Hello and welcome to It Could Happen here. It's time to finally continue our journey through Latin American anarchism.

Now, so far, we've covered almost every country in Latin America at this point, including Peru, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Central America,

the countries of the former Grand Columbia, like Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia, and also Cuba

and a few other islands in the Caribbean. And now, before we get to the really big history

that I've kind of been saving as the finale

that is anarchism in Mexico, we're going to be talking about the anarchist movement in Uruguay.

So, my name is Andrew Sage.

You can find me on YouTube as Andrew Zim.

And you can also find the bulk of the research for today's

episode in Ankhil Capoletti's aptly titled Anarchism in Latin America. I'm joined today by

James. It's me again. And it's been a while. Yeah, it has been a while. Nice to be back. Great to be

back in conversation. Yeah.

So before we could really get into the history of anarchism and Uruguay, I probably should

give some context as to how Uruguay became Uruguay. And where my source for this history is

primarily the Encyclopedia Britannica.

So before the whole scourge of European colonialism,

what is now known as Uruguay supported a population of about 5,000 to 10,000 people,

which were organized in semi-nomadic groups.

You had the Tarawa, the China, and the Guarani Indians, primarily.

So the first European visits took place first in 1516, and they weren't particularly successful or of interest. Spain was looking for gold and looking for silver. That was their incentive for

colonization at the time. And they didn't see any of that, so they didn't have much motivation to

stick around. It was until the 1620s, over a century later, that Jesuit and Franciscan missionary

...