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Applying for Permanent Residency

Posted on April 29, 2007
Filed Under Expat Tips, Immigration | 11 Comments

In a previous post, I discussed the steps that need to be taken before leaving for Uruguay in order to apply for permanent residency. In this installment I will cover what needs to be done after the arrival in Uruguay. In the next installment, I will discuss how to apply for a national ID (cédula).

After you arrive in Uruguay, keep in mind that you will be dealing with government officials that have an enthusiasm for bureaucracy and procedural matters. So take a deep breath and go along for the ride. Don’t try any shortcuts as it will probably only delay things. To the best of my knowledge, here’s what you need to do: Read more

Uruguayan Permanent Residency

Posted on April 28, 2007
Filed Under Expat Tips, Immigration | 6 Comments

If you are considering residency in Uruguay and are frustrated by the lack of information available from the Uruguayan consulate, you are not alone. Most of the information on the web on this subject is vague, incomplete or contradictory. So it is not surprising that many Uruguayan expats recommend hiring an immigration consultant (gestor) to facilitate the process. This may be tempting because the process is rather complicated. But keep in mind that a gestor will cost you around 400 dollars per person and will NOT increase the likelihood of being accepted. Actually, it may delay the process because if you wait to assemble the required documents only AFTER the gestor tells you to, you’ll lose precious time, maybe several months. Either way, it is always a good idea to understand the process. And if you are like me, you will want to prepare the necessary papers and documents, well BEFORE heading to Uruguay. Read more

Uruguayan Citizenship

Posted on April 26, 2007
Filed Under Expat Tips, Immigration | 24 Comments

The rules covering the rights to Uruguayan citizenship are spelled out in the country’s constitution. In order to make this information more accessible to people who don’t know Spanish well enough to read legalese, I am posting my informal translation of the relevant articles below. Keep in mind that I simplified the wording. But I kept the original meaning to the best of my ability. It is important to note that even though the Constitution is the law of the land, understandably, it does not spell out how it is carried out in practice. I will publish more details if and when I manage to get a hold of that information. Read more

Radio

Posted on April 24, 2007
Filed Under Expat Tips, Culture | 4 Comments

Learning a new language is tough. What nobody told me was that once I learned it I would need to keep using it in order to maintain fluency. I grew up speaking Portuguese as my only language until I was twenty-five. In spite of that, in less than five years living abroad my conversational abilities in my native language were already suffering. Granted, I was busy learning other languages and did not speak any Portuguese in my daily life. But still, I was quite annoyed to discover I had to struggle to find the mot juste in my own language. I had to face the fact that the “you only use ten percent of your brain” thing was a big, fat lie. Later in life, other languages, learned at great personal sacrifice, would also slowly shrink to “emergency-use-only” state after a period of disuse. I guess the lesson learned is: use it or lose it. Read more

Family Matters

Posted on April 22, 2007
Filed Under Culture | 4 Comments

Uruguay is a family-oriented country where family bonds extend much wider and deeper than what is common in North America. Even though most families have few children (2.04 on average), the extended family includes distant cousins and is augmented by neighbors and childhood friends that are often treated essentially as members of the immediate family. Read more

Home Rental in Uruguay

Posted on April 20, 2007
Filed Under Real Estate, Expat Tips | 10 Comments

Unlike in North America, it is rare that a rental unit will belong to a corporation that owns a whole building. Almost always you’ll be renting from an individual owner. This means that the negotiation process will be more complex and emotional. After all, you may very well be renting somebody’s former home. And as many owners do not engage a property manager, you should not expect much support after you’ve rented. Of course, if there is a leak in the apartment, the owner or his inmobiliaria may (or may not) call someone to fix it right away and will pay for it, but if your light fixture broke or a bulb is missing you are on your own. Read more

Real Estate Vocabulary

Posted on April 19, 2007
Filed Under Real Estate, Expat Tips, Vocabulary | Leave a Comment

If you are looking for a home in Uruguay, keep in mind that a lot of the research or “shopping” can be done online. There are many real estate portals and real estate companies with very informative sites. The best of them however are in Spanish and are laden with Real Estate specific lingo. The purpose of this post is to provide a quick background, and a decoder ring for accessing this world. Read more

Squatters

Posted on April 18, 2007
Filed Under Real Estate, Crime, Economy | 5 Comments

Land occupation in Uruguay has increased dramatically in the last decade. The slowness of the judicial system and the severe economic crisis the country went through after 2002 made land invasion more common in certain areas. Even in high profile balnearios such as Punta del Este, a few very visible asentamientos (settlements) can be found, like the Predio Lobos at the Rambla Brava y Roosevelt and the barrio Kennedy, half a block from the Club de Golf. Many families now live in these asentiamentos, in spite of years of legal efforts to evict them. In that same area, in the past summers homes were occupied and terrenos invaded at a rate of two or three per month. Read more

Life is a Beach

Posted on April 16, 2007
Filed Under Culture, Places | 5 Comments

Uruguay has over 500 km of beaches, 220 of which are on the Atlantic Ocean. When you look at a map, you’ll see that up to Punta del Este all beaches face an ever widening river, the Rio de la Plata. Because of this, towards the west the water has a brownish tinge from the silt carried by the Uruguay and Paraná rivers into the Plata basin. Montevideo itself is blessed with several good beaches, but at that longitude, the water has a river-like appearance most of the time. When the wind blows from the east, it gets bluer and saltier. The further east you go, the more ocean-like the beaches become. For all practical purposes, from Punta del Este onward all beaches face the Atlantic Ocean. At the balnearios close to Punta, such as Piriápolis, the water is blueish most of the time, but when the conditions are right, the water can be brownish all the way to Punta. Read more

Punta del Este

Posted on April 14, 2007
Filed Under Culture, Places | 11 Comments

I must start by warning that in one post one cannot possibly capture more than a fraction of what Punta del Este is. Punta del Este is the primary summer vacation destination of the jet set, wealthy people and wanna bes from Argentina, Brazil, and to a lesser extent, Europe and North America. The steady winter population of about 10,000 swells to 250,000 in January and February when the tourists take over. The transformation from a ghost town to a lively place is so sudden and so dramatic that it is hard to recognize it as the same place. If you were to arrive in early December and stay through Jan 5th, you would witness an amazing transformation. Shops, restaurants and night clubs that seemed closed for good, open for business and become busy in a few days. You begin to see throngs of people at all hours of day or night, supermarkets become crowded, parking at beaches becomes difficult and car minders appear out of the woodwork. Late February, the cycle reverts itself and the place begins to empty again. The rest of the year, Punta looks like a well-kept, deserted metropolis. Read more

Mate

Posted on April 12, 2007
Filed Under Food and Drink, Culture, Vocabulary | 11 Comments

Sooner of later, any blog about Uruguay must talk about mate. Although I am not Uruguayan, I grew up in Southern Brazil where the mate culture is strong and where mate drinkers abound. In spite of being very familiar with the custom, the extent of the mate culture in Uruguay surprises even Argentinian and Brazilian gauchos. The sight of people carrying a thermos bottle and a mate everywhere is almost uniquely Uruguayan. And it is common to see people drinking mate in public at all hours. To illustrate how prevalent the habit is I actually witnessed a homeless man drinking mate, a policeman in a moving cruiser drinking mate and a moped driver somehow carrying a thermos under one arm, mate in one hand and steering with the other. Read more

Water and Sewer

Posted on April 9, 2007
Filed Under Services, Cost of Living | 17 Comments

In Uruguay, the water service is handled by a State Company, Obras Sanitarias del Estado. OSE serves 98% of the Uruguayan population and supplies treated water to virtually every town and village. Because of this impressive coverage, Uruguay was the only country in South America not to suffer in the Cholera epidemic of 1991-2000. Read more

Home Sweet Home?

Posted on April 7, 2007
Filed Under Montevideo, Real Estate, Expat Tips | 9 Comments

So you are interested in buying real estate in Uruguay? You have been hearing that it is a bargain and you are wondering whether you will miss out on this great opportunity. Well, there are a few things you should think about first. But before I start flailing my arms like the robot in Lost in Space, I should warn you that what follows is based on my own observations and may not mesh with what you’ll hear elsewhere. So take it for what it’s worth. Read more

Mary Jane Says High

Posted on April 5, 2007
Filed Under Crime, Culture, Vocabulary | 5 Comments

Uruguay has an unusual position regarding marijuana: smoking it is not a crime, but buying, selling and growing is. The current law states that if an individual is caught with an amount deemed for personal consumption it is considered a fault, not a crime. The law is vague and leaves it to a judge to decide about the quantity, taking into consideration intent and the moral rectitude of the individual. If a person is found to be at fault, they must attend an anti-drug class or other such activity. Of course, in order to get called before a judge, one needs to get caught first. Read more

Say Cheese

Posted on April 4, 2007
Filed Under Food and Drink, Vocabulary | 5 Comments

Last time I was in Uruguay I meant to conduct a broad tasting of Uruguayan cheeses, but ran into some problems. Unfortunately, I didn’t do any prep work and ended up a little confused. As a result I didn’t get to complete my mission the way I had intended. The things that got in the way were … well, let me explain by way of a comparison.

In France where small cheeses abound, a cheese ignoramus can walk into a shop, point at something faintly resembling a cheese and proceed to take the whole thing home. Later, at leisure, he/she can figure out whether it was cheese, butter or a door stop. Hmm, I must admit to having employed this technique. But that was before I learned French. Anyway, I was counting on using it again on a large scale to save time. Unfortunately Uruguay did not cooperate with my plan. There, the most popular cheeses are of the large type, sold in wedges (fraccionado). This means that you need to take a number at the deli section and ask for what you want. No biggie right? Were it not for the fact that in most delis there are relatively few types of cheeses but MANY brands of these same cheeses. And like everywhere else, the handwritten notes on the slabs, meant for the initiated, were terse and capricious. They sometimes referred to the type, sometimes to the brand, sometimes the characteristics of the cheese. Read more

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