Nestled between Brazil, where supporters of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro attacked federal buildings after his election ouster, and Argentina, where the opposition leader calls libertarian President Javier Milei a “little dictator,” is a country where defeated presidential candidates rush to congratulate and even “hug” the victor.
Welcome to Uruguay, a beacon of stability on a continent rocked by gang violence and political instability, where a former history teacher was elected president on Sunday on a promise not to rock the boat.
The second and final round of Uruguay’s presidential election, in which Yamandu Orsi won back the presidency for the left after five years of center-right rule, was hailed as proof of the enduring power of the nation’s consensus-driven political culture.
Election day passed off peacefully, with 90 percent of voters in the nation of 3.4 million casting a ballot, and the center-right candidate Alvaro Delgado was gracious in defeat.
Within minutes of the results being announced, Delgado sent Orsi a “big hug and a greeting.”
Analysts said the uneventful nature of the election and polite rhetoric were testament to the moderation that characterizes politics in a country with three times as many cows as people.
“It is very difficult today, with so much polarization and such strong divisions, to create spaces for dialogue and build a shared vision of the state. Uruguay has achieved that,” said Benjamin Gedan, director of the Latin America program at the Wilson Center, a US think tank.
Adolfo Garce, a political scientist at the University of the Republic in Uruguay’s capital, Montevideo, attributed the lack of deep divisions to the “trauma of the dictatorship.”
From 1973 to 1985, Uruguay was run by a brutal military-led regime, one of a handful that sowed terror in the southern part of South America in the 1970s and 1980s.
Thousands of people were jailed, tortured or killed.
Garce said Uruguayans were still scarred by memories of the years preceding the dictatorship, which was marked by “a climate of polarization that did us a lot of harm and that culminated in a military coup.”
He added that the “fairly classic bipartisan logic” that had dominated politics since the return to democracy was a further stabilizing factor.
Power alternates between two large blocs — a conservative coalition dominated by the National Party of outgoing President Luis Lacalle Pou, and the leftist Broad Front.
With both camps enjoying similar levels of support, there is no incentive for either to develop “extreme positions” or “demagogic promises,” Garce added.
Daniel Chasquetti, a political science professor who also lectures at the University of the Republic, said Uruguay “has charted the same course more or less for 20, 25 years.”
Orsi “may go a little further to the left, but I don’t think there will be a significant change,” he said.
And yet underneath the surface, Uruguay faces a raft of issues, including growing disenchantment with the political system.
A Latinobarometro poll last year showed the percentage of Uruguayans who were satisfied with democracy falling 9 points in three years to 59 percent.
The Economist magazine this week flagged what it called “a worrying lack of urgency about a slew of entrenched problems,” including slowed economic growth, rising inequality and stubbornly high poverty levels.
“Most alarming” for the magazine was Uruguay’s worsening security situation linked to the country’s emergence as a cocaine-trafficking hub.
The murder rate last year stood at more than 11 murders per 100,000 inhabitants, more than double that of Chile.
Calling on Uruguay’s parties to offer more than “more-of-the-same certainty,” The Economist wrote: “Uruguayan politicians’ preference for comparing Uruguay with its troubled region, rather than the rich world, is a concession to mediocrity.”
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