ISLA MARTÍN GARCÍA

Rising out of the Río de la Plata, almost within swimming distance of the Uruguayan town of Carmelo, the island of Martín García boasts a fascinating history, lush forests, and an almost unmatchable tranquility as a retreat from the frenzy of the federal capital and even provincial suburbs.

Only 3.5 kilometers off the Uruguayan coast but 33.5 kilometers from Tigre, 168-hectare Martín García is not part of the sedimentary delta, but rather a pre-Cambrian bedrock island rising 27 meters above sea level. Its native vegetation is a dense gallery forest; part of it is a zona intangible provincial forest reserve.

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History
Spanish navigator Juan Díaz de Solís was the first European to see the island, naming it for one of his crewmen who died there in 1516. In colonial times, it often changed hands before coming under Spanish control definitively in 1777; in 1814 Guillermo Brown, the Irish founder of the Argentine navy, captured it for the Provincias Unidas del Río de la Plata (United Provinces of the River Plate). For a time, mainlanders quarried its granite bedrock for building materials.

For a century, from 1870 to 1970, the navy controlled the island, and for much of that time it served as a political prison and a regular penal colony; it was also a quarantine base for immigrants from Europe. While serving as Colombian consul in Buenos Aires in the early 1900s, the famous Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío (1867–1916) lived here briefly.

Political detainees have included presidents Marcelo T. de Alvear (in 1932, after his presidency), Hipólito Yrigoyen (twice in the 1930s), Juan Domingo Perón (1945, before his election), and Arturo Frondizi (1962–63). In the early months of World War II, Argentine authorities briefly incarcerated crewmen from the German battleship Graf Spee, scuttled off Montevideo in December 1939.

While the island passed to the United Provinces at independence, it was not explicitly part of Argentina until a 1973 agreement with Uruguay (which was one of the United Provinces). After the navy departed, the Buenos Aires provincial Servicio Penitenciario used it as a halfway house for run-of-the-mill convicts, but it was also a detention and torture site during the 1976–83 military dictatorship.

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Sights
Uphill from the island’s muelle pasajero (passenger pier), opposite the meticulously landscaped Plaza Guillermo Brown, the island’s Oficina de Informes was, until recently, the Servicio Penitenciario’s headquarters. It now houses provincial park rangers. Several antique baterías (gun emplacements) line the south shore.

At the upper end of the plaza stand the ruins of the onetime Cuartel (military barracks, which later became jail cells). Clustered together nearby are the Cine-Teatro, the former theater, with its gold-tinted rococo details; the Museo de la Isla (Island Museum); and the former Casa Médicos de Lazareto, the quarantine center now occupied by the Centro de Interpretación Ecológica (Environmental Interpretación Center). On the opposite side of the Cuartel, the Panadería Rocio (1913) is a bakery that makes celebrated fruitcakes; a bit farther inland, the faro (lighthouse, 1881) rises above the trees, but is no longer in use. To the north, the graves of conscripts who died in an early-20th-century epidemic dot the isolated cementerio (cemetery).

At the northwest end of the island, trees and vines grow among the crumbling structures of the so-called Barrio Chino (Chinatown), marking the approach to the Puerto Viejo, the sediment-clogged former port. Across the island, beyond the airstrip, much of the same vegetation grows in the Zona Intangible, closed to the public.

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Activities
Though the island offers outstanding walking and bird-watching, the river is not suitable for swimming. The restaurant Comedor El Solís, though, has a swimming pool open to the public.

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Getting There and Around
On the west bank of the Río Tigre, Cacciola (Lavalle 520, tel./fax 011/4749-0329, info@cacciolaviajes.com) offers day trips to Martín García on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday at 8 a.m., but get to the dock by 7:30 a.m. Arriving at the island around 11 a.m., the tour includes an aperitif on arrival, a guided visit, and lunch at Cacciola’s restaurant Fragata Hércules; there is ample time to roam around before returning to Tigre by 7 p.m.

Cacciola also has a Microcentro office (Florida 520, 1st floor, Oficina 113, tel./fax 011/4393-6100, cacciolacentro@sinectis.com.ar). Fares for a full-day excursion are US$12 for adults, US$4 for children ages 3–10, including port charges.