Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Ciudad y poder: La construcción material y simbólica del Montevideo colonial (1723 – 1810)

2009; Duke University Press; Volume: 89; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00182168-2009-059

1527-1900

César N. Caviedes,

Historical Studies in Latin America

When Portuguese raiders founded Colonia do Sacramento on the eastern shore of the Río de la Plata estuary in 1680, the colonial authorities in Spain were justifiably alarmed. Their possessions in the New World were not only threatened by European adversaries, but now the Portuguese in Brazil had established a bridgehead in the Río de la Plata that allowed them to make inroads into the vast lowlands of this river system and, from there, to ultimately threaten Alto Peru, the silver source of the Spanish crown in South America.After an initial success in dislodging the intruders, the colonial authorities in Madrid decided to build a stronghold on the eastern shore of the Río de la Plata (Banda Oriental) to ascertain their presence in these remote territories and deter future thrusts from rival nations. With this strategy in mind, the garrison-settlement of San Felipe de Montevideo was founded in 1723. But unlike its counterparts in the Spanish Caribbean, Montevideo never attained an image, intended to discourage further incursions, as a plaza fuerte, due to a chronic lack of funds, official indolence, and appalling administrative incompetence.Documenting the painstaking growth of the settlement and elaborating on the strategic considerations of its foundation are the main purposes of Emilio J. Luque Azcona’s monograph, based on a dissertation completed in 2004 at the Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Seville. The thematic structuring, the organization of the bibliographic sources, and the placement of the illustrations and tables at the end of the volume and not within the text, reflect its origin in a doctoral thesis.Notwithstanding these structural limitations, Luque Azcona’s book has the merit of presenting the case of Montevideo as an exposé of the failed governing policies that plagued the Spanish colonial system at the end of the Habsburg rule, and revealing the efforts made by its Bourbon successors to correct them. In a systematic and evocative manner, the author delineates the conception of Montevideo as a bulwark planned in the Spanish metropolis with scarce knowledge of the specific terrain conditions, little consideration for local defense details, and misunderstanding of the strategic regional purposes of the stronghold. Using pertinent archival documents and travelers’ accounts, Luque Azcona outlines the dismal conditions prevailing in the languishing settlement, which, in addition to suffering from endless bickering among conceited administrators, was also constantly harassed by roaming Indians and threatened by pirate attacks. No more helpful were the available human resources, consisting of a few settler families from the Canary Islands, rogue soldiers, brawling seamen, militia deserters, mixed breeds, and Spanish bureaucrats wishing to leave the place as soon as their commissions were completed.The combination of corrupt functionaries or incompetent colonial administrators and an unreliable labor force was detrimental to the construction of fortifications and the development of the settlement: ramparts crumbled due to faulty materials, city walls were pierced by vagrants and itinerant Indians, the streets were commonly impassable. Repeatedly, visitors from Spain warned that the place would not resist a military attack. This is precisely what happened in 1807, when British General Whitelock seized the garrison settlement without encountering major armed opposition.The failure of the colonial authorities to establish an imposing fortress in Montevideo capable of halting foreign assaults in this unattended part of South America underlines the vulnerability of the Spanish dominion in the Río de la Plata region at the end of colonial rule. The feeble constructions that had been finished before the Uruguayans gained independence from Spain in 1814 were promptly demolished, and with them went all concrete reminders of the Spanish presence. In a rather plaintive tone, the Spanish scholar laments the loss of historical memory that is evident in the contemporary city of Montevideo: “From the viewpoint of the material patrimony, the transformations undergone by the urban landscape and the architectonic design of the central zone of Montevideo have brought about the irreparable loss of valuable historical and artistic patrimonies, among which are, precisely, the fortifications that now have practically disappeared” (p. 21). Paradoxically, remains of the old town and some historical monuments dating back to the period of Portuguese occupancy in Colonia do Sacramento (today Uruguay’s Colonia) were declared by UNESCO as the “Patrimony of Humanity” in 1995, a designation that recognizes the Portuguese heritage and has converted the former enclave into a thriving tourist attraction for Brazilians, Argentines, and Uruguayans, thus making Colonia the only place that merits historical mention in the whole country.