Rio de la Plata but is actually pork shoulder. At an asado party, which happens almost every three weeks in Uruguay, they serve you the meat cuts on a wooden plate which you pass around the table and all devour as if it were their last meal, giving your palate the flavors of gods, which would make Zeus at the Parthenon and all pagan gods and half-gods jealous. All cuts of meat are prepared on a grill called parrilla and are either inside a den, patio, or terrace or inside a very long-shaped dining room with the proper chimney to push all smoke up the chimney.

But of course, the good-smelling meat on the grill stirs up your appetite even if you are not originally interested. Another marvelously tasting meat cut you can savor at any La Pasiva or at the Trattoria (at the Tres Cruces Shopping Center) restaurant in Montevideo, or at elite restaurants like Garcia, La Corte, or La Perdiz, is the famous chivito, which is a thin chicken (my favorite) or beef cut, served with tomatoes, lettuce, olives in a toasted bun or just in a plate, and usually served with a potato, diced carrots and sweet peas mayo salad they call ensalada rusa (Russian salad), heavenly tasting good. You will not miss at all a hamburger after eating this delicacy.

Another specialty from Uruguay is the famous milanesa, but, unlike the Mexican version, this one is from a fresh thin cut of chicken or beef, and thinly breaded and baked as opposed to fried. Personally, I prefer the chicken one. This trick plus not eating at all ground beef and fried food are why most Uruguayans are fit and don’t see alarmingly large numbers on their weight scale.

In Uruguay, they usually serve you Black Label followed by beer, usually Patricia, the national brewery. I was told that is to digest it easier than if you keep drinking scotch only, and to minimize the effect of getting tipsy. Of course, the other option is always to limit yourself to Coke, Pepsi or Sprite, or sparkling Salus water, which is the national mineral water, or plain bottled water.

Friends don’t look at their watch, ever

If you are at my friends’ gathering, in Montevideo, after working hours or on the weekend, which Argentinians usually call finde, short for fin de semana (weekend in Spanish) you will always have fun. There is always a great storyteller or a great pianist, and everyone dances and celebrates life. I find that better than being always so square and politically correct to the point of being boring and not enjoying the happy part of life, since life is not for most just work, eat and sleep, making money, spend most of it, and then die. Parties, or friends gatherings, in Montevideo, can last from 4–12 hours! Of course, this marathon-like gathering is only among very close friends. And you have the privilege of being admitted to one of those groups as soon as you get to Uruguay. I have been in one and I enjoyed it enormously, and now that I lost it, I feel like an orphan. It is a mixture of a nice conversation, great food, friendship with no masks or cliches. Spontaneity is what abounds. All without any social class backstabbing. After such an experience, you should consider yourself as a very blessed person on Earth, but if you still went “back to where you came from,” like the Beatles’ song is telling you so many times, it is probably because you forgot the real meaning of friendship and you are in for a great surprise back home, if you went back, as I did.

People moving around everywhere

Uruguayans, by definition, are bus line users and therefore you will learn sooner or later that they all walk 29 times more than in spoiled northern territories. And you will be glad to join them in this healthy habit, and once you get back home, you will ask yourself who has time to walk three laps around a big park every day? There, you walk to the supermarket dragging your small supermarket cart, you walk to the pharmacy, which is a different kind of store than in the USA, quaint and nicely small, with the best perfumes and colognes the world has to offer. You walk to the restaurant, thousand more than in our country, and all with a flair and character of their own, making you want to go back, as opposed to the boring effect of going to a chain restaurant. You walk to church, and once inside, you are in awe to all you see inside, since it is usually a historical building, and not just another building in the block. Walking to church in this tinny country can metamorphose into the thousands of large crowds, meeting outside churches or at the famous coastline or rambla. It is just awesome to partake in such a celebration. But just remember that Catholics are only 25% of Uruguayans. A very large percentage of people are agnostics or atheists. Of course, there are Evangelists, Adventists, Methodists, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses too. You walk to the park, and usually, you have so many trees, you think you are in Yellowstone Park. But if it is too far you need to walk to, that is more than 14 blocks, you take a cab or Uber, but usually Uruguayans walk 20 blocks without complaining or showing discomfort at all, unlike us, who hardly walk a long distance in the streets.

The best Meat Cuts in the World

You will also notice that in Uruguay people would not eat ground beef, so if you expect ground beef or the sauces you are used with Italian food, forget about it and get used to their tuco, which is usually a white cream sauce similar to bechamel with either mushrooms, cheeses and very seldom red sauce. But they excel in raviolones (large ravioli) and sorrentinos (round or oval ravioli), which are succulent and freshly made as all pasta in restaurants in Uruguay, and not the dry and tasteless ones, because we don’t realize there is something like freshly made pasta your taste buds will dance for, so stop eating dry pasta or frozen ravioli. You don’t know what you are missing. I ate fresh pasta for 17 months and now no way I will ever again eat dry pasta. I learned to enjoy one of the best meat cuts on the planet, bife al vacio (flank primal cut, cushioned by the cow’s belly, with no fat) or ancho (meaning wide, the former a more tender and smaller cut). Glorious meat for meat connoisseurs, the English word for experts, and not to be confused with the actual French word connaisseur, since there is a difference just in the spelling, which changed in French, but not three centuries ago, when first borrowed by the English language, but never updated. Now, let’s talk pizza. Real Pizza! Not the cardboard kind of pizza overly commercialized in the USA and shamefully called pizza when it doesn’t at all taste like real pizza and worse of all, it doesn’t even have any taste compared with the Italian original, nor Uruguayan nor Brazilian pizzas! The secret is in the dough, which is an artisan-like produced dough by real master bakers and not minimum wagers who don’t know the difference between salmon and red snapper, just to give you an example. Also, the real tasty ingredients they use in Italian, Uruguayan, Argentinian and Brazilian pizzas are genuinely fresh and of good quality, and not the usual kind of mass production line make-a-fast-buck-garbage stuff, we all are used to deal with in the fast-food industry. I know better because my first two jobs were at major pizza chains in Texas. How can a 25 pounds flour bag mixed with water, oil and, just a little pack of “secret herbs” be the only successful formula for a multi-million dollar business where the customers are just poor souls who never tasted a real pizza? If you want to try real doughnuts, would you go to Angola or Mozambique? So, don’t tell me you know how a pizza is supposed to taste or look like if you don’t ever try once in your lifetime one in Italy, Uruguay, Argentina, or Brazil, where real Italian immigrants kept doing it as their parents and grandparents did. Once you ate the real pizza you will never eat the cardboard one again. One more thing. One more secret about Uruguay. If you eat oven-baked chicken milanesa as opposed to ground beef, baked potatoes, or baked yam, and also walk regularly, you will lose at least 4–6 pounds, as I did just by doing this. When you go to restaurants with friends as a group to eat out in Uruguay, it is customary for all to split the bill, so nobody ends up paying for it. Probably you go out with a friend or a couple, but not that often with 10 friends at a time, which is just normal in Uruguay, where people have lots, lots of friends.

Healthier Uruguayans

The transportation system is very well organized and except on Sundays and holidays, you are properly covered moving around town (Montevideo). The first thing you need to know is from where to where you need to go to find out online, which bus line and which bus number. You could for example google SMT and then enter the bus number, under “Consulta Horarios de Omnibus” (“Bus time schedule,” like for example 174, destination Punta Carretas), type the bus number you think you need to take and you will see the whole day’s schedule of that specific bus, omnibus in Uruguayan Spanish or rioplatense. Also, google Cutcsa and even, I would advise you to get the app so will know how to move around with the biggest bus line of all in Montevideo. So, you should always have a very small notebook in your pocket and then you will ask the driver or the ticket attendant to tell you when to get down. You can also verify at the above-mentioned site all the places the buses go and also ask friends which bus number they take to go from any place to another destination you have in mind and write it down. You will be glad you did or else you will stay within four walls and you will be paranoid about going places by yourself to know the beautiful town. The average bus ride price, if you have an STM membership card of your own or if you can borrow one, as I did, it is more or less 31 pesos (USD1.00=33.00 pesos/UY) for one hour to 49–55 pesos for two hours, allowing you to switch buses as long as you change on time. But if you do not have a bus card, you pay almost double. If you observe how and why urban Montevideans walk you will notice that they walk very fast because they have to catch one or more buses to arrive at their destination. Also, watch out if you need to use your cell while you walk or if you take pictures while on the street. In Argentina, they can take your phone off your hand in a split of a second, not so much in Montevideo, because I took thousands of pictures, with caution, of course, but after checking the streets for security and safety, I knew when to concentrate on the camera as opposed to people walking in the street. People do what is called dribbling in soccer, which is walk very fast around you with the ball without allowing you to grab it. Well, when the sidewalks are tight and so many people are walking in all directions, you need to be able to walk fast without trampling on top of people. Once in a while, they will say perdon, for sorry. If they hit you by accident. Uruguayans don’t have the space phobia we Americans have, and you will notice that everything is narrow, small, and always crowded. And when you are back in the USA you will notice how impersonal spaces are because the human factor becomes insignificant, and you will miss seeing such a large mass of people living life to the fullest, not just driving cars. You will notice that if you need to pay a bill, like maintenance bills at a building you rent or own or a supermarket bill, you will have to stay in line at some ATM’s or special financial services places in shopping malls with 3–6 windows, reminding you of the post office in the USA. If you need to do an important transaction at a major bank, like the BROU, you will have to be patient and wait for one to one and a half hours to have 70–135 people go before you. And if you need to get blood work or lab work done, you first get a number and day at an ATM and, then you stay in two lines, one to see your group announced (which you can do days in advance) and then again you stand in line again where you have about 10–20 people in front of you standing in line to be called by the nurse after you got your number to be called. Fortunately, now in Covid-19 times, there is no line anymore. But, on the other hand, to see a practitioner or eye specialist or any specialist, you first get a number and pay at the same totem (a kind of ATM where you pay and get your appointment day and time). And after that, you wait for your appointment. But a doctor's appointment costs an average of only USD3,00 and a specialist only USD10,00. To refill medication you just go to the pharmacy, which is located at the same building as your clinic or doctor’s office. So, bang! You get two things accomplished at the same place and save time. You don’t have to wait for the usual Medicare open enrollment time, instead, you are treated as a human being with your right to have medical coverage immediately, and not whenever your government feels like it. This little country cares for its inhabitants, even if they are foreigners (like myself), they are all entitled to medical coverage all the time. No way you will stay without seeing a doctor or having your medication for 2 or 3 months at a time. Then, you discover what socialism does to social well-being and healthcare, respect and dignity.

The medical insurance, funeral arrangements, emergency coverage, like hospital care, ambulance service and, doctors who do house calls 24/7, is a marvel of Uruguayan democracy and health care system, unlike any in the world. Not even the USA offers all these services in a single package and paying an average of USD147.00 a month only. Yes, that is for real. That is what socialism does, and watch out. Socialism is not the same as communism or a dictatorship as Maduro’s or Ortega’s. Also, in Uruguay, you are not brainwashed to commit euthanasia with your loved ones as hospitals do in the USA, under the disguise of “hospice,” a very nice sounding word to cover up for murder, because taking away all medications keeping a person alive is indeed murder. Within those terms, my mother was murdered in the USA in this exact manner. So, think before you make a judgment. Life is not only about making money without a limit and having 1% of the world enslave the rest. Life is where your needs are met with a just balance of needs, wants, work, and free time for yourself. Life is not working till you are 80 and you drop dead. That was my case, no statistical research needed. I did not have to pay any marketing or facts-gathering company a dime to know all this. I learned it all firsthand. Living there. Partaking in everyday life with all Uruguayans. That was my reality, my real life, and not just library facts digging. Anyone with time to kill can do that, but be in the trenches of real-life and then writing about it, is pure gold, pure truth you have to enjoy or sweat. And if you are able to save lots of money, with a lifetime payment of additionally USD5,000.00, you are given VIP treatment at hospitals and at any health care facility and you never stay in line. This sounds strange for a country with a new socialist, communist, and the Christian Democratic parties alliance since 1971, which ended with the military coup in 1973, creating a dictatorship that would last till 1985, after the people voted in 1980 to end the military regime, which had governed Uruguay after the defeat of the urban guerrilla and socialistic and communist Tupamaros, of which former President Mujica and his wife, Lucia Topolansky — president and vice president respectively — belonged to. They even made a movie about Mujica called “The 12 year’s night,” which won the first prizes at the film, the Biarritz, the Huelva film festival, the Berlin and Cairo film festivals (and nominated at the film festival of Venice and San Sebastian). This Hollywood-style approach of former guerrilla fighters (and soldiers and cop killers, him and his wife alike) turned Mujica into a revered person in Spain (while his wife was Vice President at the previous government) almost all over the world. In the USA you can probably ask yourself how many presidents in history were able to take the highest position in the country in spite of having murdered someone? And some other presidents didn’t kill anyone personally but ordered wars which caused thousands or more to die, allegedly. The downside of having gone to the left, and of literally having killed people, had Mujica locked in jail where he was emotionally tortured for 12 years as punishment by the dictatorship. Having gone to the left for 15 years, Uruguay was not like Cuba, even with the former because there was and is still capitalism, and not 100% communist as Fidel’s country, so your rights and freedoms are not taken away, not even now with the right-wing mandate. In this little country in the Rio de la Plata, where a minority has all the money, but the government too, which sounds so strange, people still keep buying things all the time, but not to the exaggerated scope people get when buying non-stop in Lincoln’s country. There is always a spending ceiling, unlike in Marlboro’s Country when talking about the poor is mostly seen as a consequence of not having gone to college, not having had the necessary business savvy, not having had good parents to guide you, not having the “right” brain, not having the “right” skin color, not having the guts to say “this is mine” to all people you encounter, so all you get is yours and you don’t share nothing with society and you don’t give anything back to the community. Your goal is only to amass all the money you can because you know that education is not a right, healthcare is not a right, only electorate vote counts, not the popular vote, or perhaps you don’t know all is written and planned by the 1% (was Calvin perhaps right when talking about predestination?) But it is not all true. People in America have dreams and illusions.

Winning coalition, unlike the divided right, for the People, 16 years ago, but now back to the right

The only good result of the socialist and communist coalition in Uruguay, which seemed to be ready to win last year elections for the fourth time, is the health benefits, which even a foreigner like me did enjoy while living there as a foreigner, making you feel at home and like your human rights are fully and duly respected, unlike in the USA, where you need to wait for enrollment times, regardless if you cannot afford to see a doctor or buy your medication. Another social advance of utmost importance was the constant raise of the minimum wage where nobody would die of hunger, as long as they had a place to live. But amazingly enough, you still see homeless people sleeping in the streets. Those are the ones who do not want government assistance or have mental health issues. But while I used to live in Houston, I was the same too. People sleeping on the sidewalk in the winter and I did volunteer with friends giving them extra blankets and sodas. Another marvel of socialism in Uruguay is that the government pushed for a low or nonexistent debt level for all its citizens by having everyone have a major socialistic minded credit card allowing you to buy on credit with no interest at all -and not the credit card offers in the USA pretending to give you 12 or 14 months interest-free credit cards, so later you get hooked to credit debt until you become enslaved of a system favoring only the haves. But in Uruguay, the freedom card is called OCA, with no interest as long as you pay off the balance in 12 months. And Uruguayans are very bright and shrewd people. You cannot trick them into anything like in the USA. So, when you tell them no interest for 12 months, they are not going to abuse that “privilege.” But if you are as gullible as most of us are in the USA, having credit cards galore and spending like there is no tomorrow, and paying debts right and left till you literally drop dead at your very grave or if debt-free, then one week after or before you die, you get to erase the red from your balance sheet, unless you belong to the wealthy 1% or by exclusion, then the interest of almost 42% in the Rio de la Plata will make you think twice before belonging to the next group, that is the 10% or the subsequent group…probably “less poor that the poor” following group, and buying too much on credit. And Uruguay’s neighbor Argentina pays about 62% mortgage interest. Something to think about. To make things worse, in Argentina they talk about “risk country,” which by golly, is nothing we ever heard in the USA. Risk country means the risk anyone would run by investing all their money in your country. That risk country number on February 4th, 2019 was 654. And is not as bad as it used to be before Argentina signed a 50–52 billion dollars loan with the IMF when it used to be like 734. Can you imagine someone talking about the USA even being any kind of “risk country” for anyone to invest in? This is capitalism paradise. You can invest here and still make a killing because the USA is a non risk country. And, but as bad as Argentina, 10% of the population in Uruguay is a government bureaucrat who cannot be fired ever, creating a huge burden for society. At least at the former government. Now, we need to see what the actual right-wing regime will do. But here in the USA, the Republicans used to criticize the Democrats for having a huge government apparatus — perhaps 17%? — The taxes are also very high to support so much social welfare, and I talked to several business people who complain that the taxes get to around 30–35% not allowing them to invest in their business as they wished they would. Also, lots of companies close down losing about 47,000 jobs in one single year, which is a lot in a country of barely three million souls.

Unions have more power than the former two political parties dividing the country in the past, and mushrooming parties of socialistic ideology bloom

The last one was Fleishmann, you know, the yeast company. And the power Unions and union leaders have is legendary, in Argentina a big mafia with former governments as accomplices, meanwhile, in Uruguay, where big money is long gone in the ’30s and late ’40s, the problem is just the right to strike, for example, 7 days straight for the garbage collectors union, highly paid people, living the city in dire straits, the same as the bus and the cab drivers unions when somebody gets murdered or hurt in an accident, they called a city-wide strike lasting 24–48 hours. The same if a teacher is attacked by parents or students. The city teachers union calls then a strike. Also when the anesthesiologists union wanted a raise and they did not get it, went on strike not caring for people in pain who needed to be operated but were not in a life or death situation, when they did indeed make an exception, but never if they just were in a lot of pain. But, all and all, of course, that is much worse in Argentina, where the unions act as the opposition against the government with much more influence and destructive power. In Argentina there are marches all the time, paralyzing the country. In Uruguay, that time was way back when the people protested against dictatorship, which did not happen as a spontaneous impulse. It was the reaction of a political party (Colorados) and the military wanting to stop things from getting out of hand, influenced by communists in universities and intellectuals who, as opposed to Christianity, atheism held ground and was the seed of a revolution against a democracy. With the gradual birth of social awareness and discontent against a rightist government, right before Uruguay had become a dictatorship in 1973, the Tupamaros movement suddenly turned violent and they started throwing stones at the authority, then they grabbed weapons, robbed banks. Then, they started kidnapping the rich. Then they started killing people. The Robin Hood-like “altruistic” effort of robbing the rich to help the poor had lost its romantic appeal early on to become a violent way to try to overthrow the democratically elected government. From an intellectual revolution, it soon became a vulgar group of bank robbers and killers, who used the robbed money to purchase land, which is the same “modest living” former President Mujica boosts to own as a beacon of democracy and non-ostentatious living, surely with stolen bank bills. Every one of his co-nationals knows that and few allow themselves to be fooled by such blatant hypocrisy unless they hate to work and do not want to be good citizens. Then the sleeping lion woke up. The military held a coup and took over the country, became merciless and extremely inhumane, and started a fascist regime that lasted more than a decade (till 1985), and committed crimes of lesser humanity. Some of these war criminals are not yet in jail. People were detained everywhere. People were executed without even being detained and their rights were not read, because there were no constitutional rights anymore. People were made to disappear. People were thrown from airplanes and killed. About twelve thousand people were arrested and eleven hundred were killed. People lost their constitutional rights. If you walked in the street with no ID, you ended up in jail. If you walked in a group you were suspected of subversion activities and arrested and thrown in jail, even if you were eleven. The mounted police used to gallop with their swords in combat positions assaulting the protesters and passers-by too. My mother and my 11 years old brother got caught in that chaos and had to run for cover to save their lives. Even if you were just celebrating the fact that your soccer team won a tournament you were arrested. So, celebrations and gatherings were declared forbidden. Then, clergy staff had to go bail you out of jail. Before the atrocities started as means of repression, the two arch-rival political parties governing the country in the past were the Blancos and the Colorados (the latter one masterminded the military coup of 1973 and after its defeat could never again regain power, because the present government is led by the Blancos). Fearing losing their influence and grip on power, the military held elections. But even if the people voted not to have the military stay in power, the status quo still lingered. Later the country was mushrooming with a multitude of socialistic and communistic-minded political parties. But that was the pat, now the elected government is right-winged.

Lord Ponsonby “created” a country called Banda Oriental to separate two mega-powers, Argentina and Brazil, so you are for a nice trip when you come here for a gastronomical and cultural holiday

But, what few historians know in the USA is that Lord John Ponsonby, a famous British diplomat, and Foreign Minister, who functioned as a mediator for the war between the United Provinces of Rio de la Plata (which would become later Argentina) and the then Brazilian Empire from 1826–1828, and is regarded as the international figure who basically invented Uruguay as a country, because England needed a buffer zone between mega-countries like Argentina and Brazil, and was very much present in Uruguay with the first railroad system in the country, the first fridge-freezer facilities of Uruguay and also the first British Hospital, which still stands nowadays.

But going to the practical side of urban transportation, you find a cab anywhere if you just wait for an average of 8–15 minutes in the relatively crowded main streets of Montevideo, and even not so busy streets, and altogether is it, where, since more than a century, half of the country’s population reside. There are no streets where you don’t see people walking, unlike in the USA where most of us go anywhere, even 4 blocks away, only by car. Among all people walking and working in Montevideo you will find plenty of Cubans, Venezuelans, and many other nationalities, who by political coalitions like the last two mentioned, have a preference in the immigration lines for the right of residency. The rest needs to wait an average of 18 months to two years to have their residence, all while staying in the country. At the gas station downstairs from where I used to live there are three Venezuelan attendants, very happy to be here, as opposed to starving in Venezuela. Uruguay might not be as a rich country as it used to be between 1900 and 1950, but it is a paradise for Maduro’s country exiled citizens.

Being happy in small daily things is still possible only in Uruguay, in spite of being a 3rd world country, but with USB connections and WIFI everywhere, even in buses

Most places, like offices and homes, have A/C units, but rarely use them, except for shopping malls. So, in the summer months, you sit melting your life away, impossible to think straight, and finally you fall asleep from exhaustion at the typical afternoon nap or siesta, even if you never took a nap in your entire life. And the same at night, you sweat like a dog. Babies are subsidized, so, this way, the poor are being helped to stay out of starvation, but are not encouraged to find a job, because to start with, there are not so many job opportunities, except for entrepreneurs like restaurateurs and people who can start new businesses in spite of the high costs of running an enterprise in Uruguay. And you will not imagine what people steal. If you have a dog food enterprise and you don’t hire private guards to protect your home or warehouse, that is fair game for anyone casing your home or business. There still is a building boom in Montevideo and all over Uruguay. Some say it is money laundering. You always see three to ten-story buildings mushrooming everywhere, including the Trump Tower in Punta del Este. The city of Montevideo is a very eclectic architecture living museum of all imaginable styles and periods in history. From Art Nouveau to Classic, from Colonial to contemporary. If you take any bus covering part of the old town (Ciudad Vieja) and the rest of the city sections and subdivisions, like Tres Cruces, Punta Carreta, Pocitos, Malvin, Carrasco, El Prado, Cordon, Aguada, Reducto, etc., you will find all the possible building styles you can dream of. Hire a cab and have it go through town, even while in movement, with eventual slow down speed and occasional stops, you can make a fabulous collection of architectural beauties. You also find USB connections to recharge your cellular on the run everywhere, in malls, hospitals, and even city buses, and lots are electrical ones, not using fuel nor gas. The funny thing is that in the USA, if you live in a small town, major sandwich shop franchises don’t want clients to use their free Wi-Fi account and if you ask employees to help you, they don’t realize that we live in the first world and that we have the right and need to use the Internet anywhere.

You can still go to Uruguay in pursuit of your dreams and make it unless you just miss pure capitalism or fear life as a free gift or still have umbilical cord ties

Go to Uruguay just for love, because in most countries, there is the good and there is the bad. You might have asked yourself why the hell did you leave the USA in the first place. You did it because you don’t like your boss. You did it because you did long for more justice back home. You did it because you got tired of being just a consumer. You did it because, in spite of family and good friends, you wanted more. You did it because you wanted to walk alongside the rambla, the famous and beautiful Uruguayan coastline stretching for miles and miles. You wanted to see the sunset at Pocitos, where you can see the sun go down among palm trees and the Rio de la Plata. You wanted to see the famous Montevideo Casino. You wanted to see Piriapolis, Punta del Este (the Uruguayan equivalent of the Cote D’Azure) Colonia Suiza, at the west coast. But after seventeen months, you came back to the USA, because this trip didn’t have to be a self-imposed exile, but a reason to leave your comfort zone and be adventurous, dare to see new worlds, new cultures, new gastronomy, new relationships, a new horizon, a new sea, a new way of hugging, a new way of embracing life, hope and human understanding and a hope for justice for all and not just a few. A new way of believing in mankind. Do it. You will not regret it. Because life is too short, and don’t wait for others to tell you the story. You be the one to live a story so later you go back and are able to tell it, unless an umbilical cord ties you back and you need to go back suddenly, abandoning your new loved ones. Girlfriend. Family. Friends. If you left, nobody would understand why, here nor there, the new paradise. Or perhaps you don’t grasp yet that life is a gift and you are entitled to it before you have no more energy left and no desire nor strength to leave home anymore, looking for happiness elsewhere.

Just do it. Because nobody told you to leave. You decided freely. Just go. And if you come back after all that effort and having soaked yourself into a new culture that became yours but you chickened out and returned home, at least you had the guts to give it a shot. Don’t regret it.