ginally came from armbands allegedly torn from the Uruguayan flag, but the conservatives switched to red armbands when they realized that red faded less quickly in the sun than blue.
In the early 20th century, President José Batlle y Ordóñez oversaw Uruguay’s modernization and industrialization, and was also able to squash the remnants of caudillismo political culture from the Spanish colonial era which to the present continue to cause trouble in countries like Argentina. This is why Uruguay since Batlle’s presidency has enjoyed much lower levels of corruption than the rest of South America.
However, the simmering tension between the left and right wings of Uruguayan politics persisted. From 1954 to 1967, Uruguay tried an unusual solution borrowed from Switzerland: a collegiate Executive Office in which a different member was designated President every year. In this way, Uruguay became the “Latin American Switzerland” for a while, acting as a model of democracy and banking liberties until a military coup ended all this.
A Marxist urban guerrilla movement, the Tupamaros, launched in the late 1960s, led Uruguay’s president Juan María Bordaberry to “agree” to military control of his administration in 1973. (They returned the favor by firing him from his job in 1976 and appointing the first of several puppet presidents.) By the end of 1974 the rebels had been brutally crushed (and Tupamaro leader and future president Jose Mujica was imprisoned at the bottom of a well), but the military continued to expand its hold over the government, by engaging in widespread torture and disappearances of alleged insurgents and anyone unfortunate enough to be perceived as opponents of the regime. Civilian and democratic rule was not restored until 1985.
Today, Uruguay’s political and labour conditions are among the most free on the continent. In 2004, a leftist coalition (the Frente Amplio or Broad Front) which included the Tupamaros won elections which left them in control of both houses of congress, the presidency, and most city and regional governments. In 2009, former guerrilla leader Mujica was elected president, although he continued to lead a modest lifestyle of growing flowers on his farm outside Montevideo, driving an old Volkswagen Beetle, and donating 90% of his salary to charity.
Temperate and wet but due to the absence of nearby mountains, which act as weather barriers, all locations are particularly vulnerable to rapid changes from weather fronts.