An unusual episode occurred on Tuesday on the Uruguayan-Brazilian border that divides the cities of Rivera and Santana do Livramento:
a car lost control in Uruguay and overturned in Brazil
.
The Argentine journalist
Fernando Duclos
, known on social networks as
Periodistán
, published a photo of the vehicle embedded in the mountain through which it crashed.
“A case for border fans: today a car overturned in Uruguay and fell in Brazil.
There were no injuries
,” Duclos reported.
The newspaper El Observador contacted the Rivera Headquarters and reported that the car, which was going on the side of the mountain road, fell due to “
technical problems
.”
A case for border fans: today a car went off a cliff in Uruguay and fell in Brazil.
There were no injuries.
pic.twitter.com/WJwekjTdQj
— Periodistan (@periodistan_) February 6, 2024
Two cities that are one
Rivera, located in the north of Uruguay, and Santana do Livramento, in the south of Brazil, are two large cities that function as if they were one.
The first has about 90,000 inhabitants;
the second, about 80,000.
Rivera and Santana are divided by a large avenue that in turn acts as an imaginary border - known as the Peace Border -, which allows circulation through both countries at the same time.
Many residents live on one side, but work on the other.
During the pandemic, controlling the passage of Brazilians to Uruguay and vice versa was a topic of discussion.
The Uruguayan government restricted passage into the country, but not Rivera.
Uruguay and Brazil share a square on the Peace Border.
Photo: REUTER
The symbol of the union of both countries is the International Plaza,
the only binational plaza in the world
.
It was inaugurated after the agreement of the presidents of Brazil and Uruguay,
Getúlio Vargas
and
Alfredo Baldomir
, in February 1943, while the world was suffering the consequences of the Second World War.
On several occasions the presidents of Brazil and Uruguay met in the area.
One of the last great meetings on the Peace Border was between
José “Pepe” Mujica
and
Lula Da Silva
, in 2010.
On one side of the street it is Uruguay;
on the other, Brazil.
Photo: REUTER
Binationalism is also perceived in the language: it is very common for families in one of the two cities to have Brazilian and Uruguayan members and for the inhabitants to speak fluently Spanish, Portuguese or a mixture of both, known colloquially as “portuñol”.