Uruguayan Quotes

The Stadium Have you ever entered an empty stadium? Try it. Stand in the middle of the field and listen. There is nothing less empty than an empty stadium. There is nothing less mute than stands bereft of spectators. At Wembley, shouts from the 1966 World Cup, which England won, still resound, and if you listen very closely you can hear groans from 1953 when England fell to the Hungarians. Montevideo’s Centenario Stadium sighs with nostalgia for the glory days of Uruguayan soccer. Maracanã is still crying over Brazil’s 1950 World Cup defeat. At Bombonera in Buenos Aires, drums boom from half a century ago. From the depths of Azteca Stadium, you can hear the ceremonial chants of the ancient Mexican ball game. The concrete terraces of Camp Nou in Barcelona speak Catalan, and the stands of San Mamés in Bilbao talk in Basque. In Milan, the ghosts of Giuseppe Meazza scores goals that shake the stadium bearing his name. The final match of the 1974 World Cup, won by Germany, is played day after day and night after night at Munich’s Olympic Stadium. King Fahd Stadium in Saudi Arabia has marble and gold boxes and carpeted stands, but it has no memory or much of anything to say.

He told me that in 1886 he had invented an original system of numbering and that in a very few days he had gone beyond the twenty-four-thousand mark. He had not written it down, since anything he thought of once would never be lost to him. His first stimulus was, I think, his discomfort at the fact that the famous thirty-three gauchos of Uruguayan history should require two signs and two words, in place of a single word and a single sign. He then applied this absurd principle to the other numbers. In place of seven thousand thirteen he would say (for example) Maximo Pérez; in place of seven thousand fourteen, The Railroad; other numbers were Luis Melián Lafinur, Olimar, sulphur, the reins, the whale, the gas, the caldron, Napoleon, Agustin de Vedia. In place of five hundred, he would say nine. Each word had a particular sign, a kind of mark; the last in the series were very complicated...

As I think of the many myths, there is one that is very harmful, and that is the myth of countries. I mean, why should I think of myself as being an Argentine, and not a Chilean, and not an Uruguayan. I don't know really. All of those myths that we impose on ourselves — and they make for hatred, for war, for enmity — are very harmful. Well, I suppose in the long run, governments and countries will die out and we'll be just, well, cosmopolitans.

I come from a plane that fell into the mountains. I am Uruguayan. We have been walking for ten days. I have a friend up here who is injured. In the plane there is fourteen injured people. We have to get of here quickly and we don't have any food. We are weak. When are you going to come and fetch us? Please. We can't even walk. Where are we?

I do wish you’d break the careless habit of using the word American as if you had stolen it from the rest of us. Use norteamericano, because we Cubans and Mexicans and Uruguayans, we’re also Americans.

THIS IS MY ABC BOOK of people God loves. We’ll start with . . .           A: God loves Adorable people. God loves those who are Affable and Affectionate. God loves Ambulance drivers, Artists, Accordion players, Astronauts, Airplane pilots, and Acrobats. God loves African Americans, the Amish, Anglicans, and Animal husbandry workers. God loves Animal-rights Activists, Astrologers, Adulterers, Addicts, Atheists, and Abortionists.           B: God loves Babies. God loves Bible readers. God loves Baptists and Barbershop quartets . . . Boys and Boy Band members . . . Blondes, Brunettes, and old ladies with Blue hair. He loves the Bedraggled, the Beat up, and the Burnt out . . . the Bullied and the Bullies . . . people who are Brave, Busy, Bossy, Bitter, Boastful, Bored, and Boorish. God loves all the Blue men in the Blue Man Group.           C: God loves Crystal meth junkies,           D: Drag queens,           E: and Elvis impersonators.           F: God loves the Faithful and the Faithless, the Fearful and the Fearless. He loves people from Fiji, Finland, and France; people who Fight for Freedom, their Friends, and their right to party; and God loves people who sound like Fat Albert . . . “Hey, hey, hey!”           G: God loves Greedy Guatemalan Gynecologists.           H: God loves Homosexuals, and people who are Homophobic, and all the Homo sapiens in between.           I: God loves IRS auditors.           J: God loves late-night talk-show hosts named Jimmy (Fallon or Kimmel), people who eat Jim sausages (Dean or Slim), people who love Jams (hip-hop or strawberry), singers named Justin (Timberlake or Bieber), and people who aren’t ready for this Jelly (Beyoncé’s or grape).           K: God loves Khloe Kardashian, Kourtney Kardashian, Kim Kardashian, and Kanye Kardashian. (Please don’t tell him I said that.)           L: God loves people in Laos and people who are feeling Lousy. God loves people who are Ludicrous, and God loves Ludacris. God loves Ladies, and God loves Lady Gaga.           M: God loves Ministers, Missionaries, and Meter maids; people who are Malicious, Meticulous, Mischievous, and Mysterious; people who collect Marbles and people who have lost their Marbles . . . and Miley Cyrus.           N: God loves Ninjas, Nudists, and Nose pickers,           O: Obstetricians, Orthodontists, Optometrists, Ophthalmologists, and Overweight Obituary writers,           P: Pimps, Pornographers, and Pedophiles,           Q: the Queen of England, the members of the band Queen, and Queen Latifah.           R: God loves the people of Rwanda and the Rebels who committed genocide against them.           S: God loves Strippers in Stilettos working on the Strip in Sin City;           T: it’s not unusual that God loves Tom Jones.           U: God loves people from the United States, the United Kingdom, and the United Arab Emirates; Ukrainians and Uruguayans, the Unemployed and Unemployment inspectors; blind baseball Umpires and shady Used-car salesmen. God loves Ushers, and God loves Usher.           V: God loves Vegetarians in Virginia Beach, Vegans in Vietnam, and people who eat lots of Vanilla bean ice cream in Las Vegas.           W: The great I AM loves will.i.am. He loves Waitresses who work at Waffle Houses, Weirdos who have gotten lots of Wet Willies, and Weight Watchers who hide Whatchamacallits in their Windbreakers.           X: God loves X-ray technicians.           Y: God loves You.           Z: God loves Zoologists who are preparing for the Zombie apocalypse. God . . . is for the rest of us. And we have the responsibility, the honor, of letting the world know that God is for them, and he’s inviting them into a life-changing relationship with him. So let ’em know.

Uruguayan President José “Pepe” Mujica in December 2013 made his country the first in the world to regulate cannabis for recreational, medical, and industrial uses.

And that's all, my young friends. The legend spread on the winds of Mexico City and the winds of '68, fusing with the stories of the dead and the survivors and now everybody knows that a woman stayed at the university when its freedom was violated in that beautiful, tragic year. And I've heard others tell the story many times, and in their telling, the woman who spent fifteen days shut in a bathroom without eating is a medical student or a secretary at the Torre de Rectoría, not a Uruguayan with no papers or work or place to lay her head. And sometimes it isn't even a woman but a man, a Maoist student or a professor with gastrointestinal troubles. And when I hear these stories, these versions of my story, I don't usually say anything (especially if I'm not drunk). And if I am drunk, I try to play it down. That's nothing, I say, that's university folk-lore, that's urban legend, and then they look at me and say: Auxilio, you're the mother of Mexican poetry. And I say (or if I'm drunk, I shout): no, I'm not anybody's mother, but I do know them all, all the young poets of Mexico City, those who were born here and those who came from the provinces, and those who were swept here on the current from other places in Latin America, and I love them all.

The proposed legislation would use as its base internationally accepted body mass index standards to determine whether a model was too thin and would set criminal penalties for hiring models who fell below the standards determined by the law. The index suggests that a woman who is 5 feet 7 inches tall should weigh at least 120 pounds. But the final legal standards would be determined by the French health authorities, who could adjust them for factors such as bone size. Violators would have to pay a fine of about $83,000 and serve as many as six months in prison. The struggle over the appearance and health of fashion models is hardly a new one. It became more public in 2006 after the deaths of two models, a Brazilian and a Uruguayan, which set off a spate of voluntary standards in the industry and the effort in some places, including New York, to use healthier looking models. The death in 2010 of a French model and actress, Isabelle Caro, who at one point weighed just 55 pounds, fueled further calls for steps to address anorexia. So far the fashion industry has opposed legislation to address the issue, although a number of designers have spoken out

values can be circumvented more easily when the payoff is alluring enough through the creation of an emotional state that is more powerful than the value. Perhaps the most vivid example of this dynamic involves stranded survivors of disasters such as the Uruguayan rugby players who survived a plane crash in the Andes and then decided to eat the flesh of their deceased friends to remain alive.

which the club said they would donate to a “good cause.” The KNVB thought the punishment didn’t fit the crime and hence went about increasing Suarez’s suspension to seven league matches. Suarez was branded the “Cannibal of Ajax” by the Dutch daily newspaper De Telegraaf. In order to weather the storm, Suarez took to the popular social media platform Facebook to offer his apologies; he uploaded a remorseful video. Fortunately, the entire fiasco wasn’t a big deal in the international scene as the Dutch league isn’t quite as popular as the other leagues. Suarez still had opportunities to turn over a new leaf.

synonymous with controversies. He has had his fair share of negative media press in his career and rightly so. When in Ajax, he once faced suspension for a half-time altercation with teammate Albert Luque, over a free kick! Regrettably, Suarez has been involved in bigger controversies than just the half-time altercation. On November 20, 2010, Suarez did the unthinkable when he bit PSV Eindhoven’s Otman Bakkal on the shoulder during Ajax’s match with PSV. Understandably, Ajax suspended him for two games and fined him an undisclosed amount, which the club said they would donate to a “good cause.” The KNVB thought the punishment didn’t fit the crime and hence went about increasing Suarez’s suspension to seven league matches. Suarez was branded the “Cannibal of Ajax” by the Dutch daily newspaper De Telegraaf. In order to weather the storm, Suarez took to the popular social media platform Facebook to offer his apologies; he uploaded a remorseful video. Fortunately, the entire fiasco wasn’t a big deal in the international scene as the Dutch league isn’t quite as popular as the other leagues. Suarez still had opportunities to turn over a new leaf.

One group of senior directors took an extravagant junket to Uruguay to kill doves. They especially loved killing doves. Why? It couldn’t have been the challenge. The group paid a Uruguayan farmer who had thousands of doves on his property to allow them to shoot there. One of the managers told me the air was so thick with doves that the hunting resembled a scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s movie The Birds.

And then there were Hernán and Rafa, muscular brothers who expressed most of their politics through soccer, moving smoothly back and forth between the two topics as if they were one. The character of other countries came out on the field, they said. The Brazilians presumed, the Uruguayans lacked heart, the more prosperous teams aped European styles, and the proletarian ones had the light footwork that you learn when you play on pitted dirt.

The Uruguayan kid was well-spoken and intelligent; he was a 21-year-old Rasta kid from Montevideo. His name was Cristobal. He seemed really interested in the products and wanted to find a job, saying that if he did not find one soon he would have to leave his girlfriend behind in Barcelona and go back to Uruguay. He had a gorgeous Spanish girlfriend; he showed me a picture, I had met her once. She was so hot, I did not even know how he had gotten close to her. So, I thought the kid had the right motives and the necessary motivation to do this job. His situation was not really that different from mine. He was kind and soft-spoken; he had innocent eyes. You could tell by his voice that he was a good person and would not do anything wrong, not even if he was forced to. I was sure he was not a Silvio-like Spaniard thief who would dare go wild stealing orders and collecting full money for half-delivered products. Silvio might even have involved the store owners, the alleged clients, in the scam to squeeze more products out of poor fool Adam, „The Goof-Proof.

Their first Olympic match was against Yugoslavia. The Yugoslavs sent spies to the practice session. The Uruguayans caught on and practised by kicking the ground and sending the ball up into the clouds, tripping at every step and crashing into each other. The spies reported: ‘It makes you feel sorry, these poor boys came from so far away.’ Barely two thousand fans showed up. The Uruguayan flag was flown upside down, the sun on its head, and instead of the national anthem they played a Brazilian march. That afternoon, Uruguay defeated Yugoslavia 7–0.

This means that most of the births they have seen were to women on epidurals lying still during labor, waiting for it all to be over. Seeing this kind of birth over and over again causes a subconscious imprint on the mind, and many women develop enough fear of the pains of childbirth that they block the messages their bodies give them about other positions they might take in labor. Others may simply fear diverging from the norm. A woman in the first stage of labor may find it beneficial to try several upright positions: standing, perhaps leaning on a counter or tray table; slow dancing with her partner; sitting while leaning forward or propped up with pillows; squatting; or sitting in a rocking chair. Sometimes one position suffices, but laboring women usually like to change from one position to another as labor progresses. One of the most effective labors I ever witnessed was that of a first-time mother giving birth to a very large baby. She moved through the first part of labor very efficiently by belly-dancing while putting as much of her weight as possible on a long staff she was holding to steady herself. She then pushed her baby out while leaning on the bed in a kneeling position. A woman’s position during labor and birth may affect her ability to breastfeed in a couple of ways. Dr. Roberto Caldeyro-Barcia, an Uruguayan obstetrician, was one of the first to scientifically investigate the effects of maternal position on labor. In 1979 he published a study now regarded as a classic, which demonstrated that mothers in a “vertical” position had thirty-six percent shorter opening stages of labor than “horizontal” women; the “vertical” women also reported less pain than the “horizontals.” Walking helped labor progress as well, because it brought the pressure of the baby’s head against the cervix, helping it to thin and open. And the “vertical” mothers’ babies’ heads were less apt to be extremely molded just after birth, indicating a somewhat smoother passage through the mother’s birth canal. Equally important, the babies of women who gave birth in upright positions had less fetal distress at birth.5 These factors all increase the chances that a woman will have a good early breastfeeding experience. Dr.

URUGUAYAN CHIVITO SANDWICH Stack a soft roll with thin slices of caramelized, grilled flank steak, melt mozzarella over the meat under the broiler, then add boiled ham, fried pancetta, diced green olives, sliced hard-boiled egg, thin-sliced onion marinated in vinegar and sugar, lettuce, tomato, and aioli. Cut the sandwich on the bias and serve.

The System The denunciation of a dictatorship’s crimes doesn’t end with a list of the tortured, murdered, and disappeared. The machine gives you lessons in egoism and lies. Solidarity is a crime. To save yourself, the machine teaches, you have to be a hypocrite and a louse. The person who kisses you tonight will sell you tomorrow. Every favor breeds an act of revenge. If you say what you think, they smash you, and nobody deserves the risk. Doesn’t the unemployed worker secretly wish the factory will fire the other guy in order to take his place? Isn’t your neighbor your competition and enemy? Not long ago, in Montevideo, a little boy asked his mother to take him back to the hospital, because he wanted to be unborn. Without a drop of blood, without even a tear, the daily massacre of the best in every person is carried out. Victory for the machine: people are afraid of talking and looking at one another. May nobody meet anybody else. When someone looks at you and keeps looking, you think, “He’s going to screw me.” The manager tells the employee, who was once his friend, “I had to denounce you. They asked for the lists. Some name had to be given. If you can, forgive me.” Out of every thirty Uruguayans, one has the job of watching, hunting down, and punishing others. There is no work outside the garrisons and the police stations, and in any case to keep your job you need a certificate of democratic faith given by the police. Students are required to denounce their fellow students, children are urged to denounce their teachers. In Argentina, television asks, “Do you know what your child is doing right now?” Why isn’t the murder of souls through poisoning written up on the crime page?

decades before. Garibaldi had spent his own twenty-year exile in South America, first joining gaucho rebels in Brazil and then raising an “Italian legion” to fight in the Uruguayan civil war; he’d brought sixty of his most loyal soldiers, the core of his highly skilled regiment, back with him to Europe.