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| Battle of Masoller | |||||||
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| Part of theRevolution of 1904 | |||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||
.svg) Blancos | .svg) Colorados | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
| Aparicio Saravia (DOW) | José Batlle y OrdóñezOscar Muñoz Caravia † | ||||||
Part ofa series on the |
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| History ofUruguay |
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20th Century |
 Uruguay portal |
TheBattle of Masoller, which occurred on September 1, 1904, was the final battle of theAparicio Saravia revolt, resulting in the victory of theColorado forces.
Masoller is a village in northern Uruguay, close to the border withBrazil. The proximity of the Brazilian border proved significant for the outcome of the battle, because the defeatedBlanco general,Aparicio Saravia, retired injured from the battle and fled to Brazil. The victorious Colorado forces were reluctant to pursue the injured leader of the Blanco forces because they resolved to keep the conflict within Uruguay's borders and avoid an incident with the Brazilian Government. Saravia died of wounds in Brazil on September 10, 1904.
The Battle of Masoller also marked the political consolidation of the Presidency of the liberalJosé Batlle y Ordóñez, and more broadly of the Colorado Party.
This battle figures inLa otra muerte, a short story byArgentine writerJorge Luis Borges, in his collectionEl 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: the underlying idea of Borges is that personal and historical memory is complex.
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.[1]