Even though the town of Carmelo makes no
claims to fame other than the facts that it is home to the only swing bridge in
Uruguay and also the only town in the country founded by national hero José
Artigas, its streets are paved with stories, some of which have been collected by
author Carlos María Domínguez, who is Argentinean by birth and Uruguayan by
inclination.
The town of Carmelo makes no claims to
fame other than the facts that it is home to the only swing bridge in Uruguay
and also the only town in the country founded by national hero José Artigas. I
went to Carmelo as a kind of personal pilgrimage, drawn there by writer Carlos María
Domínguez, who is Argentinean by birth and Uruguayan by inclination. His books
have been translated into more than twenty-five languages, and I am privileged
to have had him as the teacher of my writing workshop. Domínguez has studied
this area, where the political borders of the two countries divide lands that
are naturally united by the islands of the Paraná Delta. He has written
accounts of the Río la Plata, along with novels set on both of its shores.
Three
Notches on My Rifle[i] is a
novel based on the true story of Julia Lafranconi, the daughter of an Italian
immigrant who used reeds, a ceibo tree, and his unbreakable will to build his
own island —measuring nearly two square miles— by defying wind and water to
shore up sediment carried by the rivers. He planted fruit trees, cultivated a
garden, and constructed a handful of precarious structures on stilts —for
protection from regional storms that flooded the island when they blew in from
the southeast— where his daughters grew up and eventually brought their men. Of
the daughters, Julia was the undisputed heir, the queen of Juncal Island. The
islands are shifting lands where the strong prevail and smuggling and piracy
are not necessarily consigned to the past.
As
Domínguez relates in
Written in the Water (2011)[ii],
young Julia Lafranconi, always wearing a hat that had belonged to her father
and with the legendary rifle slung in a bandolier, was seen in the ports of
Tigre (Argentina) and Carmelo and Nueva Palmira (Uruguay), dealing in fruit and
buying raw materials. When she still enjoyed good health, she frequented the
taverns in the company of men, drinking and smoking like a man. She progressed
from trading to trafficking in everything from spare truck parts to immigrants
during World War II, including Jews who passed through Uruguay to Argentina and
later, Nazis who took the same route.
Haroldo
Conti —an Argentinean writer assassinated by the last dictatorship— relates
that all sorts of “eccentric and obsequious” characters from both shores
visited Julia every year on her birthday. Conti wrote to Julia: “Since you have
a keen sense of friendship, I became part of your history and we shared the
same rivers, the same friends, the tree house built by old Lafranconi, the path
marked with capybara tracks to the left of the house, the female pilot of that
portentous sloop that now sails between the pier and the henhouse, the carousing
nights, the rough songs, the dead you lent me because I was new to this, those
tragic stories whispered behind your back, those friendship ceremonies we
initiated, and above all my girl, those wild stories, never the same, that seemed
to be a cursory summary of your life, sagas and legends that grow more dramatic
every year, adding more deaths and ruffians, with ships of obscure ancestry
that slip their moorings after the first drink and sail by memory, malefactors that
are fully part of life on the river.”
Julia
died in 1965 and her
remains rest in the mausoleum in the Carmelo cemetery. One wall of the
mausoleum bears the name of Ramón Guillermino, the man she stole from her
sister and who, in a twist of poetic justice, fled with Julia’s niece, which
explains why he is not lying in the mausoleum as planned.
Eager to
see Juncal Island, I reached Carmelo on a warm November night. It was strange
to be on the Río de la Plata and see the opposite shore — or perhaps I should
say the shores of the islands in the delta. The widest river in the world is
not so wide near its birthplace. I like the fine sand of the river beaches and
the fact that trees grow right on the beach.
The
following morning, I went to the Calera de las Huérfanas, a tumbledown estate
with a rich history. It used to be a Jesuit mission with a population of some
three hundred and workshops for various trades, in addition to kilns for bricks,
tiles, and lime. When the Jesuits were expelled in 1767, the Buenos Aires
Council named Juan de San Martín, father of the Argentine liberator, governor
of the estate. He lived there, married there, and saw his three oldest children
born there. Domínguez notes that some people say that José de San Martín was
born in what is now Uruguay and that in the mid-20th century, an
Uruguayan journalist stole Instrucciones del Año XIII, José Artigas’ most
significant work, from a Buenos Aires library, and in revenge, an Argentinean
journalist tore General San Martín’s birth certificate out of the Carmelo parish
register. Domínguez confirmed that apage is indeed missing from the register.
Later,
Juan de San Martín was sent to govern other Jesuit towns in Argentina, and the
estate passed into the hands of the Buenos Aires Colegio de las Huérfanas, from
which it takes its current name. In my view, the lime kilns were the most
interesting thing about Calera de las Huérfanas, because it was just so
fascinating to crouch inside them and reflect that Buenos Aires, Montevideo,
and Colonia relied on the lime produced here. I was also struck by how solitary
the landscape is, how the only sounds are birdsongs and the call of the
occasional partridge.
That day
I had lunch in a restaurant near Carmelo’s main square, where I came upon a
fountain that simply screamed kitsch. The church was also quite modern and did
not match the age of the town. After speaking with Carmelo residents, I managed
to sort out the confusion. This was the main square, but not the oldest. That
honor belongs to Plaza Artigas, which boasts a monument to the founder and is
fronted by the Cathedral, the Town Hall, and other constructions from the early
20th century. The peace and solitude typical of the siesta hour reigned. I
wanted to see and touch the register that is supposedly missing General San
Martín’s birth certificate, but the church was closed. The entire town
slumbered.
Shortly
afterward, I visited the
cool and shady cemetery to seek out Julia Lafranconi’s mausoleum. Here she is
known simply as “Miss Julia.” All the elders remember her, and many tell of
visits to Juncal; someone swore he used to swim there in the mornings and
return in the afternoons. They talk of “Miss Julia” respectfully and
nostalgically. I do not know if the nostalgia is for her or for the youths they
were when they knew her. “Miss Julia” lives on in the collective memory of the towns
she frequented, at least on this shore. The cemetery caretaker mentioned that
many people visit the mausoleum and the authorities keep it in good repair, as
befits a legend that has only spread and grown since the publication of the
novel by Carlos Domínguez.
There are
other tourist attractions in the area. Leaving Carmelo and heading west toward Nueva
Palmira, near the Las Víboras stream, is a dirt road a little over a mile long that
runs inland to the Narbona Estate and Chapel, a national historic monument from
the 17th century. The caretaker zealously watches over the ruins of the estate
and the chapel. I have to take my photos from the doorway of each room, since
no one is allowed inside for fear the structure will collapse. The buildings
and the lovely, secluded surroundings are definitely a draw.
Lastly,
not very far from there is ground zero for the Río de la Playa: a delightful,
wellmaintained spot with a buoy indicating where the Paraná and Uruguay join to
form the widest estuary in the world.
I
am grateful to my writing teacher for having awakened my curiosity about this
part of the country. We tend to go east to the beaches or, if we like
antiquities, to the city of Colonia. Carmelo and its environs are worth
touring, whether or not the visit is a tribute to a novelized real-life character
like Julia Lafranconi.
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