The Battle of Masoller, which occurred on September 1, 1904, was the final battle of the
Aparicio Saravia revolt, resulting in the victory of the
Colorado
Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the wes ...
forces.
Location and historical background
Masoller is a village in northern Uruguay, close to the border with
Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
. The proximity of the Brazilian border proved significant for the outcome of the battle, because the defeated
Blanco
Blanco (''white'' or ''blank'' in Spanish) or Los Blancos may refer to:
People
*Blanco (surname) Fictional characters
*Blanco, a hobbit in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth
* Blanco Webb, character in the BBC sitcom ''Porridge''
* El Blanco, albin ...
general,
Aparicio Saravia
Aparicio Saravia da Rosa (August 16, 1856 – September 10, 1904) was a Uruguayan politician and military leader. He was a member of the Uruguayan National Party and was a revolutionary leader against the Uruguayan government.
Early life
H ...
, retired injured from the battle and fled to Brazil. The victorious Colorado forces were reluctant to pursue the injured leader of the Blanco forces because they resolved to keep the conflict within Uruguay's borders and avoid an incident with the Brazilian Government. Saravia died of wounds in Brazil on September 10, 1904.
The Battle of Masoller also marked the political consolidation of the Presidency of the liberal
José Batlle y Ordóñez
José Pablo Torcuato Batlle y Ordóñez ( or ; 23 May 1856 in Montevideo, Uruguay – 20 October 1929), nicknamed ''Don Pepe'', was a prominent Uruguayan politician, who served two terms as President of Uruguay for the Colorado Party. He w ...
, and more broadly of the Colorado Party.
Feature in work by Jorge Luis Borges
This battle figures in ''La otra muerte'', a short story by
Argentine writer
Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo (; ; 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, as well as a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. His best-known b ...
, in his collection ''
El Aleph''. The story concerns a certain Pedro Damián, whose personal history initially appears to have been one of a coward who fled the cannon fire at the Battle of Masoller, to survive as a virtual hermit until his death nearly forty years later. During the course of the story, however, the narrator finds that this same history has somehow spontaneously converted into the tale of a hero who died at the head of the charge in the same Battle of Masoller in 1904: the underlying idea of Borges is that personal and historical memory is complex.
''La otra muerte'' addresses the relationship between the present and history and the question of how a single event can change, or be perceived to change, an infinite number of destinies, Characteristically, Borges chose for this story a military event ubiquitously interpreted as determining the course of twentieth-century Uruguay.
[Ariel Dorfman, "Borges and American Violence," in ''Some Write to the Future: Essays on Contemporary Latin American Fiction (orig. 1968)'' (Durham NC: Duke University Press, 1991), 25-40. ]
See also
*
Masoller dispute
References
External links
*
John Charles Chasteen'Heroes on Horseback: A Life and Times of the Last Gaucho Caudillos' University of New Mexico Press
The University of New Mexico Press (UNMP) is a university press at the University of New Mexico. It was founded in 1929 and published pamphlets for the university in its early years before expanding into quarterlies and books. Its administrative ...
, 1995
{{DEFAULTSORT:Masoller
Conflicts in 1904
Battles involving Uruguay
Battles of the Uruguayan Civil War
1904 in Uruguay
Rivera Department