MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay — I didn’t travel to Uruguay to see a revolution.

I didn’t plan on watching a house in an impoverished neighborhood burn to the ground in a matter of minutes, its former residents walking away from the scene in tears. I wasn’t expecting to meet the U.S. Ambassador to Uruguay either. Celebrating Carnaval and befriending an up-and-coming South American rocker-slash-painter also failed to make my pretrip itinerary.

The real reason for my spending a week and a half in this beautiful yet troubled country — sandwiched tightly between Brazil and Argentina — was the University’s Hillel and Hillel Uruguay’s collaborative Alternative Spring Break effort. The endeavor, which stretched from Feb. 24 to March 7, combined the Ann Arbor-based Hillel program “Jewish Perspectives on Globalization” with the Uruguayan “Programa de Justicia Social” or Social Justice Program. The trip’s aim was to volunteer in Jewish and non-Jewish communities racked by economic hardship stemming from a series of social and financial shocks over the past five-plus years.

But ultimately, the stated humanitarian goals made up just a part of an unforgettable and eye-opening experience. After all, sometimes it’s the unexpected that makes the most indelible mark.

A Reason for Hope

Three and a half million people live in Uruguay, and it seemed to me that all of them packed the streets of the capital, Montevideo, through the day and night of March 1. Thousands of red, white and blue partisan flags waved in the air, mixing with the celebratory shouts and songs from optimistic mouths.

The occasion? A historic change of government was taking place. The flags surrounding me were those of the triumphant Socialist “Frente Amplio” Broad Front Party, whose presidential candidate, Tabaré Vazquez, was elected last October and was sworn in during the afternoon as Uruguay’s first-ever leftist leader in its nearly 180 years of independence. Previously, the government had been headed by conservative regimes, with sporadic stints of military dictatorship thrown in for good measure.

Ché Guevara’s face was plastered on flags, T-shirts, signs and posters. Banners read, “Viva Cuba! Viva Fidel!” — drawing comparisons to the Communist island in the Caribbean. I was especially moved by the giant words “Lenin vive!!” (“Lenin lives!!”) scrawled across a high wall on a main street near the city center.

An open-air rock concert blared into the early morning hours as I moshed with revelers who were excited for change.

In talking to Uruguayans in Spanish and English, I came to understand that nobody knew exactly what to expect from the new administration. But for the time being, most everybody hoped for an improvement from the life they had grown accustomed to. A life where, despite recent encouraging economic growth, inflation ran rampant from 1998 until the last year or so. A life where, a mere two years ago, nearly one-third of all Uruguayans — and more than half of all children under six — were living in poverty, according to Hillel Uruguay’s statistics.

Many of these people, I realized, had nothing but optimism for a brighter future. And on March 1, if only for a day, that hope rested squarely on the shoulders of Tabaré Vazquez.

It may not have been Lenin’s total deconstruction of the system or Castro’s violent coup — though a sporting goods store across the street from my group’s hotel was broken into and robbed around four o’clock in the morning — but it was a revolution nonetheless. Those of us who were there knew it was history in the making.

Back to Work

Three and a half million people live in Uruguay, and it seemed to me that all of them packed the streets of the capital, Montevideo, through the day and night of March 1. Thousands of red, white and blue partisan flags waved in the air, mixing with the celebratory shouts and songs from optimistic mouths.

The occasion? A historic change of government was taking place. The flags surrounding me were those of the triumphant Socialist “Frente Amplio” Broad Front Party, whose presidential candidate, Tabaré Vazquez, was elected last October and was sworn in during the afternoon as Uruguay’s first-ever leftist leader in its nearly 180 years of independence. Previously, the government had been headed by conservative regimes, with sporadic stints of military dictatorship thrown in for good measure.