Uruguay: The Most Progressive Country You've Never Thought About
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Uruguay was the first country in the world to fully legalise marijuana, in 2013 — and did it quietly, with a state-controlled distribution system, without fanfare, and without the social disruption that sceptics predicted. It was also the first country in Latin America to legalise same-sex marriage, in 2013. And the first in the region to fully legalise abortion. Uruguay has spent the past century building a social democracy that consistently outperforms its neighbours on education, equality, transparency, and quality of life indicators, often without international attention.
The asado is Uruguay's most important cultural practice — the Sunday barbecue is a national institution. The asado is not grilling in the casual sense. It is a slow process, over hardwood coals, of cooking large cuts of beef, lamb chops, chorizo, and morcilla (blood sausage) at precise distances from the heat for precise amounts of time. The asador — the person managing the fire — holds a position of responsibility at a social gathering. The meal takes hours. The conversation happens around the fire. Uruguay's quality of beef, raised on grass in the Pampas, makes the raw material exceptional.
José Mujica, president of Uruguay from 2010 to 2015, donated 90 percent of his presidential salary to social housing and anti-poverty programmes, lived on his farm outside Montevideo, and drove a 1987 Volkswagen Beetle. He implemented the marijuana legalisation, the same-sex marriage law, and the abortion law. He became internationally famous for talking about consumption, happiness, and the relationship between wealth and human flourishing in ways that public figures rarely do.
