Territoriality and fiction: an entente between Montevideo españolista focus and the isolated assumption?

Abstract

From the very beginning of the revolutionary process that eventually became the independence struggle, Montevideo is considered to have been a focus of pro-Spanish feeling. By contrast, Asuncion is rather seen as the chief city of a territory that split away from the empire and proclaimed its independence at an early date. Nevetheless, for a short period the two cities essayed an 'entente' (alliance). National historiographies usually narrate the events of the past in accordance with the political maps of their respective countries. This article sets out to look at the two cities in the period 1810-20 through the perspective of various economic and symbolic factors that reveal the fictions that underpin the construction of all territorial units, however they are put together.