Qualla: Martín García Island

Martín García Island: Introduction

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. When the army came for Juan Perón on the morning of 13 October 1945, they took him here - to a low, wooded island standing alone in the muddy expanse of the Río de la Plata. Perón was not the first president to be held on Martín García, and he would not be the last. Argentines came to joke that the island spelled out a name: YPF, for Hipólito Yrigoyen, Perón, and Arturo Frondizi, the three presidents its garrison locked away - the same initials as the national oil company. From this island prison, Perón's detention sparked the mass demonstration that would define Argentine politics for generations. Less than two square kilometers of rock and forest, Martín García has carried a weight wildly out of proportion to its size.

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Martín García Island: The Gatekeeper of Two Rivers

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. Geography made this island matter. Martín García sits squarely in the main channel of the Río de la Plata, commanding the approaches to the continent's two great inland highways - the Paraná and the Uruguay rivers. Whoever held it controlled the gateway to a quarter of South Amer...

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Martín García Island: The Prisoners Before the Presidents

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Silvinarossello, CC BY-SA 3.0. Long before generals exiled their rivals here, Martín García was a place of confinement for the powerless. It served as a penal colony from 1765 until 1886. Then, beginning in 1879, the island became something far darker. As the Argentine state waged the so-called Conquest of the...

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Image: Silvinarossello | CC BY-SA 3.0

Martín García Island: An Island the Wars Kept Coming For

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Roberto Fiadone, CC BY-SA 4.0. The twentieth century brought the island a quieter, stranger kind of fame, but the wars of the wider world still reached it. In 1914, German sailors rescued in the South Atlantic at the start of the First World War were interned here for its duration. In 1943, German crewmen from...

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Image: Roberto Fiadone | CC BY-SA 4.0

Martín García Island: A Border Drawn by the River Itself

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Coquimbo58, CC BY-SA 4.0. Argentina and Uruguay disputed the island for years, until the Treaty of the Río de la Plata settled the matter on 19 November 1973: Martín García would be Argentine, but solely as a nature reserve. In exchange, Argentina ceded other waters and islands to Uruguay. Then the river ...

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Image: Coquimbo58 | CC BY-SA 4.0