I am going to try and learn some things about Uruguay while I am here, and will try and outline interesting facts here on the blog. This will enable me to continue learning while holding onto a hobby of informing those of you back home where I am and what I am up to.
Uruguay is composed of 19 departments. This structrue is perhaps similar to the counties we have back home Washington State - King County, Snohomish County, Pierce County and so on.
Here is the same map relating the names of each department.
As you can see in the image above and below, Montevideo (the dept. where Mari and I are residing) is the smallest department of the 19, located all the way at the bottom of the map.
Each of the 19 departments has a capital city that monitors the department. For example - Colonia del Sacramento is the capital of Colonia. In this respect, Montevideo is the capital for the department of Montevideo, while also serving as the countries capital as well.
Stealing from http://www.wikipedia.org/, Uruguay "is home to some 3.5 million people, of whom 1.8 million live in the capital of Montevideo and its metropolitan area. Comparing Seattle and Montevideo, Wikipedia relates that the 2010 census found that Seattle is home to 630,320 residents within a metropolitan area of some 3.4 million inhabitants. Thus, the greater metropolitan area of Seattle has roughly the same number of inhabitants as all of Uruguay.
Uruguay won its independence between 1811–28 following a struggle between the claims of Argentina and Brazil, being laid by England, Spain and Portugal. There were three major battles fought in 1811 that helped bring about Independence for Uruguay. The 200 year anniversary, the bicentenial, is going to be celebrated here in 3 days on February 28th 2011.
Stealing a bit from http://www.explore-uruguay.com/, "Uruguays National Independence day is known as Independence of the Oriental Republic of Uruguay.
At the end of May 1810, news came to Montevideo about the establishment of the First National Government in Buenos Aires. The people of Uruguay now begin to have feeling about emancipation.
On February 28, 1811, a group consisting of hundreds of patriots and led by Pedro Venancio José Viera y Benavides took the cities of Soriano. Once taken, he proclaimed the end of Hispanic domination."
This was the first battle of many, spread over several years, that helped free Uruguay and set it apart from its much larger neighbors - Argentina to the west and Brazil to the north.
The major military leader here is Artigas - or rather, Jose Gervasio Artigas Arnal. He is the national hero of Uruguay, and is referred to as "the father of Uruguayan independence". There is a major building devoted to his tomb located in downtown Montevideo and is open free to the public everyday and stationed with armed guards. Its quite a site.
Artigas admired the United States of America and was said to always carry a copy of the United States Constitution with him. He wanted the United Provinces of the River Plate government to be based on the same federalist ideas as the USA. These ideals went against what the Buenos Aires government of the time wanted, but he managed to gain the support of some other provinces. Because of this, the Buenos Aires government supported the Portuguese invasion of the Eastern Bank. - Wikipedia
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