Map - Cerro Largo Department (Departamento de Cerro Largo)

Cerro Largo Department (Departamento de Cerro Largo)
Cerro Largo Department is a department of Uruguay. Its capital is Melo. It is located in the east of the country, bordering Brazil to its northeast with Yaguaron River as the natural border, Treinta y Tres Department to its south, Durazno Department to its west and the departments of Tacuarembó and Rivera to its northwest with Negro River as its natural border with them.

At the end of the 18th century, apart from the indigenous people, the area was populated by the Spanish and the Portuguese alike. In 1795, the Captain of the Spanish Infantry Agustín de la Rosa founded the town of Melo, a fortress to repel attacks of the Portuguese and the Indios. The territory was invaded by the Portuguese in 1801, 1811, and 1816. The history of this place is marked by battles before, during and after the Independence of the Republic.

The old Posta del Chuy, 15 km from the town, was the historic Inn where travellers from Melo to Villa Artigas (the actual Río Branco) could rest and pay the fares for using the first public work of the Republic, the stone bridge over the stream Chuy del Tacuarí, today a Heritage Monument, built in 1855 by the French Basque brothers Etcheverry.

In 1830, when Uruguay was divided in nine departments, Cerro Largo was one of them, including the biggest part of what was later separated as the Treinta y Tres Department.

During the 19th and early 20th centuries, when intermittent periods of civil war occurred in Uruguay, the department was a stronghold of the Blanco party. This was the precursor of the Partido Nacional.

Local people are usually known as "arachanes", in memory of an extinct local ethnicity, the Arachán people.

 
Map - Cerro Largo Department (Departamento de Cerro Largo)
Country - Uruguay
Flag of Uruguay
Uruguay, officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay or the Eastern Republic of Uruguay (República Oriental del Uruguay), is a country in South America. It shares borders with Argentina to its west and southwest and Brazil to its north and northeast, while bordering the Río de la Plata to the south and the Atlantic Ocean to the southeast. It is part of the Southern Cone region of South America. Uruguay covers an area of approximately 181,034 km2 and has a population of an estimated 3,507,384 of whom around 2 million live in the metropolitan area of its capital and largest city, Montevideo.

The area that became Uruguay was first inhabited by groups of hunter–gatherers 13,000 years ago. The predominant tribe at the moment of the arrival of Europeans was the Charrúa people, when the Portuguese first established Colónia do Sacramento in 1680; Uruguay was colonized by Europeans late relative to neighboring countries. The Spanish founded Montevideo as a military stronghold in the early 18th century because of the competing claims over the region. Uruguay won its independence between 1811 and 1828, following a four-way struggle between Portugal and Spain, and later Argentina and Brazil. It remained subject to foreign influence and intervention throughout the 19th century, with the military playing a recurring role in domestic politics. A series of economic crises and the political repression against left-wing guerrilla activity in the late 1960s and early 1970s put an end to a democratic period that had begun in the early 20th century, culminating in the 1973 coup d'état, which established a civic-military dictatorship. The military government persecuted leftists, socialists, and political opponents, resulting in deaths and numerous instances of torture by the military; the military relinquished power to a civilian government in 1985. Uruguay is today a democratic constitutional republic, with a president who serves as both head of state and head of government.
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UYU Uruguayan peso $ 2
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ES Spanish language
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