by Chip Livingston
Always I’m asked what I love about Uruguay.
Because the food, I say, because the people. Because the rhythm of
the place, the Culture. Carnaval. Candombe
Drums that demand I dance. It’s different:
Everything. Its Education – free through university and evidently
effective. Everyone seems wise, well-read, and worldly. It’s egalitarian. And
though I know one Richie Rich, the majority of people are equal. They treat
each other as equals. It’s
Fun, I mean, fatal, just
Going to the grocery store, a walk in my
Hawaianas to practice my holas. The Healthcare – universal and
fucking fantastic.
lemanja, the goddess of the ocean. Idea Vilariño, the first poet whose
collected works I read entirely in Spanish.
Jacarandas.
Karaoke at Il Tempo. Kioskos to buy my tobacco y hojillas.
Loros, the small green
parrots that top the palmeras. La Paloma in Rocha, where I’ve
beached seven summers.
Llaves antiguas –
old skeleton keys to open my doors, and, oh man, the beautiful doors of
Uruguay. There are photo books and collage posters of the puertas in
Montevideo. I take
Mate at merienda,
I
Nap at siesta,
Obey the rhythms of my borrowed land.
Public transportation. Public wifi. Public Welfare. Public exercise equipment.
Institutions that actually serve the public.
Queso. I guess it
makes sense that if Uruguay has the most natural beef in the world, its dairy
would be as pure. Quince paste, which they call membrillo, and I
have a story about that for another time.
Really it’s remarkable I haven’t mentioned the meat.
Rrrreally rrrremarkable but
Seriously, Uruguay outlawed antibiotics and hormones in its livestock in the
1970s, it’s banned Monsanto and GMOs, imported
Transgenic foods are marked with a yellow triangled T. Tomatoes
still taste like tomatoes in
Uruguay; bananas still have seeds. It’s a long trip south but
Vale la pena. Now if I
shortened “vale la pena” to just “vale,” it would suggest I’m
from Spain. The abridged version in Uruguay is “dale,” used like
“okay,” pero ta,
You know I love learning those distinctions between spellings and palabras.
Zorrilla.
Zorrilla’s on the twenty-peso note, which you can imagine as a
dollar, Juan Zorrilla de San Martin, an epic Uruguayan poet, whose home, bought
by scholars of the state, is now a national museum; a street and park are named
for him. Juana de Ibarbourou appears on the thousand peso, another poet.
The hundred peso features Eduardo Fabini, a musician and composer.
Do you know what I’m getting at? The Uruguayan money has artists and thinkers
on it. And I think about the killers I carry in my U.S. wallet.
Zumba, my first
onomatopoetic Spanish word, the drowsy bee’s buzz.
Yerba Mate, obviously, if
you know me. I’ve nearly always got a mate full of yerba, the
Guaraní herb that motors the world’s most nocturnal country, Uruguay.
Xcept Uruguay isn’t really the country’s name. No tiene nombre oficial but
is officially known as La República Oriental del Uruguay, the republic east of
the Uruguay River, referencing itself by location, by the X on the upside-down
map, and uses the indigenous name of the nearby river, this cattle country
crossed and bordered by rivers and sea, its bays a sweet and salty mix,
Which are just some of why and what I love about this watery paisito,
the first time I met her crossing the Río de la Plata from Buenos Aires, on a
whim, a mention, just the first weekend of a 10-day escape from North American
winter with another U.S. writer. We decided within 24 hours to stay the entire
holiday in Uruguay.
Verdad. Era verano. It
was summer in our wintertime. Carnaval. And we toured the Atlantic
beaches, convinced we’d been secreted into a kind of heaven, as if the venteveos saw
and sung to us, the velas lit for Iemanja an extraordinary
riverside welcome, warm beacons with carnations, coins, watermelons. Y
acá volvimos, vivíamos, y yo vivo de nuevo.
Uruguay. Uruguay. Uruguay.
“Ur-u-guay? You’re a guy?”
“Ur-u-guay? You’re a gay?”You’re a single gay guy living in Uruguay? Que
suerte, che! Uuuuu!
Ta! It’s tranquilo, and
truth be told, todavía no sé what it is to be
exact. Todo: los tomates, las tortas fritas, los teros, el tortugon, el
tango, los tambores. The drum groups in the streets, the people on
their feet, the two beats that keep the culture dancing. Los tambores.
Los tangueros. The tango. The tambores. And los Tupamaros.
Spanish as a second language. I’d studied a semester with a Spaniard, had Cuban
friends teach me to cuss, heard my share of Puerto Rican pillow talk, but
learning to speak Uruguayan Spanish, No es poca cosa. No es Catalán,
cierto, pero casi Canario, an idioma of opposites, where a
former prison is now a luxury shopping mall and the current prison is called
Freedom, where barbaric and fatal are adjectives for amazing, where to
experience joy is to die or to be killed by something. Sino es así, no?
O sí? Sí no? See?
RR. Errrrrrrrre. Mi perrita, mi porro, mi ferrocarril. Mi fat yankee tongue trying to roll the double RR. Joderrrrrrrr!
Really, I don’t know if that will work on the page. The Rambla: among my first
and constant appreciations, Montevideo’s Rambla is 13.7 miles of uninterrupted
sidewalk along the river and up the Atlantic coast; it’s where Montevideanos
ramble, rest, relax, and meet for mate, to read, to exercise, to
take sun, run. Its rhythms still and accelerate me. Requesón.
Que tal? How’s it
going? Quizás you’re wondering how much love for this little
country I’m going to share. I’ll try to be quicker.
Pero el problema es you
can’t rush a Uruguayan, and I am growing more Yourugua every
day, and there are a lot of things I love in the republic that start with P:
poets, there are so many poets, and the people actually read poetry. There are
poems etched in marble in public plazas. The people read! And the people are
kind, helpful, pretty and peaceful – until it comes to fútbol, then
it’s back to the killing metaphors. But Pizza. Pasta. Pan de Azúcar,
where I saw a live wild black puma in a sheep pasture. Ah, population
statistics: there are seven sheep for every human in Uruguay and there are four
cows for each person. Palermo. Piriapolis. Parque Rodó. Cabo
Polonio. Punta del Diablo. Palos borachos.
Olímpicos and other
sandwiches de miga. Las ondas buenas, ojalá, y obvio eating
Ñoquis on
the 29th of every month.
Niños envueltos,
delicious sausage in cabbage with a tortuous name, wrapped children. Riquísimos
son.
Mira! Mate, mimos, mercados, murgas, the meat (see “Carne”), medialunas at merienda,
the extra meal. They have four meals a day in Uruguay! And merienda suits
me, soothes mi hambre at North American dinnertime. I have to
mention Mujica, the former president, his example, history, and his changing
the face of the republic to el mundo.
Lluvia. I love the
fucking rain in Uruguay and it’s a good thing because this country is
elemental, water falling into water, sky and sea, sea and earth, sol and
sky, where llamadas call me to my feet for their ensayas
y desfiles.
Lemeyun, and I’m
even allergic to onions, but this Armenian-inspired Uruguayan dish is
like, paf!, a grilled pita bread topped with spiced citrus beef
ceviche.
Kisses – abundant as bread – and everything starts and ends with a beso.
How tender and wholesome and masculine and shattering of macho North American
stereotypes of how two humans can so naturally touch each other. Granted this
is one kiss on the cheek, but there are exponential expressions of their
comfort with intimacy.
JAJAJA is how they
text laughter. Y les gusta reir. And I laugh at how distant my
language just got when I spoke of showing affection. I have a lot to learn
yet. Jamón y queso. Juas?
lemanja, I have mentioned, an important figure in my knowing the country and my
gratitude. Part of my introduction,
How we arrived the first time the weekend of her birthday, February 2, and
joined Montevideo on Playa Ramirez to light candles and leave her regalos on
the sand and in the sea. Olas de hermosas holas. Horneros. Y
hombres excepcionales. Guapos. Guapas. Gauchos. And Gooooooooooooooooool! We’ve
gotten to Fútbol! And I’ve become a fanatic. Ya fui a
mi first clásico, between Peñarol y Nacional, and now only
lack one task to becoming unofficially Uruguayan – learning to play truco –
but of my fondness for the other game. Obviously it has a lot to do with futbolistas. Fainá.
Y bueno ta, no falta mucho para el fin, and
Everything yet to be said yet an expression of some sorts shared. Empanadas.
I don’t know if Uruguay invented the tango or empanadas,
but it has perfected them.
Desfiles of
diversity and marches for more derechos humanos, and the country is
already known to be the most humanitarian in the Americas. The first country in
the world to legalize marijuana, the first country to allow a woman to file for
divorce, one of the few Latin American countries where abortion is safe and
legal. Gay marriage, claro, like it was never a question. Uruguay
elected a transgender senator and a female vice president.
Chorizos, choripán, chivitos! But Che, escuchame, the way Italian,
Spanish, and African genes have mixed with los Charrua.
Carne, the best meat in
the world. Happy cows and 52 cuts of beef: pulpón, asado,
entrecot, lomo, nalga, peceto, vacío, colita de cuadril, morcilla sweet
or salty, chinchulín, chorizo. I dated a carnicero.
I dated a cowboy. Carnival drums and murgas, parades and bailarinas,
las comparsas, la cumparsita, a never-ending series of cenas and cumples.
But because the rhythm of the place I say, because the people: because the
food, which centers on the Asado, the barbecue, and ends with aplausos for
the asador.
First published in Carve magazine in 2018
Copyright © Chip Livingston. All rights reserved.
Chip Livingston is the author of a novel, a collection of essays and stories, and two poetry collections. His writing has appeared on the Academy of American Poets’ and the Poetry Academy’s websites; and in Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, New American Writing, and other journals and anthologies. Chip teaches in the low-rez MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, NM.
He lives in Montevideo, Uruguay.
