“Paradoxical national day date”: Why Uruguay celebrates its independence the day it decided to join Argentina

After the independence of a large part of America from Spain, on August 25, 1825, the eastern patriots cut ties with the Empire of Brazil; they in turn proclaimed adherence to the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata

Every August 25, when Uruguay celebrates its Independence Day, the debate is reopened. The date unnerves historians who argue the celebration is out of step with what happened nearly 200 years ago, and wonder if it isn’t being given more prominence than it should be.

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On August 25, 1825, after an uprising that pushed back the Luso-Brazilian occupation of the Eastern Province, an assembly of representatives signed the law of independence from the Empire of Brazil. But at the same time it proclaimed the union to the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata, as Argentina was known then.

The country as such was born three years later, in an act less recognized as foundational, but more adjusted from the legal point of view.

“Uruguay has five national dates but all of them prior to the birth of the country. August 25 is one of them, perhaps the most paradoxical, because the imaginary stubbornly places itself above the facts,” historian Leonardo Borges wrote on Twitter.

Does it make sense for Uruguay to commemorate as Independence Day a date on which not only did it not really become independent, but it was annexed to another nation?

“All the ephemerides contain something of injustice”, said the historian Ana Ribeiro. “What happens in history is always a chain of meanings and choosing any date is always arbitrary. For example, is the taking of the Bastille really the determining date of the French Revolution? No, it’s probably the most highly symbolic.”

LONG DISCUSSION

The debate is decades old. The two-time president Julio María Sanguinetti, a regular critic of this historical contradiction in Uruguay, even proposed in Parliament in 2006, as a senator, to commemorate August 25 under another name -without referring to “independence”- and choose a new national date. as the most important.

The former president has reiterated that he is not unaware of the magnitude of what happened on August 25 in the process of national configuration, but he insists on the same thing that many historians agree: it does not mark the origin of the country at all.

“August 25 is in no case the date of Uruguay’s independence. In fact, it tells us more about the unionist past than about a supposed national construction”, insisted Borges.

Many historians maintain that the Orientals did not aspire to be an independent republic, but wanted, as José Gervasio Artigas wished, to be another of the Argentine provinces, to which “it always belonged by the most sacred bonds known to the world”, as stated the Law of Union signed on August 25.

For many, to choose a day of birth in the country, this should be October 4, 1828. That date does not appear in the national calendar, but it was when the Preliminary Peace Convention was ratified, in which Argentina and Brazil agreed, with the mediation of Great Britain, the independence of the current Uruguay.

The reluctance to recognize it is that, for some, it is like admitting that the country was “an English invention”, promoted solely by a strategic and commercial interest, since the creation of a “buffer state” prevented Argentina and Brazil from dominating the Río de la Plata.

With information from AFP