Tacuarembó

Tacuarembó was a planned town. On 24 October 1831 President Fructuoso Rivera decreed the creation of a city in the region and gave the task to his brother, Colonel Bernabé Rivera, who set out from Montevideo on a three-month journey with a caravan of wagons and families towards the Tacuaremboty River, whose Guaraní name means "river of the reeds". The land was surveyed and divided into blocks, and on 21 January 1832 the town was founded as San Fructuoso, after St Fructuosus of Tarragona, whose feast falls on that day, and after the president.

The settlement grew quickly. By 1837 it had more than 500 residents, a justice of the peace, a military commander, a parish priest and a mayor, and on 16 June that year it became capital of the new Tacuarembó Department, created together with Salto and Paysandú. It became a town in law in 1895 and, renamed Tacuarembó — from the Guaraní for a bamboo shoot — a city in 1912.

Its later history is that of ranching country. Cattle and sheep shaped the economy, the railway from Montevideo to Rivera passed through, and eucalyptus and pine plantations and sawmills spread across the department. In 1987 the town held the first Fiesta de la Patria Gaucha, now described as the country's most important folklore event.

Tacuarembó presents itself as the capital of gaucho country. Gaucho traditions remain part of rural life, and the Fiesta de la Patria Gaucha each March gathers the criollo societies of the north for a parade of about 4,000 horses through town, jineteada rodeo on bucking horses, roping, folk music and dancing, and the fogones — full-scale recreations of rural homesteads, schools and churches from the colonial period to the late 19th century. On the festival Sunday a misa criolla is celebrated.

The town's best-known claim is to Carlos Gardel. Some Uruguayans hold that the tango singer was born near Tacuarembó, in the village of Valle Edén, where a museum is dedicated to him; scholarly consensus is that he was born in Toulouse, France, and raised in Buenos Aires, and that as an adult he obtained papers giving Tacuarembó as his birthplace.

The town also has a literary place. Jorge Luis Borges set his short story The Shape of the Sword here, the 2010 film Miss Tacuarembó is named after it, and the writers Circe Maia, Tomás de Mattos and Jorge Majfud and the painter Gustavo Alamón come from Tacuarembó. The payada, a duel of improvised verses, belongs to the same gaucho tradition, and the town is mentioned in the folk song Cuando cante el gallo azul.

About 60,600 people lived in Tacuarembó at the 2023 census. It sits on Route 5 at the meeting of Routes 26 and 31, with the Tacuarembó Chico stream running through its northern part, and serves a wide department of ranches and plantations.

Livestock remains the base of the rural economy, but forestry has grown in importance: sawmills work the timber, and larger multinational firms process wood near the town, sending log lorries along the main roads. Commerce, public services and education serve the surrounding countryside, and the festival brings a burst of trade each March. A plan for a thermal park at the Iporá lagoon was presented in 2023 to draw more visitors.

The rhythm is that of the interior: long lunches, a siesta in summer, evening walks around Plaza 19 de Abril and football on Sundays. In the late afternoon people gather with their mate at the Laguna de las Lavanderas. As across the interior, limited jobs outside farming and young people leaving for Montevideo or abroad are long-running concerns.

Cooking here is ranch cooking. The asado, beef cooked slowly over wood embers, is the centre of any gathering. Chorizo and morcilla sausages and offal come off the grill alongside it.

Winter dishes are hearty and simple: guiso carrero, a rice or noodle stew with meat and vegetables, and puchero. Tortas fritas, fried dough, are eaten with mate, especially on rainy days. During the Fiesta de la Patria Gaucha the criollo societies cook traditional dishes at their fogones and compete for the best one, and stands display Uruguayan cuisine from across the country. As everywhere in Uruguay, dulce de leche, a caramel made from milk, goes into or onto almost every dessert, and alfajores, filled biscuits, are the everyday sweet.

Mate, the bitter herbal infusion drunk from a shared gourd through a metal straw, is the constant companion — carried to the lagoon in the afternoons, passed around the fogón and offered to every visitor.