This material was compiled by Jose Maria Firpo, in a book called El Uruguay and sus Visitantes:1926-1967. The chapter is called "The Happiest Place South of the Border". These are my favorite parts:
1. A hotel in Colonia wouldn't DREAM of charging guests to walk in and take a bath, and then nap all afternoon, at their spa.
2. The author, the jounalist Milton Bracker, described our cattle as Shorthorns which means that they are "as docile as Ferdinand". That got me into finding out how Ferdinand the Bull was based on a true bittersweet story.
3. The school district commission of Rutherford, New Jersey published school material about Uruguay using the words "Socialist" and "Utopian" to describe it. It didn't take long for detractors to call out this description as "hitlerist". The revised edition made no mention of Uruguay as socialist or utopian.
4. To describe the two party system as totally representative of the people, the author says that in Uruguay "very few have too much and there are very few who live in poverty". Tell that to subsistence farmers!
5. He mentions that each individual of Uruguay believe that they are "One Heart" together with their other compatriots, celebrating that this quality is not shared among other peoples of the world. This idea comes from "The Purple Land" by W.H. Hudson which is required reading to understand the country during its "barbaric" period.
6. Jose Gervasio Artigas, our George Washington, was the only foreign military general to not serve in the U.S. and despite that was offered political asylum with all its privileges and prerrogatives.
7. The feminist movement is strong in Montevideo: 607 women got divorced that year. The country is mostly Catholic, but not as pious as the people of Peru.
In a specific case, a woman divorced her husband because he had to sell the automobile to fund his gambling habit. Still, the husband claimed, if a gambling addiction was the only grounds for a divorce men would win in all litigation. He is saying that men have many more flaws than women.
