Between Portuguese and Spanish
The Spanish Juan Diaz de Solis discovered the coast of Uruguayin 1516, and Cabot built the first fort on the rio San Salvador in 1527. However, the occupation was methodically pursued only in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. However, it was not until 1726 that the Spanish founded Montevideo, finally,in 1777, to sell the entire Portuguese colony, in exchange for land from the high basin of the Paraná River: the “Eastern Band”. The province marks the eastern limit of Spanish territory, bordering on Portuguese Brazil. Under the name of “Provincia cisplatina”, the territory, too eccentric, is only imperfectly controlled by the Portuguese Empire. Part of Buenos Aires, the so-called“Thirty-three Orientals”expedition, commissioned by Juan Antonio Lavalleja, occupies Montevideo in 1825. After two years of war, British diplomacy imposed in Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires the recognition, in 1828, of the Eastern Republic of Uruguay. The story of Uruguay’s birth is marked by its geopolitical situation, that of a buffer state between Argentina and Brazil, whichwill confront it by interposed factions.
