The enduring allure of Colonia.

• Author: Carbajal, Miguel
• Position: Uruguay

ON THE IMAGINARY LINE of the 34th parallel south of the equator, at 65 degrees longitude, rests the city of Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay. Bathed in the waters of the River Plate, a short distance from its meeting with the Atlantic Ocean, this cosmopolitan town of 24,000 residents preserves a unique physiognomy. Fortified walls, cobblestone streets and colonial structures are the vestiges of a stage where the saga of the Portuguese-Spanish "tug-of-war" was played out during the eighteenth century.

When Juan Diaz de Solis discovered the River Plate in 1516, he noted that the few aborigines inhabiting its banks possessed nothing worth trading. He also learned, too late, that they were sufficiently distrustful to harvest their first illustrious victim; Solis was murdered on the white sands of Colonia. Francisco del Puerto, cabin boy of the Spanish expedition that subsequently ventured into the estuary up to the mouth of the Uruguay River, was the first white man to actually occupy the country.

History is full of detailed accounts of the European's misconceptions regarding the New World, beginning with the search for a more direct spice trade route and culminating in the gold fever which led to the looting of America. Out-of-the-way Uruguay, with its lack of mineral wealth and its elusive local population, held no attraction for the Europeans. Poor and bare, the area seemed destined to serve as a sort of privileged spot from which to contemplate the passage of crews driven by greed to those turbulent places where history was in the making. The happy consequence was that the area's ecology and internal equilibrium remained intact for nearly two centuries longer than in the continent's more richly endowed regions. However, it was only a matter of time before outsiders perceived that Uruguay had something they needed, and the country fell victim to the fluctuating laws of supply and demand.

In the early decades of the seventeenth century, the first creole governor, Hernando Arias de Saavedra (better known as Hernandarias), introduced a few herds of cattle and some horses into Uruguay. In the course of time the entire region was transformed into a huge "seaside cattle range," which not only changed the eating habits of the aborigines and the size of their weapons (the stones tied to ends of their boleadores became two and a half times as large as those used to bring down deer, and arrowheads doubled in size), but also made the offshore waters of...