The nation of Uruguay seldom makes world headlines, it's small and lacks dramatic landscapes.

Yet it possesses a culture based on horses and cows that stands out among the American nations.

And it is among the world's leaders in constructing a society of happy people.

Funding for In the Americas David Yetman was provided by Agnese Haury.

Uruguay is a small nation sandwiched on the coast between Brazil and Argentina.

My destination is the gaucho town of Tacuarembó, well in the interior.

First I landed in the capital town of Montevideo, which lies south of Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina.

This is Montevideo the capital and by far the largest city in Uruguay.

It's not a big city by international standards only about a million and a half people, but nearly half the population of the nation lives here.

As you drive around Montevideo you get the impression that Uruguayans are comfortable with each other.

They seem to be quite willing to consider new legislation to make a more just society and a more progressive society.

The rate of unemployment is very low, the rate of crime is very low, you can walk around the streets without any fear of crime.

Literacy is very high, higher than in the United States and without much controversy Uruguayans have legalized marijuana, legalized abortion, legalized gay marriage, their health care system is certainly the envy of other South American countries.

So I overall get the impression that Uruguayans are far more concerned about making each other happy than fighting each other, and that's a refreshing sign.

This plaza is the beginning of the main avenue, called July 18th which is the day of Uruguay's declaration of independence.

90% of people live in cities, very few people live in rural areas and Montevideo has half the total population of Uruguay, which is significant, right.

All the agricultural productions outside of Uruguay comes through here and it is exported by boat to the rest of the world.

We are a small country, and because of this it is easier to get along.

There have been periods of violence a few decades ago, and no one wants them to happen again.

So we are tolerant people, not because we have a heavenly gift or anything like that, but because we have suffered from the result of intolerance.

We believe in a strong large middle class where there isn't a huge gap between rich and poor, and that there is a social justice for all.

This is the Montevideo equivalent of a farmer's market, except that it goes back for a couple hundred years.

I keep bumping into people and they wonder what in the world is an outsider doing here.

Every neighborhood has a market or feria , which occurs once a week.

Neighbors come to look for alternatives to shopping at the supermarket.

For decades the feria has been a very traditional part of Montevideo's culture, where we come to look for good quality products and fresh produce.

Montevideo is a port city, but most of the fish caught nearby leaves the country.

What isn't exported is consumed at local restaurants, and maybe just once a week.

We are a culture of carnivores, beef-eaters.

Even today we have maintained our sense of neighborhood, because we are a small country we have closer personal relationships.

It is very common to meet a stranger and discover you have an acquaintance in common.

You might say that's what characterizes us as Montevideanos.

This is a city with a variety of services, accesses to cultural events, heritage sites, museums, cultural centers.

It is a city with a rich history of immigrants and the tradition they have brought.

There are distinct migratory contingents that have contributed to this.

Poles, Lithuanians, Spanish, Italian, French, it's an interesting cultural mix.

Some of my anthropologist friends would say that I am forgetting the indigenous component, a strain of our heritage that is still present, as well as an African heritage.

Montevideo brings together that diversity.

But the key is to achieve social justice, distribution of wealth, a more egalitarian society, I think that's the common goal of our government, and that is the road that we're on.

Montevideo is one of the great small cities of the America's, the rest of the country is sparsely populated or underpopulated.

Much of the interior consists of small ranches called pagos , where the ranchers raise beef and sheep.

Especially in the northwest, gaucho culture is still in place after a couple hundred years.

Mate is a beverage that greets us first thing in the morning, before anything else, a mate to lift the spirits, to really wake us up.

A normal day is to wake up, have a good mate, and about when the sun comes up we feed the animals, the chickens and the pigs and then milk the cows.

That's always the first chore.

Since calves are in a pen, we milk the mothers before they go with their calves to pasture.

Only then we bring in the horse to saddle up and head out to inspect all the pastures because there could be stray cows or sheep there.

And then we check to make sure they are in good health, to make sure that they don't have any skin parasites and to treat them for ticks if they do.

That's pretty much a day in the life of a gaucho.

All the people around the Tacuarembo prepare themselves for this holiday, right.

For example, we here are roughly 55km from the Tacuarembo on horseback and of course the parade is the highlight of the year, an opportunity to show off to the public the people our friends and acquaintances by marching.

It makes us feel proud to identify ourselves with our culture.

This is the morning milk for breakfast.

And then afterwards she'll make, like what I used to have when I was a kid, rice pudding.

Uh-huh, this is a loaf that came out last night, so this is whole wheat bread that has milk in it.

All the pastries, all the bread pastries are made in this very oven right here.

This is actually a wood fired oven that's the wood is stoked in from the outside, it has a wonderful function, because it gets cold here in the winter and everybody wants to hang out by the oven, so everybody wants to get a lot of bread so they can hang out by the oven.

You want to stay as close to this as you can, because it gets below freezing here.

Clara goes to school 4km from here and comes back in the afternoon, class is from ten to three, so she leaves at nine and returns at four p.m. My horse is called flea, because he is tiny, the smallest horse we have.

I love going to school on horseback.

No, I will have to go to Tacuarembó, to the secondary school, I don't have a choice.

It used to be very different, because in rural schools when I was a child, there were many children, 40-50.

Today there are only 5 or 6.

In the past it was more difficult, the children, they didn't have horses to ride to school.

They would walk, even if school was 5km away.

And without shoes because they had no walking shoes, the shoes they did have they only wore at school.

Now they have clothes, shoes, horses to ride, it's different.

The first time I made the trip, my mother showed me the way.

Ever since then I've rode by myself.

I like everything about it, the plants, the animals, the coatis.

When there are fruits in the canyon, then the tangerines are ripe, sometimes they throw tangerines at me when I ride by.

The school is over there, behind that hill.

I love to gallop, I like it a lot, but please don't tell my teacher.

In 2007, out of a population of 100 people, 25 left the area in that year.

The population of rural areas continues to decrease, there are very few people left and they have small families.

No one anymore has 10 kids, the average is 3, maybe 4.

My grandmother had 17 brothers and sisters.

The rural areas in Uruguay, just like everywhere else in the world have a general problem of depopulation.

Thjs school used to have 50 students in it, it now has 10.

But in a special situation like this one, this building was donated by a private donor to the government with the condition that as long as one student came, it would have to remain open.

So despite the very low enrollment here, they still have a teacher that is dedicated to teaching those kids.

The little ones arrive on horseback, they unsaddle their horse, put away their tack, and then they eat breakfast on that table over there, and then we get to work we usually work in the schools with themes related to the children's lives, since most of the kids are involved with the gaucho celebrations, and similar things such as the traditional homes they build for the festival.

This is one way we can help to preserve our heritage, culture, customs, and we will study the things that change, and other things that stay the same and these we see during celebrations.

And the children take pictures of items that they see in their own houses that are from the past, but still used today.

This shows natural horsemanship, these three photos.

We're trying to get them into that other smaller corral so we can....

It was through anthropologist Susan Lobo that I learned of this gaucho region, and the way of life.

She lives not far from the school.

We brought them in from the big field....

I've always been interested in Uruguay, it's one of the countries in Latin I'd never been to, I wanted to be around horses, because I ride, and I always wanted to be out in the country.

You know, I always say that I came for the horses, but stayed for a gaucho, which is what happened.

You ever wondered where the wool from your jacket came from, this is the shearing process.

The old way.

Most of the wool in the world is cut in a much more mechanized with motorized shears, but it's a little bit harder on the sheep, and this is actually quite benign.

It also takes expertise.

Nelson has been doing this for many many years.

The sheep skins are to sit on, on horseback, or if you are walking the herd by foot, that is called torpiando, in the past there were no trucks, no roads, so the animals were herded on foot.

While this was also used to make the bed.

I think if I could work at this for maybe two or three decades I could get the real gaucho personality.

What is terrific though is the sheep skin.

People who are as thin as I am sometimes suffer in the hard saddles, this is extremely comfortable and I've been on this horse for at least 5 minutes.

These large birds with the white bands on their wings are called tero tero, they will alert the presence of anything strange, the dogs will alert the gauchos if they don't hear the bird sounds, it's a great combination, a wild bird helping a domesticated dog, helping a gaucho.

Good story.

It's important to understand that in Uruguay's system of livestock production we have a system for identifying each animal.

Every Uruguayan cow here has an electronic chip, and using this technology, you can let supermarkets know exactly where this calf was born, where that cow came from.

All Uruguayan livestock lives outdoors, out in the open.

Uruguay is not a paradise for vegetarians, meat is very big in the diet.

As a matter of fact in some places, there's not much else you can get.

Whether its sausage, roast suckling pig, various cuts of chicken, an entire cow, meat is the basis of the diet in Uruguay.

And when you come to the fiesta de Patria Gaucha, there are 50,000 people all wanting big cuts, big servings of meat, so you have a fire fueled by eucalyptus wood, you have grills that are made by old mattress frames, and you have a hungry clientele, so you get a six sided cooking area with the necessity of at least two men working it at all times.

That's a lot of meat, but that's the Uruguayan diet.

The concept of a f ogon is difficult to describe without seeing it.

There are twelve of them here in the fiesta and each one of them represents a native old origin of a settlement.

This particular one represents a Spanish settlement back in the late 17th century.

The Spaniards brought cows, and they made their huts out of cow hides.

Natives made their houses out of grass, good insulator, warm in the winter and cool in the summertime.

Each year the the associations from those original towns, hamlets, settlements, come into the fiesta and build this representation.

This will be here for about a week, and then it's gone.

And it's an essential part of the fiesta of gaucho country.

Way on the outskirts of Tacuarembó, everyone is getting ready for the big day, the big fiesta, the great party of the gauchos in town.

They have to start very early in the morning when the mist is still lying in the lowlands, get their horses saddled, get everyone ready and ride on their horses into town for the parade.

I asked Nelson why they tie the tail of the horse in a knot, and the answer was in the old days when they had a lot of broncos, really wild horses, that would be part of domesticating, part of taming them, that they would tie them in knot to show that they were tamed, now it's just a tradition, and they like it cause it looks nice.

The horse was for everything, to bring the sick to the doctor, to bring home groceries, to go out just for a ride, you know the horse was everything, and it's still that way.

It's interesting that here in Uruguay horses are identified by their hair, their hair color, horses don't have names here.

I started riding when I was 2 years old, and when I went to school I went all by myself, 7km away.

No, I cannot imagine life without horses, I've been riding since I was a small child, I can't imagine what it would be like, but I don't think it would be fun.

The first time I was in the parade I was nine months old and rode on my dad's lap, and after all these 17 years, I have never missed a parade.

I was born knowing how to ride in the parade.

It is now quite acceptable for girls to parade in not only a dress, but also in pants and boots like the guys do.

Also know you see the girls parading with the guys, partners, guy friends, boyfriends, husbands or whatever.

Well my clothing is the traditional girl's skirt with a blouse made of rough cloth, which is being used more often now, a blouse with skirt rather than the whole dress, like many do.

The street is full of horses, trucks, people, wannabe gauchos, real gauchos, horses of every conceivable color, and the excitement is palpable.

This is a big day, this is a big, this is Christmas, this is New Year's Eve, the biggest day of the year.

We're just seeing a tiny little portion of the preparations, so the parade is going to be something, I've never seen anything like it.

It's hard to know whether there are more horses or cars here, coming in from all the little towns, little settlements out in the boonies.

The interior of Uruguay is very sparsely populated, so when there is a big event like this, they come from 100km away.

So the three abreast is part of the organization of the parade for safety purposes.

When they are shouting, what they are saying is "long live Uruguay, long live Uruguay, long live tradition and the culture of the gauchos."

The culture of the gauchos includes the entire family, the whole family participates, including the children and sometimes even the family dog.

The gaucho stems from three cultures, three sources: indigenous, European, and African roots.

From those origins came the gaucho.

The indigenous groups were originally Charua and Guarani.

The Guarani lived father to the west.

Uruguay claims that they are all gone, there are still many in Paraguay, but here, you look at the faces and you say there's some indigenous ancestry, some genetic stuff going on that's not from Europe.

The parade is usually made up of three to four thousand horses and riders.

La Patria Gaucho serves to preserve a lot of our cultural experience, a collection of memories, anecdotes, and bygone ways of life where people were forced to deal directly with nature, to use the natural world around them in order to survive, mainly based on the use of the horse.

And the horse, that animal with four legs that was domesticated by man and was transformed into an ally to solve the problem of traversing great distances, and herding animals.

In summary, horses became a fundamental partner for man at a time when the countryside was one huge green desert, literally populated by animals and no people.

The horse was the essential element, that relationship with the horse brought about a symbiosis similar to what could be a centaur, the man on a horse is transformed.

He is a warrior.

A man with a wider horizon.

He is a bold man, a brave man, a fraternal man, and that's the essence of the gaucho.

We celebrate these customs so we understand where we come from, and so we understand why we are who we are.

The group called Tres Arboles, three trees, is the last of the formally organized groups in the parade.

There are still thousands of horses and people behind the organized ones.

This is the end of the judging, the rest is going to be pure fun and pure common people, showing off their horses and their costumes.

It's the real Uruguay.

In the 1970's the Uruguayans suffered under a brutal dictatorship.

Cultural expressions, such as the gaucho festival were suppressed.

In the last 40 years, those same Uruguayans have learned to focus on building a more just society, and celebrating their cultural traditions as a nation.

I wish other countries in the Americas, including my own, could learn to do the same.

Join us next time In the Americas with David Yetman Northerners regard the Caribbean Islands as a tropical playground.

One large island is different.

Though Trinidad has steel drums, stilt walkers, Hindu temples and wonders of nature.

Tobago, part of the nation of Trinidad and Tobago, is where the beaches are; it's a very different sort of nation.

Funding for In the Americas with David Yetman was provided by Agnese Haury.

Copies of this and other episodes of In the Americas with David Yetman are available from the Southwest Center.

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