Montevideo

Montevideo was founded by Spanish colonists in 1724 to thwart Portuguese incursions into Montevideo Bay. It was established as a military buffer and a port city, situated for over a century in an uneasy middle ground between empires. In 1830, Montevideo became the capital of the newly independent Oriental Republic of Uruguay. It has always been the demographic center of the country. By 1930 Montevideo was home to one-third of the country’s population, becoming Latin America’s most “primary” city in terms of share of total population. Since its founding the city has been the national center of politics, finance, media, culture, sports, and the arts. In the 20th century, Uruguay became known as the “Switzerland of South America” and Montevideo the “Athens of the River Plate.” Montevideo in the 20th century was a cosmopolitan and progressive city; a vibrant center of culture and the arts boasting modern infrastructure, a seaside boardwalk, verdant parks, and architecture blending colonial with art deco and art nouveau design. The years following the world wars, however, were beset by growing poverty, socioeconomic polarization, and political instability, the latter reaching a crescendo through the Tupamaro urban guerrilla uprising. The government responded with authoritarian counter-insurgency measures, setting the stage for the military’s takeover in a dictatorship that lasted from 1973 to 1985. With the return of democracy, new social movements advocated for urban services and justice for the victims of state terror. By the 1990s, neoliberalism and globalization had significantly altered the city’s social and spatial physiognomy. New, extreme forms of marginality in shantytowns ringing the city inversely mirrored the hyper-consumerism and conspicuous wealth of the upper-class neighborhoods of the eastern coast. Crime, insecurity, drugs, and violence came to dominate urban realities and sensibilities. The leftist Frente Amplio came to municipal power in 1989, and nationally in 2004, seeking to create a more democratic, participatory, and just city and country, although with mixed results. This article is organized thematically, although it follows a loose chronological order as well. Most of the cited works are in Spanish and written by Uruguayan authors, reflecting the relative dearth of English-language studies of Montevideo. Almost all of the entries are books, with some journal articles published in English also included. It is an interdisciplinary collection mostly drawn from the social sciences and humanities. It should be noted that it is often hard to parse out the difference in studies about “Uruguay” versus “Montevideo.” Often the former assumes the latter, and with half of the country’s population and constituting the nation’s hub, Montevideo is almost always part of any analysis of Uruguay. Nevertheless, the attempt was made to provide a more limited number of generalist works on Uruguay that include or assume Montevideo, while foregrounding those studies that take the city as a primary setting and focus of analysis.