Yesterday evening in club désirer:

Yamandú, 64, told us:

„La democracia es lo principal“ – „Democracy is the essential!“

Leandro, being younger and having not experienced the military dictatorship, tells us about the crisis in 2002 and how it influenced his generation, his life and his family. He quoted us some lines from a song describing democracy with everybody participating and he brought us a drawing that he did when he was 13 years old and that is really precious to him.

Maurizio Bruno gave us a lecture in Uruguayan history. He described the beginnings of Uruguay in the 18th/19th century, the first period after independence and the developments that led to the actual form of democracy nowadays. Very interesting for us was that president José Batlle y Ordóñez (he was president twice 1903-07 and 1911-15) experienced the political system in Switzerland and started to reform the Urugayan system in a similar way.  Maurizio gave us a brief overview of the developments that led to the military dictatorship and a short summary of the last 30 years. It was incredibly fascinating and we realized that we practically know almost nothing about the developments and the history in Latinamerica in Europe, especially about the last 100 years. This leads us back to our forming history projects – questioning who makes history? –  and makes us think about power structures and frameworks.

Power structures bring us back to the following two pictures we took today in the street outside of the Bar 7 Rayos and Espacio de Arte Contemporanéo. These photos give us the opportunity to simply ask whether democracy is really of all and for all?

Did you ever ask people about democracy and what they think is the most important part? You easily can find out a lot with this simple question. Try it – we are curious about your results!