Punta del Este as Global City? competing visions of Uruguayan nationhood in a geography of exclusion

This article examines the controversies and struggles surrounding the Uruguayan workers confederation march from Montevideo to the exclusive resort city of Punta del Este in 2002. At stake were competing visions of the present and future direction of Uruguay. Punta del Este is central to the government's project of a “new” Uruguay: a service-oriented, outward-looking, and high-tech regional financial and economic center. The city presents a socially and spatially exclusive setting to showcase this new image, an exclusivity necessary in the face of the contrasting vision the protestors sought to highlight: an Uruguay of growing poverty, inequality and a questionable future.