The Uruguayan state does not know how to count its own people: The INE ignored 350,000 people in the 2023 census.

This Thursday, the National Institute of Statistics (INE) came out to sell as a “closure” of the 2023-2024 census what would be a scandal of biblical proportions in any serious country: 10.3% of the Uruguayan population was directly not counted. Thirty-five thousand four hundred thirty-three Uruguayans living in settlements were left out of the survey. Total omitted: 350 thousand people. Yes, you read that right. Three hundred fifty thousand.

Director Marcelo Bisogno, with his poker face, called it a “complementation phase” because “the census had some limitations.” Limitations. As if it were a minor detail and not the live confession that the most expensive and pompous operation in recent years was a historical embarrassment.

To clarify the size of the delusion: in the 2011 census, the omission was 4.1%. In the five previous ones, it didn’t even reach 2%. Now, suddenly, 10.3%. Bisogno explained it with the nonchalance of someone telling you it rained: “people may not have answered, the housing may not have been identified, or people may not have opened the door to the census taker.” Ah, of course. The classic “people didn’t open up.” As if the State, with all its resources, had no way of counting its own population and had to settle for those who opened the door.

But the best part comes now. Bisogno himself acknowledged that 90% of the population that was counted “is not representative” of the country. Translation into plain language: the data they have is twisted like a tourniquet. They counted more older people than young, more rich than poor, and more from Pocitos than from Casavalle. Literally. “We counted more people living in Pocitos than in Casavalle,” the director said without a muscle twitching.

In terms of age, the black hole is between 25 and 35 years old and, above all, among kids aged 0 to 5 years: 17% of the smallest children in the country were not counted. How do you plan for daycare, schools, and early childhood policies if you don’t even know how many there are? Mystery. All of this demonstrates that the Uruguayan State is not credible. The data they use to justify themselves is erroneous, and if they acknowledge the error, it is to continue applying a disastrous statism as a “patch.” Never to reduce the State or do what they need to do.

And then come the “dramatic variables,” as Bisogno called them with the face of someone discovering gunpowder. The population in settlements increased from 4.5% to 5.5% after the “weighting.” 34,533 more people living informally. If you take the 10.3% omitted, the real percentage of Uruguayans in settlements rises to 9.6%. Almost one in ten. In rural areas, the omission went from 4.1% to 5%, with 32,020 rural residents missing.

But the truly delirious aspect of this whole circus is not just the technical embarrassment of the census. It is that the Uruguayan State is going to use this false, twisted, and openly incomplete data as if it were the revealed truth to justify exactly the same thing it has been doing for over a century: perpetuating the Batllista State, continuing to impoverish the country, and maintaining increasingly delirious public policies. First, you create the disaster (a census that didn’t count), then you “correct” it with statistical lab weightings, and finally, you use it as irrefutable proof that “more State is needed.” More spending, more plans, more subsidies, more interventionism, more taxes. The perfect vicious circle of Uruguayan impoverishment.

Look at how the farce is set up:

•  Settlements “increased” suddenly. Perfect. Now they will come out with worried faces to say that “the housing emergency is worse than we thought” and to justify more ANV, more subsidies, more expropriations, and more money for settlements. All with data they themselves admit is cooked.

•  Kids aged 0 to 5 years were missing by 17%. Ideal for the narrative: “We need to invest more in early childhood!” Translation: more spending on INAU, more programs, more bureaucrats, more state-run daycare centers.

•  Young people aged 25 to 35, the ones who work and pay taxes, are the most omitted. So the State will continue designing policies for a Uruguay of retirees and beneficiaries instead of one of producers and entrepreneurs.

Low-income people were underrepresented. Then the usual chorus will come: “inequality is structural,” “we need to redistribute more,” “the market doesn’t reach.” And they will continue with the same model that for 70 years has not lifted anyone out of real poverty, only manages it.

This is not a technical error. It is the survival mechanism of the Batllista State: a State that cannot even count its own people, but uses that incapacity as an argument to keep growing, keep spending, and keep suffocating those who produce.

350 thousand invisible Uruguayans. A census that acknowledges it did not count. And a State that will continue to govern as if that data were pure gold.