A BRIEF INTRODUCTION OF URUGUAY’S CURRENT SITUATION
Uruguay is one of the smallest countries of the South Cone in South America that lies on the Atlantic coast between Brazil and Argentina.
The size of the country is about 176,000 km2 and the geography is featured by undulating plains, lots of rivers and natural forest.
Apart from Montevideo, the capital city, Punta del Este, on the Atlantic coast, 130 kilometers east of Montevideo, is a very well-known seaside resort in South America.
Most of the population has their origin in the immigrants that mainly in the XIX and XX centuries came from Spain, Italy and other European countries. Recent genetic research tends to show that a significant portion of the population has also indoamerican ascendants. The descendants of enslaved Africans are estimated at 8% of the total population of the country. Even though the state is not religious, the population consists of 66% Catholics, 2% Protestants and 2% Jews. At the same time, there is an important participation of Uruguayan population in Afro-Brazilian rituals.
The language spoken is Spanish, and English, Portuguese and Italian are taught at school as second languages. Portuguese has also widespread as a result of MERCOSUR integration.
POLITICS
Uruguay is a democratic republic and has a presidential system. The three independent powers of the State are: Executive, Legislative and Judiciary. The government is elected every 5 years and the vote system is universal.
The President and a cabinet of 12 ministers form the Executive Power and the Legislative Power is organized in two chambers> the chamber of Senators and the Lower Chamber (House of Representatives).
The major political parties are: Frente Amplio (comprising: Movement of Popular Participation; Assembly Uruguay; Socialist Party, Communist Party; and “Vertiente Artiguista”); the National Party / White; and the Colorado Party / Red.
The most relevant social organizations are: PIT-CNT (Inter Workers-National Convention of Workers); FUCVAM (Uruguayan Federation of Housing Construction for Mutual Aid); and FEUU (Federation of University Students).
In the presidential and parliamentary elections of October 2004, it was the first time that a leftist candidate won the Presidency.
Doctor Tabaré Vázquez was elected with 50.45% of the votes. It was the worst vote in history for the Colorado Party.
On the domestic front, the first step of Vazquez was signing the emergency plan-one of the main banners of the campaign- to meet the needs of food, health and education of the homeless population. On the external front, the first steps were to sign an agreement with Venezuela, exchanging Venezuelan oil, which comes to Uruguay at low prices and low interest loans for foodstuffs, exported to that country at low prices, and the reestablishment of diplomatic relations with Cuba. Uruguay had broken the diplomatic relations with Cuba in April 2002 when it submitted a censure motion against Cuba at the UN with the argument that the human rights situation in the island was not what it should have been.
THE PULP MILLS
In 2006, the construction of two pulp mills near the Uruguay River, which are owned by Finish and Spanish companies respectively, generated criticism and protests from residents of the town of Gualeguaychu (Argentina) and the government of that country because they said the pulp mills would pollute the river that is the natural border between the countries. Since then, and for more than two years, the residents of Gualeguaychu closed the bridges that cross the river and prevented the passage of vehicles from Argentina, which generated significant financial loss to Uruguay. During 2006 there were intermittent closures in long weekends and holidays until finally, in November, it was decided to block total indefinitely. In the same month Uruguay denounced Argentina at the International Court of Justice in The Hague for blocking Fray Bentos Bridge.
Almost two years afterwards, in September 2007, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has authorized the submission of a Reply by Argentina and a Rejoinder by Uruguay. The Court fixed 29th January 2008 and 29th July 2008 as the respective time-limits for the filing of these written pleadings. In January Argentina introduced a 500 pages document. Last Monday 28th July, Uruguay met Argentina in The Hague and closed the trial stage. The Uruguayan government argues that the pulp mill in Fray Bentos is not contaminating, based on international environmental reports. One of them is the report of the Canadian Ecometrix consultant who concluded that the Finnish pulp plant did not alter the quality of air or water of the Uruguay River in the first six months of operation.
Through this process, the document stage in The Hague is finished. The next step will be oral when each part will support its view in February – March 2009.
DICATOR TAKEN TO PRISON
In a historical decision from the Justice, in November 2006, the former dictator Juan Maria Bordaberry and his former foreign minister Juan Carlos Blanco, were arrested and prosecuted for the kidnapping and murder of four people in 1976, two of them who had been members of the Parliament.
Other senior Army during the years of dictatorship were prosecuted for similar offences and sent to a prison built especially for them.
In January 2007, Bordaberry was placed in home detention scheme, due to its delicate state of health.
THE ECONOMY
The year 2002 was particularly adverse in the economic field and marked a significant deterioration of living conditions of the majority of the population. The Argentinean crisis and the retraction of the Brazilian market raised the possibility of a "default" in the short term. The economic crisis increased the emigration. It was then estimated that 450.000 Uruguayans, 13% of the population, lived abroad. The migrants were mainly young, well educated and with professional qualifications. This exacerbated the ageing of the country's demographic structure. Surprisingly Economy Minister Alberto Bensión announced the change in exchange rate policy which fired a 40% increase. The free float of the dollar was praised by U.S. and IMF but discontent was noted on several popular demonstrations.
The growing rumors of a possible "corralito" (restrictions on the withdrawal of deposits), announced the extension of holiday until August 5, when it confirmed the U.S. decision to provide a direct financial assistance to Uruguay of 1,500 million.
Diplomatic relations between Uruguay and Argentina suffered a decline during this period. In 2002, in an interview for Bloomberg chain, the Uruguayan president, Jorge Batlle said off the record that "Argentines are a group of thieves, from first to last." The statement was broadcasted by television and forced president Batlle to travel to Buenos Aires to apologize publicly for what they described as "a mistake".
In July 2007 the minister of Economy, Danilo Astori, implemented a tax reform based on income tax that harsh voices raised against it, both from the opposition and government sectors. Astori, who already had a difficult relationship with the radical factions of the Frente Amplio on his economic policy and the total cancellation of debt with the IMF (over one billion dollars), said that reform would create greater equality and would be broadly beneficial to the low and lower middle sectors of society. The 28th July 2008 the government announced that from September 2008 onward the minimum income value to be taxed would be increased so 170.000 more of the Uruguayan citizens will not pay this tax.
URUGUAYAN AND INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGE AND COOPERATION
Uruguay has developed a wide range of bilateral cooperation relationships as well as multilateral ones through the UN and the OAS (Organization of American States).
The bilateral cooperation relationships that have developed more and that are most known are with Venezuela, Canada, Spain, Germany and Japan.
There are many bilateral agreements in specific areas. For example, the Uruguayan Law 16.515 approved in July 1994 is the agreement for technical and scientific cooperation between Uruguay and China. More recently, in January 2007, we find the Uruguayan Law 18.226 that makes in a law the Framework Convention on the Preferential Credit granted by China to Uruguay, signed in September 2006.
For the Ibero American countries there are many projects and initiatives approved in 2007 by the Responsible for Cooperation in the XVII Ibero-American Summit of Heads of State and Government in Santiago de Chile which directly benefit Uruguay. Uruguay’s participation in this cooperation highlights in: strengthening and training of human resources in matters of public policies directed at children and adolescents; supporting network of Human Milk Banks; and training and technology transfer in the field of integrated water resources management.
In that summit, a statement on Cooperation was signed on the special importance of international cooperation for development with middle-income countries and the need to continue to support their national efforts to eradicate poverty and the achievement of appropriate Millennium Development Goals.
In relation to the cooperation through the Organization of American States (OAS), the Uruguayan Office of OAS works as a link with the Inter-American Agency for Cooperation and Development (IACD) in project management involving Uruguay, either as participant or coordinator. The areas that are more supported are Sustainable Development and Environment Strengthening, Democracy and Combating Drugs.
The United Nations (UN) Office in Uruguay has developed its cooperation line through the UNDP (United Nations Development Program). In this moment, the UN is going through a restructure of the whole Organization which includes different ways of cooperation. Uruguay is 1 of the 8 pilot countries that are implementing the proposed restructuring of the UN. (The other 7 are: Albania, Cape Verde, Mozambique, Pakistan, Rwanda, Tanzania and Vietnam). The first phase of the reform is supposed to be conceptual and it consists of definitions of the reform and making plans to implement it. The second is a phase of implementation and Uruguay is about to begin. Why is UN trying this reform? Because the organization is concerned about the fewer and fewer donations given to poor countries through the United Nations. In other words… donors need to rely on UN fund management to decide to give the cooperation funds to the United Nations to implement projects in poor countries and middle-income countries. Over the last 30 years, trust in this management has decreased a lot. The spirit of this reform seems to be giving confidence to donors and consistency in the actors involved.
REPORT OF INTERNATIONAL NEWS AND IMPORTANT EMERGENCIES Most Uruguayan Media get the information of international news from the news Agencies. However, there is a group of journalist who try to broaden the sources of information looking in the local media of each country and talking to local journalist to know which kind of political and ideological lines are behind the news. Of course it’s essential to know the conditions in which the journalists are working.
As an example, in the radio show I produce[1] we read all the different media from all over the world that we can. The aim is to explain what is going on within that context. In international news this is more important as the audience may not be aware of the complexities of foreign affairs.
During the last 3 years we’ve seen the exponential increase of inaccurate news websites throughout the world, a situation worsened with the advent of “the blog”.
Even though some of these sources can be very useful and interesting, they can also be dangerous. It’s essential to verify the qualifications of the professionals who are responsible of the published content. This is one of the major dilemmas faced when teaching young journalists and media students who understand the concept and the theory. However, when they start working they tend to abuse the internet, and many of them don’t apply the basic idea: internet is a medium, not a source of information.
Important emergencies are the kind of information that transform into a piece of news immediately but at the same time the sources of information are limited.
In general, governments don’t give all the information a journalist would like to receive; sometimes because there are security reasons to be reserved about the information and some other times because the government hasn’t been trained to establish an intelligent and respectful relationship with the media.
The consequence of this is that the same information is copied from one source to another without facts being verified and often results in a distortion of the truth.
JOURNALIST CURRENT SITUATION AND CHALLENGES OF DEVELOPING COUNTRIES – the South Cone
Being a journalist is not a well paid job in most of the Latin-American countries. There are some news presenters that can be better rewarded for their work, but in general terms journalists have more than 1 job and many times more than 2 or 3. The quality of the information obviously decreases because there isn’t much time to do research, one of the most important duties of a professional journalist. Otherwise, he/she transforms himself/herself into a Public Relations officer.
After the Latin-American dictatorships of the 70s a new spring of democracy came to these lands and with that new wind, newspapers blossomed in most of the countries, many of them associated to political parties. During the 90s there was a slow evolution process of increasingly professionalism which for the journalist means working for the people, not for the owner of the company he works for. Many ethical discussions were part of every day work because the owners of the media didn’t understand this commitment with the truth and the people and felt betrayed. This topic leads us directly to a whole discussion of which should be the objectives of the professional journalists.
Together with this disassociation tendency of the media from the political parties, there was a development of multi media corporations who aim to manipulate the information to their benefit and unify the information that is broadcasted. This enemy of the journalist is now stronger and much more difficult to identify in every day work. I am not able to say if the situation is better or worse in terms of independence; I can say that it’s different.
A different situation is the one of the journalist who works for the media owned by the estate. It’s very common in these parts of the world that the government in power thinks that the public media is its own media who works for the political party in the government. The public media should act as independently from the government as the private media, or even more. Public media has to respect the audience and this means looking for the (possible) truth, instead of being the news agency of the government in power. Journalist need to remember that all the governments have their office of public relations but the journalist job is something different.
The three sectors who are interested in the media business are: the private sector, the civil society and the government, whose interests many times overlap. The ownership of the media has changed a lot in the last 15 years and today there is concentration of ownership of the media throughout the world. Regional and international media corporations control the media market: AOL-Time Warner, News Corporation, General Electric, Sony, Vivendi, Viacom, Televisa, Globo and Clarin. One of the worst consequences of the reduction of ownership is the decline of opinions, views and spaces for an informed debate.
In Uruguay there are nearly 300 AM and FM radio stations and 40 television open channels, most of which repeat signals originated in Montevideo. These TV net is dominated by three private air channels from Montevideo (4, 10 and 12) that capture 60% of the national advertising market and their signals cover the entire country through a signal that is broadcasted openly in major cities. This signal is a synthesis of the three open signals from Montevideo. In 1994 things became a bit more complex when Uruguay incorporated the technology for TV for subscribers. These three signal companies (4, 10 and 12) were given the concession by the government and there has been a private oligopoly since then. The radio is the only sector where alternatives contents are solid, either by their programming, or due to the diverse ownership.
Latin America is, according to statistics, one of the most dangerous areas for journalists, where the objectivity of the press is conditioned to the governments and the circles of economic power. One of the most complex situations is Colombia, that has been living an armed conflict for over 30 years and journalists are in the line of fire from all fronts. The number of deaths of Colombian journalists put up these statistics whereas there are places, like Uruguay, where it is very rare to feel your physical integrity threatened.
[1] “No Toquen Nada” (Don’t touch anything) in Oceano Radio, the top news radio show of the Uruguayan radio.
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