montevideo

Got to montevideo on Monday morning at about 11:30 from the ferry from BA. Our hotel is much nicer here, and very close to the Old city and the ocean. On monday, I rambled around the city to get a feel for it. We`re having to cram a lot of seminars and stuff into our 7 days here, so I didn`t want to miss a chance to see some of this place. It has almost half of uruguay`s total population of 3 million, and is very nice, with a smaller feel than BA, obviously. great views of the ocean, not bad beaches, and really great old buildings.

on tuesday, we went to an 11 am Independence Day celebration in a major plaza. A lot of people were upset because the president (a leftist in name, but not in policy) Tabarè Vàzquez has backed down considerably from prosecuting members of the military dictatorship who assassinated people in the 70s and 80s. He barely appeared at the ceremony. We rerturned to the hotal and met with a journalist from a major magazine, who had some interesting,pessimistic thoughts about the future of latin America. But the highlight of the day was going to the student protest a few blocks away. They had to cancel it before we got there because a radical group was lighting tires on firein the major road to block traffic. 7 were arrested. We got to hear a short speech from a really firey student leader, but less than we were expecting. later a crowd of like 200 or so gathered near our hotel because the jail was close. When they released the 7, it was a pretty crazy celebration.

Today was the first really really rainy day of the trip, and besides our two interesting seminars about land squatting and civil society groups in uruguay, I stayed in the room and watched pro Uruguayan basketball. Bush league, except for the half court shot to win the game.

Montevideo-- at this point-- has just been a good break between the two highlights of the course, although we`ll see if it ever stops raining