Uruguay: Too Much of a Good Thing

Unlike neighboring Brazil and Argentina, tiny Uruguay is a fat and tolerant country where almost anyone can enjoy the good life. Its 2,700,000 people are among Latin America's best fed, best dressed, best paid, best educated and most pampered. Fully one in every four workers is employed by the government, which gives them 44 holidays a year and retirement at full pay as early as 55. Theaters in cosmopolitan Montevideo offer such lively fare as Peter Shaffer's Black Comedy and Strindberg's Miss Julia; in the city's quiet little tearooms, a cup of coffee...