Jessica Stölen
Editor
jstolen-jacobson@cherryroad.com

One of the traditions of Montevideo’s Fiesta Days Celebration is the annual Asado – a celebration of the community’s Sister City relationship with Montevideo, Uruguay. Asado is both a cooking technique and social event, comparable to a barbecue. In Uruguay, an Asado is an all day affair, with a variety of grilled meats, side dishes, and cheese.

In Montevideo of the north, the menu featured locally grown beef grilled Uruguayan style, music by Handeen and Associates, speeches, and social time.

Due to the rain, the usual ceremony held at the Jose Artigas statue downtown was moved indoors and held during the Asado at the Chippewa County Fairgrounds. Mayor Erich Winter and Carman Mills presented the history of the Sister City Relationship. “Fiesta Days began as a festival to honor our sister city relationship with Montevideo, Uruguay. Our relationship started back in 1905 when the two cities exchanged flags. In 1932, a festival was founded in St. Paul for the purpose of celebrating Minnesota’s diverse population while building bridges between ethnic groups. Two years later, the event turned into a festival of nations. The festival, in turn, inspired events around the state including Montevideo’s Fiesta Days which was first held in 1946,” said Mills.

The eleven foot tall bronze statue of Jose Artigas was shipped from Uruguay to New York in April 1949. “The statue is a replica of the one that stands in the town of Santos a few miles away from the site of the first victory of General Artigas over Spanish forces in 1811,” said Mayor Winter.

The Asado included a number of guests from Uruguay including one couple, Fernando Moleri and Maria Cristina Vidal, who have been traveling for the last eight months by camper van from Montevideo, Uruguay to Montevideo, Minnesota with the intention of visiting Fiesta Days on their journey.

The couple’s journey began with the idea to purchase and customize a camper van to travel after retirement. The journey began with a drive north to Colombia, then putting their camper van on a ship to go to Mexico. From there, the couple drove to Montevideo, Minnesota in a round-about fashion in order to see a number of sites around the country.

The couple takes very seriously the sister city relationship. Several members of the visiting guests, and local community members are part of the organization Partners in the Americas, established in the 1960s by the State Department. The couple, who has been traveling all of their lives camping and hiking, was looking forward to the opportunity to do an extended journey in retirement. “We have a curiosity,” says Maria. They purchased their camper van in 2022 and began taking smaller trips to prepare.They also started an Instagram account, Camperando America, in order to share their journey with friends and family and connect with new friends met along the way. “We always had a goal when we retired to build the van for the Montevideo trip,” says Maria.

“A lot of the Montevidans in Uruguay don’t know that this Montevideo exists and there are a few Montevideos in other states but they don’t recognize the relationship like they do here,” said Fernando (Nando).

Along the trip so far, the couple has visited Mexico, Chile, Brazil, Texas, Arizona, California, Oregon, and more. From here, the couple plans to travel to Washington, D.C. The couple has most enjoyed the people they’ve met along the way. “The beauty of the people. They’re very friendly, and we’ve traveled without any problems along the way all these months,” said Maria. “We’ve shared trips for more than 40 years, but now in retirement there’s more time.”

“The people, the culture have all been very beautiful everywhere we’ve been,” said Nando. “In South America they think of North Americans as being very cold but that hasn’t been our experience.”

The couple was also sharing the Uruguayan tradition of drinking Yerba Mate. “We always have a thermos of hot water to add to it. You pass it from person to person,” said Nando. The drink is prepared by placing the dried herb in a cup and pouring hot water from the thermos over it repeatedly, drinking it from a specific kind of silver straw.

Nando also spoke about Uruguay, saying the countryside is very natural with an emphasis on environmental integrity. There are less animals in the landscape. Uruguay is also a very small country with 3.5 million people, equating to about the population of Minnesota, with 1.5 million living within the direct vicinity of Montevideo. “We were interested also in this trip because in Uruguay we worked at a social level since we were young for many years and in a cultural center in our neighborhood,” said Maria.

About their time in Montevideo, Minnesota, the couple says they enjoyed the nature, staying in Lagoon Park, and the river, as well as the people and all of the opportunities to get together and meet new friends during all of the Fiesta Days activities. “One of the identical things between Montevideos is how warm people are,” said Nando. “There are traditions here that the culture builds upon and that’s a similar thing that tradition builds upon itself and creates a culture.”