The creation of Uruguay as a state in the 19th century was not the result of a national emancipation process, but of a geostrategic calculation by Britain, led by figures such as Lord John Ponsonby (sent by Canning by request of the king because of his lover affairs), to create a buffer zone between Brazilian imperial ambitions and Argentine republican consolidation. The new Uruguayan state served British commercial interests by neutralizing potential regional conflicts and ensuring trade access through the Río de la Plata.

From its inception, Uruguay’s sovereignty was conditional and its institutional design shaped by foreign logic rather than by popular will. The port economy, liberal constitution, and early elites were crafted under the gaze and influence of external actors. The failure to integrate with Argentina—despite cultural, linguistic, and familial ties—was not a product of collective national consciousness, but a result of war fatigue, elite accommodation, and foreign manipulation.

What is most striking is the population’s long-term embrace of this artificial construct, and the mythologies built around it. Rather than contest their externally imposed condition, Uruguayans internalized a narrative of exceptionality—one that separated them from the “disorder” of Argentina and the “backwardness” of Brazil. This myth provided psychological refuge, even pride, in a story of liberal order, European values, and political civility.

Yet beneath this myth lies a deeper, more human need: the need for recognition. In a geopolitical world that often ignores small states, Uruguayans have clung to their identity and institutional pride as forms of symbolic sovereignty. The belief in being “the most democratic,” “the most stable,” or “the most European” in Latin America is not just ideology—it is an emotional bulwark against invisibility. In the absence of geopolitical weight, recognition has become a substitute for real power.

But the cost of symbolic recognition is real. It has constrained the country’s ability to reform, integrate regionally, or imagine a post-myth political economy. As Brazil tightens its regional grip and Argentina reorients its national project, Uruguay remains trapped between past grandeur and present irrelevance—a nation born of 19th-century diplomacy, sustained by 20th-century myths, and struggling to define a 21st-century purpose.

Unless it confronts the contradictions of its origin and the limits of recognition as a political strategy, Uruguay risks becoming not just a historical curiosity—but a case study in the quiet failure of sovereign performance.