About horatiotrobinson

Currently Lives:

Citizen of:

Some Forum Posts:

Uruguay: Moving to Montevideo, Uruguay:

Hey there Gary. I'm in Montevideo and I can tell you that I've never felt insecure in the street the way some people seem to perceive it. Of course, just like in any city of the world there are bad neighbourhoods, criminality exists and we also have news media trying to manipulate perceptions just like everywhere else in the world. That's their job, that's fine. Whether we decide to believe that, that's another story. Here's a book by R David Finzer (who has unfortunately passed away). Even if it's somewhat outdated, it's more or less accurate in the things that don't change too often http://books.google.com.uy/books?id=Z9Up1rOz8mQC&pg=PA51&lpg=PA51&dq=uruguay+caller+id&source=bl&ots=R1HZLShalR&sig=BL4eHtd1FL0BmuTTrLgKqZaFd9Y&hl=en&sa=X&ei=KWWvUrqnFMLnsASbyoG4BQ&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=uruguay%20caller%20id&f=false It was written in 2006, and since then the parts that have changed are mostly those that have to do with Internet access and the prices. Inflation is a latent problem and you have to account for about 10% yearly, so that's a big difference 7 years later. The good news is that Internet-wise things have changed for good. There are more options available than we had in 2006 and better quality, including high speed fibre access in certain neighbourhoods. As for race relations, which I've seen highlighted in other posts here, I rarely feel that race is given the same importance in every day life that it has in other places. For example, state documents, census and other such things rarely describe persons in terms of their race, only when that's helpful in identifying a person in case she's lost, or there's a criminal case involved. That being said, because black people are a minority and the waves of mass immigration we had were from Europe 70 or more years ago, and we don't have a strong indigenous heritage, it is true that most uruguayans are quite vanilla and not very diverse compared to most other places. That being said, it's absolutely not true that all people in Uruguay are all white, I think a better way to describe it is that there's a smooth continuum of people from different origins, of predominantly spanish ancestry. (not what people would call "hispanic" in the US) It's true that there's a faction of people of black ancestry that have become more vocal in recent years, but it seems to me that it's mostly politically motivated and I see little in the street to inform me that's a creeping problem in our society. That's not to say racism doesn't exist. One has to expect that patrician families of super conservative backgrounds may have some degree of animosity about race, but when that happens it's generally in their private lives. It's just not acceptable in Uruguay to make any sort of racially charged of inflammatory commentary in the media or in public in any way. (unlike the ways I've seen in other parts of Latin America) In sum, not the best, not the worst. Hope that helps. Feel free to ask if you need help with anything. Cheers, H

Date Joined:

12/16/2013

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