Brian Winter: evaluation

Transcript context

…Why has the Uruguay success story so accelerated recently? Uruguay is a fascinating story, Tyler. It’s a country of just 3.3 million people that I think a lot of people, if we’re honest, would struggle to find it on a map. But despite its small size, it has been a real success story. It was always different in a Latin American context. It was Latin America’s first welfare state 100 years ago. I’ve been a big proponent of the Uruguay story. I wrote an article about it for Americas Quarterly more than a year ago, and a lot of people dismissed it and said, “Oh, well, Uruguay — it’s so small. It’s always been so wealthy that it’s not really an example for the rest of the region.” But that’s not true. Twenty years ago, when Argentina’s economy melted down the last time, it had a huge contagion effect on Uruguay. Poverty in Uruguay was actually 50 percent. This was a country that was just flat on its back. Today that percentage is in the low double digits. It’s around 10 percent. Back to this discussion we were having about crime and security — there was no silver bullet. What happened was, they came out of that crisis 20 years ago, and they realized that there were certain things that needed to be done. They needed a consensus around fiscal management, around sound management of the economy. They needed to bring better regulations to their banks. Sadly, but probably correctly, they concluded that they needed to reduce their dependence on their neighbors, that they needed to depend less — namely on Argentina — and diversify. They’re still undergoing that process today. It’s interesting — this is a country that has been knocking furiously on the door of the White House for several years now, trying to do a trade deal with the US. Met with, for the most part, unreceptive ears in Washington, but that’s what they’re trying to do. It’s a solid democracy. It does better than the United States in some of these rankings of solid democracies that get put together by the Economist Intelligence Unit and others, and the beaches are beautiful, too. So, one day when I have to go fleeing into exile because of something I’ve said or done, Uruguay is definitely on the top of my list. Let’s say you’re a 30-year-old couple, husband and wife. You have 2 kids. You all speak Spanish or Portuguese, and you have to relocate somewhere in Latin America. Which city do you choose? Maybe not permanent, but ongoing — not six months — five or ten years.…

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