Montevideo (, ; Spanish: [monteβiˈðeo] ⓘ) is the capital and largest city of Uruguay. As of the 2023 census, the city proper has a population of 1,287,452, making up about 36.8% of the country's total population, in an area of 201 square kilometers (78 sq mi). Montevideo is situated on the southern coast of the country, on the northeastern bank of the Río de la Plata.
A Portuguese garrison was established at the site of modern-day Montevideo in November 1723. The Portuguese garrison was expelled in February 1724 by a Spanish soldier, Bruno Mauricio de Zabala, as a strategic move amidst the Spanish-Portuguese dispute over the platine region. There is no official document establishing the foundation of the city, but the "Diario" of Bruno Mauricio de Zabala officially mentions the date of 24 December 1726 as the foundation, corroborated by presential witnesses. The complete independence from Buenos Aires as a real city was not reached until 1 January 1730. It was also under brief British rule in 1807, but eventually the city was retaken by Spanish criollos who defeated the British invasions of the River Plate. Montevideo is the seat of the administrative headquarters of Mercosur and ALADI, Latin America's leading trade blocs, a position that has entailed comparisons to the role of Brussels in Europe.
The 2019 Mercer report on quality of life rated Montevideo first in Latin America, a rank the city has consistently held since 2005. As of 2010, Montevideo was the 19th largest city economy in the continent and 9th highest income earner among major cities. In 2022, it has a projected GDP of $53.9 billion, with a per capita of $30,148. In 2018, it was classified as a beta global city, ranking eighth in Latin America and 84th in the world. Montevideo hosted every match during the first FIFA World Cup in 1930. It has been described as a "vibrant, eclectic place with a rich cultural life", and "a thriving tech center and entrepreneurial culture".
The city features historic European architecture and is considered one of the cities with the most art deco influence. It is the hub of commerce and higher education in Uruguay as well as its chief port and financial hub, anchoring a metropolitan area with a population of around 2 million.
Etymology
There are several explanations for the word Montevideo. All agree that "Monte" refers to the Cerro de Montevideo, the hill situated across the Bay of Montevideo, but there is disagreement about the etymological origin of the "video" part.
- Monte vide eu ("I saw a mount") is the most widespread belief but is rejected by the majority of experts, who consider it unlikely because it involves a mix of dialects. The name would come from a Portuguese expression which means "I saw a mount", wrongly pronounced by an anonymous sailor belonging to the expedition of Ferdinand Magellan on catching sight of the Cerro de Montevideo.
- Montem vídeo ("I see a hill"): This version, a variant of the previous one, suggests that the name comes directly from Latin, stemming from the spontaneous expression of a learned member of Magellan's expedition, who, upon spotting the Cerro de Montevideo, exclaimed: Montem vídeo ("I see a hill"). The rest of the crew, who did not speak Latin, mistakenly registered this as the name of the hill they had just sighted, Monte Vídeo. This theory is supported by numerous maps and documents from the colonial period that refer to the Cerro de Montevideo with the name Monte Vídeo.
- Monte Vidi: This hypothesis comes from the "Diario de Navegación" (Navigational Calendar) of boatswain Francisco de Albo, member of the expedition of Magellan, who wrote, "Tuesday of the said [month of January 1520] we were on the straits of Cape Santa María [now Punta del Este], from where the coast runs east to west, and the terrain is sandy, and at the right of the cape there is a mountain like a hat to which we gave the name "Montevidi"." This is the oldest Spanish document that mentions the promontory with a name similar to the one that designates the city, but it does not contain any mention of the alleged cry "Monte vide eu."
- Monte-VI-D-E-O (Monte VI De Este a Oeste, "Sixth mount from east to west"): According to Rolando Laguarda Trías, professor of history, the Spaniards annotated the geographic location on a map or Portolan chart, so that the mount/hill is the VI (6th) mount observable on the coast, navigating Río de la Plata from east to west. With the passing of time, these words were unified to "Montevideo". No conclusive evidence has been found to confirm this academic hypothesis, nor can it be asserted with certainty which the other five mounts observable before the Cerro were.
- Monte Ovídio (Monte Santo Ovídio), a less widespread hypothesis of a religious origin, stems from an interpolation in the aforementioned Diario de Navegación of Francisco de Albo, where it is asserted "corruptly now called Santo Vidio" when they refer to the hat-like mount which they named Monte Vidi (that is, the Cerro de Montevideo). Auditus of Braga (Spanish: Ovídio) was the third bishop of the Roman city of Braga (now in Portugal) in 95 CE, where he was always revered; a monument to him was erected there in 1505. Given the relationship that the Portuguese had with the discovery and foundation of Montevideo, and despite the fact that this hypothesis, like the previous ones, lacks conclusive documentation, there have been those who linked the name of Santo Ovídio or Vídio (appearing on some maps of the time) with the subsequent derivation of the name "Montevideo" given to the region since the early years of the 16th century.
When the Portuguese invaded the Banda Oriental and annexed it as the province of Cisplatina until 1831, they called the city Montevidéu, and pronounced as [mõtɨviˈðew].
History
Historical Affiliations
- Spanish Empire 1724–1807
- British Empire 1807
- Spanish Empire 1807–1814
- Río de la Plata 1814–1815
- Federal League 1815–1817
- U.K. of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves 1817–1822
- Empire of Brazil 1822–1828
- Uruguay 1828–present
Early history
Between 1680 and 1683, Portugal founded the city of Colonia do Sacramento in the region across the bay from Buenos Aires. This city met with no resistance from the Spanish until 1723, when they began to place fortifications on the elevations around Montevideo Bay. On 22 November 1723, Field Marshal Manuel de Freitas da Fonseca of Portugal built the Montevieu fort.
A Spanish expedition was sent from Buenos Aires, organized by the Spanish governor of that city, Bruno Mauricio de Zabala. On 22 January 1724, the Spanish forced the Portuguese to abandon the location and started populating the city, initially with six families moving in from Buenos Aires and soon thereafter by families arriving from the Canary Islands who were known as Guanches or Canarians. There was also one significant early Italian resident by the name of Jorge Burgues.
A census of the city's inhabitants was performed in 1724 and then a plan was drawn delineating the city and designating it as San Felipe y Santiago de Montevideo, later shortened to Montevideo. The census counted more than 100 families of Galician and Canary Islands origin, more than 1000 indigenous people, mostly Guaraní, as well as some trafficked slaves of Bantu origin.
A few years after its foundation, Montevideo became the main city of the region north of the Río de la Plata and east of the Uruguay River, competing with Buenos Aires for dominance in maritime commerce. The importance of Montevideo as the main port of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata brought it in confrontations with the city of Buenos Aires in various occasions, including several times when it was taken over to be used as a base to defend the eastern province of the Viceroyalty from Portuguese incursions.
In 1776, Spain made Montevideo its main naval base (Real Apostadero de Marina) for the South Atlantic, with authority over the Argentine coast, Fernando Po, and the Falklands. Until the end of the 18th century, Montevideo remained a fortified area, today known as Ciudad Vieja.
19th century
On 3 February 1807, British troops under the command of General Samuel Auchmuty and Admiral Charles Stirling occupied the city during the Battle of Montevideo (1807), but it was recaptured by the Spanish in the same year on 2 September when John Whitelocke was forced to surrender to troops formed by forces of the Banda Oriental—roughly the same area as modern Uruguay—and of Buenos Aires. After this conflict, the governor of Montevideo Francisco Javier de Elío opposed the new viceroy Santiago de Liniers, and created a government Junta when the Peninsular War started in Spain, in defiance of Liniers. Elío disestablished the Junta when Liniers was replaced by Baltasar Hidalgo de Cisneros.
During the May Revolution of 1810 and the subsequent uprising of the provinces of Rio de la Plata, the Spanish colonial government moved to Montevideo. During that year and the next, Uruguayan revolutionary José Gervasio Artigas united with others from Buenos Aires against Spain. In 1811, the forces deployed by the Junta Grande of Buenos Aires and the gaucho forces led by Artigas started a siege of Montevideo, which had refused to obey the directives of the new authorities of the May Revolution. The siege was lifted at the end of that year, when the military situation started deteriorating in the Upper Peru region.
The Spanish governor was expelled in 1814. In 1816, Portugal invaded the recently liberated territory and in 1821, it was annexed to the Banda Oriental of Brazil. It was named Imperial City by Emperor Pedro I when the city was part of the Empire of Brazil as the capital of the Cisplatina province. Juan Antonio Lavalleja and his band called the Treinta y Tres Orientales ("Thirty-Three Orientals") re-established the independence of the region in 1825. Uruguay was consolidated as an independent state in 1828, with Montevideo as the nation's capital. In 1829, the demolition of the city's fortifications began and plans were made for an extension beyond the Ciudad Vieja, referred to as the "Ciudad Nueva" ("new city"). Urban expansion, however, moved very slowly because of the events that followed.
Uruguay's 1830s were dominated by the confrontation between Manuel Oribe and Fructuoso Rivera, the two revolutionary leaders who had fought against the Empire of Brazil under the command of Lavalleja, each of whom had become the caudillo of their respective faction. Politics were divided between Oribe's Blancos ("whites"), represented by the National Party, and Rivera's Colorados ("reds"), represented by the Colorado Party, with each party's name taken from the color of its emblems. In 1838, Oribe was forced to resign from the presidency; he established a rebel army and began a long civil war, the Guerra Grande, which lasted until 1851.
The city of Montevideo suffered a siege of eight years between 1843 and 1851, during which it was supplied by sea with British and French support. By 1843 Montevideo's population of thirty thousand inhabitants was highly cosmopolitan with Uruguayans making up only a third of it. The remaining were chiefly Italian (4205), Spanish (3406), Argentine (2553), Portuguese (659), English (606) and Brazilians (492). Oribe, with the support of the then conservative Governor of Buenos Aires Province Juan Manuel de Rosas, besieged the Colorados in Montevideo, where the latter were supported by the French Legion, the Italian Legion, the Basque Legion and battalions from Brazil. Finally in 1851, with the additional support of Argentine rebels who opposed Rosas, the Colorados defeated Oribe. The fighting however resumed in 1855, when the Blancos came to power, which they maintained until 1865. Thereafter, the Colorado Party regained power, which they retained until the middle of the 20th century.
After the end of hostilities, a period of growth and expansion started for the city. In 1853 a stagecoach bus line was established joining Montevideo with the newly formed settlement of Unión and the first natural gas street lights were inaugurated. From 1854 to 1861 the first public sanitation facilities were constructed. In 1856 the Teatro Solís was inaugurated, 15 years after the beginning of its construction. By Decree, in December 1861 the areas of Aguada and Cordón were incorporated to the growing Ciudad Nueva (New City). In 1866, an underwater telegraph line connected the city with Buenos Aires. The statue of Peace, La Paz, was erected on a column in Plaza Cagancha and the building of the Postal Service as well as the bridge of Paso Molino were inaugurated in 1867.
In 1868, the horse-drawn tram company Compañía de Tranvías al Paso del Molino y Cerro created the first lines connecting Montevideo with Unión, the beach resort of Capurro and the industrialized and economically independent Villa del Cerro, at the time called Cosmopolis. In the same year, the Mercado del Puerto was inaugurated. In 1869, the first railway line of the company Ferrocarril Central del Uruguay was inaugurated connecting Bella Vista with the town of Las Piedras. During the same year and the next, the neighborhoods Colón, Nuevo París and La Comercial were founded. The Sunday market of Tristán Narvaja Street was established in Cordón in 1870. Public water supply was established in 1871. In 1878, Bulevar Circunvalación was constructed, a boulevard starting from Punta Carretas, going up to the north end of the city and then turning west to end at the beach of Capurro. It was renamed Artigas Boulevard in 1885. By Decree, on 8 January 1881, the area Los Pocitos was incorporated into the Novísima Ciudad (Most New City).