A while ago I came across the Rosa Parks of Rosa Parks blogs, the author of which collects quotes by clueless journalists calling celebrities "the Rosa Parks of" various fields of struggle or quasi-struggle. There we can learn that Rob Lowe is the "Rosa Parks of leaked celebrity porn", a woman called Connie Szefczek is the "Rosa Parks of the anti-telemarketing movement", someone by the name of Laurie Hall is the "Rosa Parks of women dealing with porn addiction", Gwen Jacobs is the "Rosa Parks of Canadian nudism" and Ellen DeGeneres is the "Rosa Parks of TV entertainment".
Insightful stuff, but the Rosa Parks of blogs (apparently unaware that there are several Rosa Parkses of blogs, and that one has claimed the title of Rosa Parks of the genre) takes it further, collecting all manner of sad similes of the type "X is the Y of Z". May is the Jimmy Carter of months, John Paul I was the Barack Obama of popes, Heinz ketchup is the Zeus of fast food condiments, macaroons are the Zooey Deschanel of bite-sized desserts, Daniel Ortega is the Burt Reynolds of Latin American dictators, China is the Mike Tyson of fiscal restraint, and so on.
This type of formulation is called a snowclone, apparently, and Mark Liberman of Language Log has some great examples in the field of geography:
In any case, a quick web search reveals that Uruguay is far from alone in being identified as "the Switzerland of South America":
[Bariloche, Argentine] features forests, spectacular glaciers, and mountains surrounding gorgeous lakes, earning its nickname, "the Switzerland of South America."
Puerto Montt is the capital of Chile's exquisite lake district, the "Switzerland of South America."
[Ecuador] is truly the land of eternal springtime, and the "Switzerland of South America."
Ushuaia is often referred to as "Argentine Switzerland" or the "Switzerland of South America"
Lebanon was once called "The Switzerland of the Middle East" and Chile the "Switzerland of South America."
[Puerto Varas, Chile] is known as the "Switzerland of South America," ...
And Isaiah Bowman, South America: A Geography Reader, 1915, puts forward a case where the relation is symmetric, at least in the sense that X is the Y of Y's superordinate category at the same time that Y is the X of X's superordinate category:
For this reason Bolivia is sometimes called the "Switzerland of South America", but it would be more nearly correct to call Switzerland the Bolivia of Europe ...
Web search reveals that Guinea, Uganda, Swaziland, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Burundi, Lesotho, Rwanda, and Zaire are among the places called "the Switzerland of Africa".
A search for {"the Switzerland of"} turns up 34,400 hits, many of them not at all geographical. For example, {"The Switzerland of * software"} alone yields 4,900 hits.
And we would be remiss in failing to note that Liechtenstein is sometimes called "the Switzerland of Switzerland".
Of course, it's not only Switzerland that places the role of Y in geographical snowclones of the form X is the Y of Z. It's well know, for example, that Belgium is the New Jersey of Europe -- except that web search shows that France, Holland, Albania, Wales, England, and Russia are all competitors for this title.
There are 101,000 hits for {"the Athens of"}: Lexington (KY) was once known as "the Athens of the West", and Nashville (TN) has often been called "the Athens of the South"; while "the Athens of the North" is Edinburgh (Scotland) , unless it's Munich, Vilnius (Lithuania), or Belfast (Northern Ireland); and "the Athens of the East" might be Alexandria (Egypt), Antioch (Syria), or Madurai (India), among others. "The Athens of America" is what some (Bostonians?) call Boston. The "Athens of Africa" might be Fez, Dakar, Freetown, Timbuktu, or Cyrene.
Bringing the strands together, we find that Zurich and Basel compete for the title of "the Athens of Switzerland", but no page indexed by Google has yet speculated as the identity of "the Switzerland of Athens". (However, "the Switzerland of Greece" is variously identified as Evritania, Karpenissi, or Arcadia.)