El bajo río Uruguay: dos naciones ¿un territorio?

Abstract

The low part of de Uruguay river is the limit between Uruguay and Argentina. Nowadays, cartography of both nations show the other side as an almost empty territory. However, this was not always like that. Over time, the Uruguay River joins both margins and supports a territorial structure, strongly marked by geography. From the private and public fields, missionaries and industrialists, the Spanish Crown first and the new nations later, stimulate and execute processes of occupation. This research explores the past and present of this territory, involving transformations and its realization with the origin of the decisions that cause and materialize them. Concludes that the river does not structure a single territory, but several, whose boundaries correspond to variable geometries, formed by the confluence of diverse strategies of domain, occupation, separation or integration, taken from outside the low Uruguay or from the various cultures which have inhabited it.