Martin Garcia: The Little Island Everyone Wanted: From Structures That Once Housed Prisoners, Presidents, and Poets to the Quarries Which Are Now Nature Preserves, This Small Island Has Played a Unique Role in the History of Argentina and Uruguay.

• Author: Castellano, Lorena
• Position: Essay

When sailor Juan Díaz de Solis buried the body of his ship steward Martín García on a small island in February 1516 and christened the island with the man's name, he could not have imagined that, the island would become a place of many conflicts and battles in the centuries to come. Today, however, the canons that still look out over its surrounding fresh waters are silent witnesses of the island's rich and passionate history.

Martín García Island is less than one square mile in size, but its strategic position between the Uruguay and Río de la Plata rivers--about two miles from the Uruguayan coast and 29 miles from Buenos Aires--made it a point of ongoing contention between Spain and Portugal during the early colonial years between patriots and Spaniards during the wars of independence, and between Uruguay and Argentina in more recent years. Brazil, France, and England have also tried to make use of the island at various times.

In 1754, Spain and Portugal each named commissions lo put an end to the territorial disputes in the so-called América meridional (South America) and the commissions actually met on Martín García Island. The dispute continued, however. wit, h the island primarily in the hands of Spain. On February 10, 1763, as a result of the Paris Treaty, Spain returned the nearby mainland town of Colonia del Sacramento to Portugal, but it did not return the island.

Later during the siege of Montevideo on July 7, 1813, thirteen soldiers under the command of Lieutenant José Caparroz of the Dragones de la Patria (a mounted infantry of the independence movement) launched a surprise attack on the Spanish garrison on Martín García and succeeded in dispersing the soldiers there Spanish Navy Captain Jacinto de Romarate came back in November, however, and took control of the island in order to use it as a base for attacking the town of Colonia del Sacramento. which was occupied al the time by patriots. The Spanish also wanted to use the island as a quarantine station for maritime travelers.

Soon, Argentina's first Navy Admiral, Guillermo Brown, appeared on the scene of this small outcropping of archaic Macizo de Brasilia rocks. Representing the United Provinces of Río de la Plata, he wrested control of the island from the Spanish in March of 1814. On March 11 of that year, the seven boats under Brown's command approached the island and engaged the enemy in combat. Two of the commanders of his boats were killed, but on March 14, reinforcements arrived and they were once again on the offensive. The patriots disembarked in the early...