Montevideo Montevideo Uruguay
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The territory of present-day Uruguay contains no significant vestiges of civilizations existing prior to the arrival of European settlers, in contrast to most Latin American countries.
Lithic remains dating back ten thousand years have been found in the north of the country.
They belonged to the Catalan and Cuareim cultures, whose members were presumably hunters and gatherers.
Other peoples arrived in the region four thousand years ago.
They belonged to two groups, the Charrua and the Tupi-Guarani, classified according to the linguistic family to which they belong.
Neither group has evolved past the middle or upper Paleolithic level, which is characterized by an economy based on hunting, fishing, and gathering.
Other, lesser indigenous groups in Uruguay include the Yaro, Chaná, and Bohán.
Presumably, the Chaná reached lower Neolithic levels with agriculture and ceramics.
Spanish seamen in the early sixteenth century search for the strait linking the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans.
Juan Diaz de Solis enters the Rio de la Plata by mistake in 1516 and thus discovers the region.
Charrua natives allegedly attack the ship as soon as it arrives and kill everyone in the party except for one boy (who is rescued a dozen years later by Sebastian Cabot, an Englishman in the service of Spain).
Although historians currently believe that Diaz de Solis was actually killed by the Guarani, the "Charrua legend" has survived, and Uruguay has found in it a mythical past of bravery and rebellion in the face of oppression.
The fierce Charrua will plague the Spanish settlers for the next three hundred years.
In 1520 the Portuguese captain Ferdinand Magellan casts anchor in a bay of the Rio de la Plata at the site that will become Montevideo.
Other expeditions reconnoiter the territory and its rivers.
Hernando Arias de Saavedra, the first Spanish governor of the Rio de la Plata region, discovers the rich pastures and introduces the first cattle and horses into the region of present Uruguay in 1603.
Early colonizers are disappointed to find no gold or silver, but well-irrigated pastures in the area contribute to the quick reproduction of cattle—a different kind of wealth.
English and Portuguese inhabitants of the region, however, initiate an indiscriminate slaughter of cattle to obtain leather.
During the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the Charrua learn the art of horsemanship from the Spaniards in adjacent areas, strengthening their ability to resist subjugation.
The natives are eventually subdued by the large influx of Argentines and Brazilians pursuing the herds of cattle and horses.
Never exceeding ten thousand in number in eighteenth-century Uruguay, the natives also lack any economic significance to the Europeans because they usually do not produce for trade.
As a result of genocide, imported disease, and even intermarriage, the number of natives rapidly diminishes, and by 1850 the pureblooded native will have virtually ceased to exist in Uruguay.
The city's commercial activity is expanded by the introduction of the slave trade to the southern part of the continent because Montevideo is a major port of entry for enslaved Africans.
Thousands of enslaved Africans are brought into Uruguay between the mid-eighteenth and the early nineteenth century, but the number is relatively low because the major economic activity—livestock raising—is not labor intensive and because labor requirements are met by increasing immigration from Europe.
The Portuguese, seeking to expand Brazil's frontier in 1680, had founded Colonia del Sacramento on the Rio de la Plata, across from Buenos Aires.
Forty years later, the Spanish monarch orders the construction of Fuerte de San Jose, a military fort at present-day Montevideo, to resist this expansion.
With the founding of San Felipe de Montevideo at this site in 1726, Montevideo becomes the port and station of the Spanish fleet in the South Atlantic.
The new settlement includes families from Buenos Aires and the Canary Islands to whom the Spanish crown distributes plots and farms and subsequently large haciendas in the interior.
Authorities are appointed, and a cabildo (town council) is formed.
Montevideo is on a bay with a natural harbor suitable for large oceangoing vessels, and this geographic advantage over Buenos Aires is at the base of the future rivalry between the two cities.
The establishment of the Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata in 1776, with Buenos Aires as its capital, aggravates this rivalry.
Montevideo is authorized to trade directly with Spain instead of through Buenos Aires.
The Spanish, to combat smuggling, protect ranchers, and contain the natives, form a rural patrol force called the Blandengues Corps.
Portugal had founded the city of Colonia do Sacramento between 1680 and 1683 in the region across the bay from Buenos Aires.
This city had met with no resistance from the Spanish until 1723, when they began to place fortifications on the elevations around Montevideo Bay.
Field Marshal Manuel de Freitas da Fonseca of Portugal had on November 22, 1723, built the Montevieu fort.
A Spanish expedition had been sent from Buenos Aires, organized by the Spanish governor of that city, Bruno Mauricio de Zabala.
The Spanish had forced the Portuguese to abandon the location on January 22, 1724, and started populating the city, initially with six families moving in from Buenos Aires and soon thereafter by families arriving from the Canary Islands who are called by the locals "guanches", "guanchos" or "canarios".
There is also one significant early Italian resident by the name of Jorge Burgues.
A census of the city's inhabitants is performed in 1724, then a plan is drawn delineating the city and designating it as San Felipe y Santiago de Montevideo, later shortened to Montevideo.
The census counts fifty families of Galician and Canary Islands origin, more than one thousand indigenous, mostly Guaraní, and a number of Africans of Bantú origin as slaves.
Bruno Mauricio de Zabala, governor of Buenos Aires, founds the city of San Felipe y Santiago de Montevideo on December 24, 1726, to prevent further incursions.
There are at least two explanations for the name Montevideo: The first states that it comes from the Portuguese "Monte vide eu" which means "I see a mountain".
The second is that the Spaniards recorded the location of a mountain in a map as "Monte VI De Este a Oeste" meaning "The sixth mountain from east to west".
They then survey the Falkland Islands and the coast of Patagonia before stopping at Montevideo again.
The cabildo of Montevideo, however, creates an autonomous junta that remains nominally loyal to Ferdinand VII as the king of Spain.
Montevideo's military commander, Javier de Elío, eventually persuades the Spanish central junta to accept his control at Montevideo as independent of Buenos Aires.
In 1810 criollos (those born in America of Spanish parents) from Buenos Aires take the reins of government in that city and unseat the Spanish viceroy.
The population of the Banda Oriental is politically divided.
The countryside favors recognizing Elîo's junta in Buenos Aires; the authorities in Montevideo want to retain a nominal allegiance to the Spanish king.
The ten thousand-member British force captures Montevideo in early 1807 and occupies it until July, when it leaves and moves against Buenos Aires, where it is soundly defeated.