page_title: Italian Uruguayans
section_title: During the Presidencies of Gabriel Terra and Baldomir Ferrari
hierarchical_section_title: Italian Uruguayans / During the Presidencies of Gabriel Terra and Baldomir Ferrari
caption_attribution_description: Alfredo Baldomir.
context_page_description: Italian Uruguayans are Uruguayan-born citizens who are fully or partially of Italian descent or Italian-born people in Uruguay. It is estimated that more than one third of Uruguayans are of Italian descent.
  Along with its neighboring country, Argentina, Italian immigration to Uruguay is one of the largest, if not the largest, ethnic groups towards Uruguay's modern culture and society, along with Spanish Uruguayans, exhibiting significant connections to Italian culture in terms of language, customs and traditions. Outside of Italy, Uruguay has one of the highest percentages of Italians in the world.
context_section_description: During the 1930s, the Italian community became very important in Uruguayan society. That coincided with the rise to power of Italian-Uruguayan Gabriel Terra from 1931 to 1938 and his successor Baldomir Ferrari (1938–1943) and his relatives. President Gabriel Terra was able to obtain land and funding support from Mussolini and Hitler to build a dam on the Rio Negro, creating the largest artificial lake in South America. In addition, Terra promoted the beginning of the process of 'industrialization by means of the Italian companies. He openly appreciated Italian fascism and tried to imitate some characteristics and corporate policies.
  In Montevideo, for example, was a political Fascio with 1,200 members, and 150 volunteers gave Italian-Uruguayans the Italian conquest of Ethiopia in 1936.
  The Italian diplomat Mazzolini said that Mussolini considered Uruguay as the most "Italian" state of the Americas with which to make a possible future political and ethnic-racial alliance. The Italian language gained considerable importance in Montevideo in those years and became compulsory in secondary schools in Uruguay in 1942 under Ferrari.
  Further, around 1938 a certain number of Italian Jews came to Uruguay, feeling rejected in their mother country by the anti-Semitic racial laws.
caption: Alfredo Baldomir Ferrari, 27th president of Uruguay.
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