We are enjoying a fairly benign summer here in Uruguay šŗš¾ Lovely sunny days with some rain š¦ļø and after the drought that we experienced last year (I never mentioned that it was officially declared in the last quarter of 2023) we are all grateful for that š¤
In January, the most popular film on Netflix was the Society of the Snow š¬ which tells one of the greatest human survival stories of the 20th century.
If you havenāt seen it yet, you must. Itās based on the book recounted by the sixteen survivors of a plane that went down in the Andes and whose survivors endured ten long weeks after having been given up for dead by rescuers. The survivors now in their 70s retold their stories to the author who is their childhood friend. And those survivors, in case you didnāt know, were all from Montevideo. Yes, from Uruguay.
Yes, one of the greatest human survival stories of the 20th century is Uruguayan.
Last week, I did a consultation with a young woman who is considering making a big life change and moving to Uruguay. I always ask my clients how and when Uruguay first came on their radar. And she surprised me when she told me that it was just three weeks ago š® Really, I said just three weeks ago and youāre already committed to a consultation with me (they donāt run cheap)?
Yes, she responded, it had been just three weeks but the more she had researched about Uruguay the more it appealed to her. It turns out that she had seen the Society of the Snow and she was so overwhelmed with the values of the survivors: āI immediately had to find out more about the society they were from. I felt this small country must be so particular, so special, if it produces human beings of this calibreā. She had totally gotten it š
When GuruāGuay started ten years ago, one of the very first places we wrote about was the memorial museum to the Andes tragedy/miracle.
The Andes 1972 Museum is a private initiative in the old city of Montevideo. Its founder is a businessman Jƶrg Thomsen. A proud Uruguayan, he felt that the miracle of the survival of his compatriots against so many terrible odds was a story that illustrated Uruguayan values of solidarity, teamwork, and friendship.
Yet when he travelled abroad, Jƶrg was sick and tired of peopleās only point of reference on Uruguay was a punchline in the Simpsons (read about Jƶrgās other much more personal motivations in our article).
After lobbying and seeing that the government looked unlikely to set anything up, and his grandchildren and others of their generation growing up without knowing what had happened, in 2013 Jƶrg left his company in his familyās care to dedicate himself full-time to the set up of the museum. āIf I didnāt do it, then no one else would,ā he concluded.
But running the museum has been an ungrateful task š Visitors over this decade have been almost 100% foreign. Uruguayans visiting monthly could be counted on one hand šļø So the museum has never even covered its costs.
Now, with the new filmāwhich has just been nominated for two Oscarsāthat has changed. Uruguayans, especially the younger generations, are flooding in.
As an indication of local interest, a little video that I made last month at the museum got thousands of views. You can see it on YouTube, Instagram or TikTok (as I write at 363,000 views! š¤Æ).
I contacted Jƶrg to send him a link to the video and this was his response:
|