In May 2025, Uruguay’s government finalized a $144 million agreement to settle its debt with the consortium responsible for the Ferrocarril Central. On television programs like La Boca es Mía, pundits quickly reached a consensus: the payment was acceptable, the minister of economy had acted responsibly, and most importantly, “Uruguay saved its honor”1. It was, apparently, the best possible outcome, considering financial conditions and the recurrent preocupation of minister Oddone.

But beneath this consensus lies an anthropological drama—one that reveals how Uruguay’s middle class manages political crisis through ritualized performances of morality and national self-respect. In the words of former president Jorge Batlle (during the crisis of 2002), “The tragedy of Argentinians is not being able to face their problems directly but disguising themselves.” That phrase, often used to distinguish Uruguay from its neighbor, now feels eerily self-referential.

Observing the media, Uruguayans and their elected officials did not protest the cost. They embraced it as a reaffirmation of identity. This is because the Montevidean middle class doesn’t operate merely with rational-economic logic. Its worldview is sustained by what anthropologist Mary Douglas2 called a “purity system”—a shared set of symbols and rituals that keep disorder at bay. To this class, “honor” is not a diplomatic abstraction, but a social mirror. It reflects their image as civil, prudent, and correct. Paying a scandalous debt becomes a ritual of purification, not an admission of failure. “Dirt is essentially disorder. There is no such thing as absolute dirt: it exists in the eye of the beholder” (Douglas, 1966, p. 2).

The performance unfolds through media, where televised punditry works as a form of symbolic closure. There is no search for accountability, no investigation of how such a debt accumulated, and certainly no critique of the public-private framework that birthed it. Instead, there is a sense of communitas, a collective emotional reconciliation that avoids political confrontation. The pundits, the ministers, and the audience all rehearse a shared script: Uruguay is still a “serious country”.

This denial is not ignorance. It is what psychoanalyst Slavoj Žižek 3 would call fetishistic disavowal: “I know very well that this is absurd, but I do it anyway.” A majority of the Montevidean middle class understands the contradiction but holds on to the performance because it reaffirms its place in the national imaginary.

Bourdieu’s concept of habitus is also useful here 4,5. The moralized discourse of “honor” reflects the embodied dispositions of a class raised on public education, civic decency, and moderate reformism. This class is not wealthy, nor powerful, but it is symbolically dominant. It defines the tone of the nation’s self-image. Even as infrastructure crumbles and fiscal deficits grow, what matters most is maintaining symbolic capital—to continue imagining Uruguay as better than Argentina, cleaner than Brazil, more serious than the rest.

Thus, the railway agreement was not just a payment. It was a ritual sacrifice, an act that transforms political failure into moral success. President Orsi and his ministers applauded not the economic cost but the reaffirmation of their cultural identity.

In a time of crisis, the real currency is not money, but myth.

References

  1. Esta boca es mía. May 19, 2025. Deuda Ferrocarril Central: acuerdo entre gobierno y consorcio https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9x4okydYNGs&t=14s ↩

  2. Douglas, M. (1966). Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. Routledge. ↩

  3. Žižek, S. (1993). Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology. Duke University Press. ↩

  4. Bourdieu, P. (1979). Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (R. Nice, Trans.). Harvard University Press. ↩

  5. Bourdieu, P. (1990). The Logic of Practice (R. Nice Trans.). Stanford University Press. ↩