Battle of Masoller
The Battle of Masoller, which occurred on September 1, 1904, was the final battle of the intermittent civil war which marked much of 19th century Uruguay, resulting in the victory of the Colorado forces.
Masoller is a locality in northern Uruguay, situated close to the border with Brazil. The proximity of the Brazilian border proved significant for the outcome of the battle, because the defeated Blanco General, Aparicio Saravia, retired injured from the battle and fled to Brazil where he later died.
The Battle of Masoller also marked the political consolidation of the Presidency of the liberal José Batlle y Ordóñez, and more broadly of the Colorado Party.
This battle figures in "La otra muerte," a short story by Jorge Luis Borges, 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.
"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. In standard historical interpretations, Uruguay's unique stature in Latin America as a middle-class welfare state owes largely to the initiatives of Battle y Ordoñez and his Colorado party.
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