I've found this on the comments on Racewire:

Third World Country: How America Fits The Bill (Part 1 of 3)

During the years I did social work in South America I asked myself again and again why is it that a country like Uruguay, with shared borders and a similar ethnic population to Brazil, somehow managed to get by without the horrific violence and desperation that plague many Brazilian cities.

The best explanation I can come up with is that it all boils down to social inclusion: a sense of shared identity, social responsibility, and a sense that the government is working for the people, and not against them. A society with a strong sense of collective identity and social inclusion tends to be more stable and peaceful than one that lacks these characteristics. Of the countries I know that have experienced social unrest, there is a divide in the population-racial, ethnic, economic, or political. If someone is seen as being "poor" before being Brazilian, or "Black" before being American, it creates a fractured and volatile society.

The whole series is worth reading; although I disagree with some points, Clare has written a good piece about social inequity, racism and how foreigners see the US.

But what caught my attention was what I quoted above; her theory about why Uruguay is not as violent as Brazil. I live in Uruguay, and I'm half and half: half Brazilian, half Uruguayan.

First of all, Uruguay does not have a similar ethnic population to Brazil. The population here is mostly White. We are far, far away from the Brazilian miscegenation. the culture is also very different; Uruguay is a country with an "European flavor", culturally speaking.

We don't really have any of the things she mention. We don't have "a strong sense of collective identity"; in fact, the "Uruguayan culture" is something vague and blurry. Social inclusion, here as in most countries, is but a dream. There is real poverty, and unemployment is one of the worst problems in Uruguay.

So, why isn't Uruguay as violent as Brazil? Because we are very few. We are a little more than 3.5 millions. Over half of the population lives around Montevideo, the capital. The rest of the Uruguayans are spread across the country, in small towns.

It's easy to live more peacefully and quietly when you're not squeezed between three billion people. The violence, the poverty and crime rates are much higher in Montevideo than in the rest of the country, because there are much more people here.

Besides, social inequity is not so bad here as it is in Brazil, but also there's not so much wealth as there's over there. Sure, there are some who are obscenely rich, but they are really few - I would even risk to say they are mostly foreigners who have summer houses in Punta del Este.

Finally, it's much, much easier to manage a little country with 3.5 millions of habitants, than a country that is almost a continent by itself. Over here, everything is smaller: the territory, the population (which is getting increasingly older), the job market, the industry, the violence, the wealth and the poverty.

Uruguayans are few, mostly old and quiet. Brazilians are many and they are fighters, both in the good and bad sense of the word. I believe that's what make the two countries so different from each other, despite they proximity and similarities.