A few years ago, if someone had asked me what I knew about Uruguay, I wouldn’t have had a whole lot to say. I might have remembered that its national soccer team won the first World Cup back in 1930. I would have guessed (incorrectly, as it turns out) that it shares a border with Paraguay. And I probably would have ventured that it’s a country with a rich gaucho heritage—an accidental correct answer, since I was really thinking of neighboring Argentina.