Lives in Motion

Lives in motion

Horacio Fernández

Photographs taken between September 2022 and February 2023

Edition: June 2024

Montevideo, Uruguay

Uruguay, a land of immigrants since time immemorial. A small country, tiny, flat, nestled between two giants. What could it possibly offer to those who come here? Why would people leave everything behind—their family, friends, roots, home, and even the comfort of many other countries—to come to a little country where everything takes time, is expensive, and far from home?

When we migrate, we do so because our new destination offers something we don’t have where we are. It could be a job, love, a life experience different from our current one, or what many cherish the most: peace, stability, and tranquility.

A small country known for its football glories and feats from almost a century ago, and more recently, for its marijuana. However, in this essay, we will see how the immigrants who have arrived in recent years tell us it is much more than that, and that it has countless intangible qualities that they value more than gold.

What’s interesting about all this is that we often don’t realize these things, and fortunately, we can take them for granted. Things like access to education and healthcare, living in a war free country, access to electricity and drinkable tap water, political stability, respect for human rights, and I could go on.

One of the goals of this part of the project is to highlight these aspects, so that we can begin to appreciate and cherish our little country even more, while always preserving the humbleness that defines us.

Unfortunately, as in every migration process, some have reported having problems. Whether with bureaucratic procedures, language, cultural and gastronomic differences, difficulties making friends, or even some xenophobic comments or attitudes. The migration process, regardless of migration reason, is often stressful, tedious, and even distressing in some cases. If we add the previously mentioned issues, the emotional burden becomes even greater. Even so, many manage to move forward and prefer to stay here rather than return to their country of origin.

I am grateful to all the people who opened their hearts and, with a smile, shared very important details about their lives. I also thank the Aquelarre photography school, especially its director Annabella Balduvino, for fostering and supporting this project. Below, we will appreciate some testimonies and photographs of immigrants who have decided to come and live in this small country.

“I don’t miss the war at all. What I miss are those moments when, curiously, despite being at war and living with it, we had our moments of being girls. Running up to fetch water for consumption, bathing together in the river, gathering firewood for cooking, those moments when all the girls gathered to prepare the fuba for dinner, which was practically the only meal we had all day. Our parents were in the fields all day, we had no food, and our only meal was funge, which is like polenta with sauce.”

“I don’t have much to miss. I have to be grateful because, beyond the war, the violence, and everything else, it has all been fundamental in my life. To take on a challenge far from your country, you need an experience that allows you to develop your life in the place you choose to live. My experience has been to create a shield and somehow evade the suffering far from home. Believe me, if I hadn’t had that experience of struggle, of falling and getting up, I wouldn’t have been able to withstand being here for long because life itself hasn’t been easy for me.”

Angelina Vunge, Angola

“Often people ask me, somewhat surprised, if I like it here. It would be very interesting for me to know why people in Uruguay are surprised that I like being here because there are quite beautiful things in Uruguay that they don’t seem to appreciate.”

“From my point of view, Uruguayans are very open, super friendly, and they help you, but at the same time, it’s more difficult to get close to them on a deeper level. That’s how I feel. It’s not a bad country to emigrate to; it’s super nice and welcoming, but I’m looking for relationships that are a bit more intimate, and that’s a bit more difficult than I thought.”

Nathalie Pijnaker, Netherlands

“I am here alone, and it’s like starting from scratch to get to know people and make friends, and sometimes I feel a bit lonely.”

“The style here is quite European. I had a completely different idea of this place. In general, people think South America is a place with cows, nature, and nothing more. Here, it’s like being in a European city, with many possibilities, and it also seems calm and safe to me, and I like it.”

“For me, being a girl who is alone, it’s difficult to think about going to Brazil or Colombia. Life here is more peaceful, and I would recommend this city to foreigners who come.”

Laura Catelan, Italy

“I am a person who doesn’t identify much with my country of origin. I lived all my life in Croatia, but if you ask me if I feel very Croatian... Maybe I felt it when we were in the World Cup final, which made me very proud, and also on other specific occasions. I have a habit that is, we can say, 100% Croatian, that I am trying to adapt here, but not so much because, like my partner, I am trying to understand the city I am in better, and also take advantage of this year of volunteering to work, meet people, and adapt to a different way of life.”

“I also like that feeling of sharing mate. Sharing something, like we are now, in a park, and sharing not only words and emotions but also something that unites people, which is something that doesn’t exist in my country. Well, there is beer, but it’s not the same.”

Vedran Viskovic, Croatia

“I left because I don’t feel very aligned with my country. Not with the politics or the lifestyle. And when I have to go back, I feel uncomfortable. I don’t know, I don’t like seeing how they live there. I really don’t miss much more than the food and my family and friends.”

“Life here is a bit simpler. At least with the people I hang out with. Nobody is showing off their life or trying to flaunt their money, like ‘look at my car’ or whatever, which is very common in the United States. Your success is based on your money and what you can buy. But here, it’s not like that. I think it matters more who you are as a person, if you’re happy in life, and if you have good relationships. It’s a more holistic view, which I like.”

“I came here for a woman. I had visited several times before to see her, and at one point, I thought, why not? Unfortunately, things didn’t work out between us, but I decided to stay here and not go back. I really like it here.”

“The truth is, I don’t miss much about New York. I miss some things, like the cultural diversity and the variety of foods, but I don’t miss the pace of life. Here, I’ve gained peace.”

Jim Koeppel,

“Everyone here creates networks. From birth, they have their family, then school, university, and all that, and the vast majority of foreigners, it seems to me, arrive without such network, and that makes everything more difficult.”

“Uruguayans are quite classist. So, if someone is from an English-speaking country, regardless of their color, they generally tend to think that the person is of a certain social level, and we receive very good treatment. I’ve spoken with black people from the United States about this, and they tell me that in Uruguay, they are treated wonderfully.”

“Generally, people are very kind, but I must also say that, being a foreigner and very interested in the topic, I talk a lot with taxi and Uber drivers who are from Cuba or Venezuela and so on, and I’m struck by how well they speak about the acceptance they’ve received from Uruguayans.”

Karen Higgs, Wales

“With me, I carried two suitcases full of dreams, hopes, and the determination to move forward.”

“The cuisine, palate, and taste of Uruguayans, I feel, are really basic.”

“For a moment, I stopped to think about my future in Uruguay. Yes, I love it. It’s a country that I really love. A country of opportunities, where no one is discriminated against. So, I ask myself, what am I going to do somewhere else? I mean it.”

Saul Jiron, El Salvador

“I have always been a foreigner. Honestly. I was born in Portugal from Angolan parents, and I lived my whole life in Brazil. Even though I lived my entire life in Brazil, I was always raised with Angolan culture. I am more Angolan than Brazilian.”

“When we first came here, there was an air of tranquility that I hadn’t felt in a long time. That feeling of a peaceful place, and looking at the sky and seeing it blue, not gray.”

“I find it difficult, and I also hear this from other foreigners, to create bonds. If I meet 10 people, maybe with 1 of them, over a long time, I can manage to form a friendship.”

Yendi Chicupo, Portugal; Mauricio Szabo, Brazil

“I am a mother of two. A single mother. The father of my children has Uruguayan roots. That’s why I ended up here. I got to know Uruguay when I came to visit his family for the first time, and honestly, I felt freer. Freer to be myself than in my own country.”

“Luckily, I now have a group of Peruvian friends with whom we always get together and do things, and we try to be good representatives of our country. We always make food, and more and more people are getting to know and try it. We call ourselves the Peruguayans.”

“My pantry is full of Peruvian spices and pisco. An Inka Cola here is very expensive, but I have a small bottle saved for emergencies.”

Cynthia Gomez, Peru

“Lo que veo parecido a la cultura japonesa, de alguna forma, es principalmente el respeto. Eso es lo primordial. Y una contra que veo, que la vi también con los chicos que trabajo, tanto japonesa y de los chicos de acá, y hablando con mi novia, es que al uruguayo le falta a veces decir las cosas. Expresarlas, ser frontal, y no guardarselas. A mi me gusta siempre decir las cosas de frente, porque creo que el respeto pasa por ahí también ¿no? A mi me gusta decir las cosas de frente, y a los chicos les digo que larguen, que digan lo que sienten.”

“Y en el trabajo me pasa una cosa. Por ahí a veces se me puede saltar la chaveta o no se que, porque no se, por ahí lo que tengo muy de japonés yo (nikkei de segunda generacion, o nissei), es que puedo estar doce o trece horas laburando como si nada. Y también haber venido acá me ayudó a ver un poco más de bajar las revoluciones, y de no estar todo el día pendiente del trabajo. Es como que me inculcaron mucho el trabajo en mi familia también”

Maximiliano Matsumoto,

“Prejudices prevail first, and my first prejudice always was, at the beginning, that people who are outside my country are better than me. When I tried to work, I had that prejudice at first, which held me back a lot. Then I realized that when people from all over the world came to work on my project, I saw that we are all the same. And that even though they have some qualities, I have others. So, I realized it’s not like that. We all have the same problems, the same dreams of wanting to move forward not just professionally but also at a family level, and life dreams.”

“When you move to another country, the first three or four years are when you miss your country the most. You can even suffer from the ‘snail syndrome,’ which is when you want to stay in your house and not go out at all, and not integrate with anything. That happens in the first years. But after four or five years, that disappears. And then you no longer feel part of your own country. So a transformation occurs within you. When you go back to your country, two things happen. The Bolivia I have in my mind is from 2009. So, when I go back to Bolivia, it’s like Back to the Future. Some things are no longer there, my friends are already married, they have children. Life has changed completely, and the country is no longer the same. You no longer feel like you belong here or there.”

“We always used our food and our culture as a way to integrate into society and make friends. Whether it was at birthdays, the food my kids took to school, or during our celebrations. At first, it was a bit complicated because we couldn’t find the ingredients, especially corn flour, but now it’s a bit easier.”

“We came here during the tequila crisis. Things got very difficult back in Mexico. First, my in-laws came. My husband is Peruvian, of European descent, but we didn’t want to go to Peru because at that time there was the Sendero Luminoso terrorist group, so we preferred to come to Uruguay.”

Soraya Herrera, Mexico

“In India, I cooked very little. I always had an open palate to try different foods. I liked trying food from different restaurants, and at home, I would also ask my mom to prepare some different dishes I saw in some places or that some friends from school brought. I always had a palate for it, but I didn’t have the opportunity or time to cook and experiment in the kitchen. I did the classic and normal, trying to make something different. I learned to cook Indian food here in Uruguay. I made it for myself, for friends, and then I started selling it as well.”

“Uruguayans have always been very kind, and what I noticed is that Uruguayans are very calm in their lives, and they know how to balance work and personal life. I love that, and I learned how to do it, which is something we are not used to in India. Of course, we have our moments of enjoyment, but the balance isn’t very good. We don’t have a good balance in India.”

“At some point, you start missing your family. Four years without seeing family, relatives, and friends is a long time. Asian families are very close-knit in that sense. Every month, we visit our relatives, our uncles, our grandparents, and we enjoy it. But now we can’t do that. The only thing keeping us going is the Indian community. Friends become our parents, our relatives, they are everything. I have made some Uruguayan friends. As I mentioned earlier, I have a group of Uruguayan friends with whom we play football at Nautilus or futsal. I made friends in the office. That was the first place where I made friends.”

“You feel proud to have the opportunity to play cricket representing a country, and to play at an international level, which is huge. It’s very rare to get this kind of opportunity. When I arrived, I heard about this possibility, and I said yes, I would play, no matter what happens.”

Soham Gupta, India

“To avoid bothering those around me, I stopped making foods with strong smells and controversial combinations. People even said my clothes would look better as curtains or tablecloths. I mean, you see how I’m dressed now. It was a bit shocking, and I thought that everyone around me or the community where I lived might feel a bit bothered, so I put all that away and came to feel ashamed of my things. Because I felt that I was making people uncomfortable, and it seemed like I had nothing good to offer, I started to feel embarrassed to show and live my culture. But, of course, it’s something I was able to overcome, and now I express it in my clothing, in my food, and in everything.”

“I would like society to learn to respect a bit more the things they don’t know and to respect other people’s space. The unknown sometimes generates three things: fear, distrust, and prejudice. By getting to know, we can overcome all those details.”

Blanche Cambou, Burkina Faso

“Look, I want to keep migrating. Not because I want to leave Uruguay, but because I came here for my first migratory experience, and it was fantastic. It was really hard. It still is hard. It pushes you to your limits and makes you learn a lot about yourself, to challenge yourself, to meet other people, and to learn a lot. I would like to keep migrating just for the experience of it. I’m thinking of going to Brazil, then somewhere in Europe, but I don’t know if it will happen soon. For now, I have two projects in Uruguay, and well, this makes me stay for now. It depends on how things go. If they grow and are here, then I have something here, a root, and I can always come back. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll just leave.”

“Most of the time, I try to relate with Uruguayans or with foreigners from other parts. Personally, I don’t seek to relate much with Venezuelans because, while it’s fine and I feel comfortable, I’m in another country, I’m somewhere else. I want to learn from people of this culture or from people who are going through the same thing as me but from a different culture. That is always interesting.”

“I see that this is an extremely good country. It has many opportunities for everyone. Here, the foreigner, the immigrant, has many comforts that they don’t have in other countries. That caught my attention a lot.”

“It shocks me that, for example, Uruguayans themselves say that they are very gray people, very neutral, neither good nor bad, but the perception we foreigners have is that they are very cheerful and well-educated people. What I’ve noticed in the time I’ve been here in this country is that they have very good education, even if you say this or that is lacking. In the eyes of a foreigner, the education here is very good. It’s a very clean, neat country, where people can feel at ease. There’s crime like everywhere else, but the peace you get from being in Uruguay is truly priceless.”

“The mate thing has been very striking. Seeing all these people who go everywhere with their mate. They never go anywhere without it. It’s something that characterizes them a lot. I tried it, and I like the sharing aspect of mate. It’s something that brings people together.”

“I just started a murga workshop, and I’m loving it. I love the atmosphere in the murga group. I’ve only been twice, but I like it a lot, and it’s here in Cerro, so it’s a way to get to know Cerro better.”

“There are many people from my country who die on the roads, who die crossing the water, because they have to walk as they have no other choice. It’s heartbreaking when you see an immigrant who has left their home, their family, and everything behind. Before, when we left, it was to explore another country, because we were welcomed everywhere. Now, Venezuelans are leaving out of necessity, which is not the same, and in trying to find safety for their families, they end up on the roads. People leave the country not knowing if they’ll ever see it again, if they’ll die, if they’ll be able to communicate. For example, today, checking my phone to see who had messaged me, I told Carlos that no one had written today, and he responded to be patient, that maybe there’s no electricity. It doesn’t matter how much you earn. The problem is there’s no water, no electricity, no food, no security.”

“If I’m going to emigrate to Uruguay, I can’t expect Uruguayans to accept my idiosyncrasies. It’s me who has to learn the idiosyncrasies of the country, the way people are, and learn about the country. Recently, a lot of young people and many professionals have started coming here. Many have accepted this condition.”

Carlos Andueza, Pedro Mendoza, Gelna Auxiliadora

“My way of thinking is that if I live in a country, I forget about the baggage from my country of origin. I came to Uruguay to be Uruguayan. I mean, I didn’t come here to make feijoada. Okay, I want to be Uruguayan. I don’t want to be a Brazilian living in Uruguay. I’ll eat feijoada when I go to Brazil on vacation.”

“The relationship with people has always been very open. I believe that being very honest with people makes them very honest with you. At least, that’s my perspective here in Uruguay. I mean, people are harder to win over, but once you do, the bond is much stronger.”

Gefferson Schmidt, Brazil

“It would be good to relax the degree revalidations a bit. I have three degrees from Venezuela. Here, I can only revalidate one, the accounting degree, because it’s the only one I can revalidate, but the university procedures have been a nightmare. I’ve been here for three years and four months, and I haven’t been able to start studying because every time I submit a document, it’s rejected because it’s missing a stamp, the stamp isn’t right, it’s too blue, and my university in Venezuela isn’t very willing to give me the pantone stamp they want here in Uruguay. It’s complicated. These small formalities and little protocols could be relaxed a bit to give opportunities to foreign, educated, or graduated professionals to practice our careers here.”

“The people in Montevideo are very warm, very noble, very kind... well, not that warm. Noble and kind, yes, but always with a certain distance, a certain respect. And that’s something I’ve also learned to handle here, from the culture, so to speak. Because it’s part of what Uruguay is.”

Maria Gabriela Valecillos,

“I feel much freer and much more protected here than in my country. With the dictatorship and everything that happened back home, I never felt either free or protected, but here I do.”

“The language still complicates things for me. Even when I go to the supermarket, and people hear my accent, sometimes they discriminate against me. It’s not very frequent, but it happens. They either don’t understand me or start speaking Portuguese to me, and I don’t speak Portuguese. Also, there’s the issue of prices. When I go with my daughter, I ask her to ask for the price because if I ask, the price triples or quadruples. When she asks, it’s 50. When I ask, it’s 150.”

“I’m going to be very honest. Maybe I was lucky, or well, maybe in my town it was a bit exclusive and I’m not saying that’s a good thing, but something I respect and really like here is that it’s a much more integrated community. I feel like over there you have neighborhoods that are mostly black and others that are mostly white. It feels like we’re very segregated over there, and that’s not good.”

“Back home, we’re a bit paranoid sometimes, because we’re constantly checking if we’re not offending, if we’re not bothering anyone. And it’s hard to live like that sometimes. Live your life, man. Here it’s not like that. I feel a bit in the middle. Americans are kind of obsessive about political correctness and all that.”

Daniel Goodman,

“Honestly, the residency process didn’t seem difficult to me. That’s another benefit of being in Uruguay. The process of getting residency is relatively easy, and even though you have to do several procedures and bring papers, compared to the United States, it’s a breeze.”

“I have several health problems, and knowing that, in the worst-case scenario, if I have an emergency, they will take care of me here. At least I’ll have a bed to sleep in at a hospital and doctors to look after me.”

“The two of us, and I say this with a bit of embarrassment but also acknowledging our situation, have a lot of privileges in many aspects, and that makes our immigration experience completely different from someone who suddenly arrives here without financial resources, without means of living, or who may not have the same level of education that we have. And well, that drastically changes the immigration experience you can have.”

“Uruguay is like being in Europe without Europe’s problems.”

“The best thing about Uruguay is the Uruguayan spirit.”

“I think the only thing Uruguayans need is to improve their self-esteem a bit. If you ask me what things I would change, it would be just that.”

Alex Stinson, USA; Evelin Heidel, Argentina

“When I arrived, I found the culture of Uruguay incredible because it’s the complete opposite. Japan is an extreme country. We don’t like physical contact. Over there, people always talk and greet from a distance. No handshakes, no hugs, no kisses. Nothing like that.”

“Her house (referring to his wife) was a restaurant in Japan. She is also the owner of this café. She is the one who opened it. She knows everything. I am her assistant. She is the boss. Owner and boss.”

“My house is like Japan. We speak Japanese. They (referring to the children) watch anime. She cooks Japanese food. It’s like being in Japan. My children take it as something natural.”

Familia Suzuki, Japan

“One of my projects has always been to have a business, a restaurant, or a café. So we started evaluating if we could do it here in Uruguay. We saw the market potential. If you think about it, five or seven years ago, there wasn’t much diversity in gastronomy, so we saw a lot of potential to do it here. We then traveled to the Czech Republic to visit our families because we knew that once we started the business, we wouldn’t be able to go back for a long time.”

“When we chose Uruguay, we did some studying to see what it was like. And Uruguay, in this region, isn’t quite like the rest of Latin America. Uruguay, with all things considered, is more European. Sometimes it doesn’t seem like it because there are differences, but it’s more European. We like Uruguay a lot because there are many immigrants. Being foreigners ourselves, we attract more foreign friends. We have friends from Mexico, Venezuela, the United States, Cuba, practically from all over the world.”

Ladislav Jelinek and Tomas Navratil, Czech Republic

“I don’t have a home country. The whole world is a country to me. Countries are like cities. Sometimes I visit one city, sometimes another city. That’s how it is for me.”

“Around my country, in the Middle East, in all the countries there, there are always problems, conflicts, wars over religion, over races, and I don’t like that. I don’t want to live in a place where there are always wars. I’m going to live for 80 years. I don’t want to waste all my time on problems. That’s why I came here.”

Fuat Kaya, Turkey

“I’m not going to lie to you. The culture is very different. We’re talking about when we left Nigeria. Things have changed a bit now. When we arrived at the old Carrasco airport, we saw a woman smoking. That was very strange for us because we had never seen that in Nigeria—a woman smoking a cigarette.”

“One of the things I miss is the respect, in all its forms. In Africa, we highly value respect towards older people. It’s something that you absolutely learn as you grow up as a child. When older people are speaking, if you’re not invited to speak, you can’t speak. It’s not that you can’t speak, but out of respect for them, you don’t.”

Olayinka Kolawole and Family, Nigeria

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Horacio Fernández, the author of this essay, was born in Montevideo in September 1986. From a young age, he was interested in the arts, learning to play the piano as a child and the guitar as a teenager.

As IT professional, he began working at Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), an Indian-origin consulting firm, in August 2007 and stayed until February 2023. There, he was constantly surrounded by foreigners who came to work at the company and frequently interacted with clients from other countries. From the start, he had a keen interest in learning about the origins and cultures of these people, including their religion, customs, gastronomy, and work practices.

In 2011, he had the opportunity to travel for work to Minneapolis, Minnesota, in the United States. After much consideration and completing all the necessary bureaucratic procedures, he left in November and stayed for a year. After this period, he returned to Montevideo, but in November 2013, he had the chance to return to Minneapolis, where he lived until December 2015.

Although Minneapolis is not one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the United States, it was there that he encountered people from many different cultures. He had to learn how to navigate life as a foreigner and integrate into a society quite different from his own, facing many of the same challenges mentioned by the individuals he interviewed. Interestingly, upon returning to Uruguay, he found it challenging to readjust.

During this second period abroad, he began to study photography on his own. He had always liked photography but had never dedicated time to studying or understanding it. Later, he continued his studies, taking courses in studio lighting and photojournalism at the Aquelarre Photography School.

He participated in the “Naturaleza Contaminada” exhibition in 2022, organized by Aquelarre, at the Joaquín Torres García Museum. Additionally, he also collaborates as a photographer for the Montevideando Magazine portal.