Uruguay, a small country of 176,221 square kilometers (68,039 square miles), and the second smallest country in South America, is home to 3.4 million people, roughly half of whom live in the capital city of Montevideo. It is a heavily urbanized country, with some 80 percent of the population residing in towns or cities. Sandwiched between the Latin American giants Brazil and Argentina, Uruguay borders the South Atlantic Ocean. Along with Chile, Argentina, and Paraguay, the country makes up what is commonly referred to as the Southern Cone.

By the early twenty-first century, Uruguay was home to a relatively homogenous population, about 90 percent of which was of European descent. However, there were also a few thousand indigenous people living in the area when the Western world discovered it in the eighteenth century. The two largest native groups were the Guaraní and the Charrúa. As was the case in many parts of...