--- description: The President-elect of Uruguay's National Council and the acting Foreign Minister of Argentina held a secret meeting on the last day of 1954 aboard a yacht anchored in the broad River Plate,... title: URUGUAY: Hands Across the River image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- * [U.S.](/section/us/) # URUGUAY: Hands Across the River by [TIME](/author/time/) Jan 24, 1955 5:00 AM CUT by [TIME](/author/time/) Jan 24, 1955 5:00 AM CUT The President-elect of Uruguay’s National Council and the acting Foreign Minister of Argentina held a secret meeting on the last day of 1954 aboard a yacht anchored in the broad River Plate, which separates the two countries. Purpose: to discuss ways and means of lifting, or at least puncturing, the so-called “tin curtain” between democratic Uruguay and the Argentina of Strongman Juan Perón. In pre-Perón days, the Plate was more a thoroughfare than a barrier; some 300,000 Argentines and Uruguayans traveled back and forth across the river each year. After Perón took power, Uruguay became a haven for Argentine exiles, and from the exiles issued a stream of manifestos and periodicals denouncing the strongman. In 1951 Perón & Co. retaliated by requiring a special police permit for travel to Uruguay. Traffic across the Plate dwindled almost to the zero point. Both governments stood to gain by making the Plate a thoroughfare again, and after the election last November of Luis Batlle Berres (TIME, Dec. 13) as Uruguay’s new Council President, both sides agreed to a midriver meeting between Batlle Berres and Argentina’s Interior Minister (and acting Foreign Minister) Angel Gabriel Borlenghi. Last week, as a result of that meeting, Argentina abolished the police permit for travel across the Plate, and on both sides of the river ferryboats promptly took aboard crowds of passengers. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6798610/uruguay-hands-across-the-river/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6798610/uruguay-hands-across-the-river/"},"headline":"URUGUAY: Hands Across the River","datePublished":"1955-01-24T05:00:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-03T20:50:35.223Z","description":"The President-elect of Uruguay's National Council and the acting Foreign Minister of Argentina held a secret meeting on the last day of 1954 aboard a yacht anchored in the broad River Plate,...","url":"https://time.com/archive/6798610/uruguay-hands-across-the-river/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"TIME","url":"https://time.com/author/time/"}],"articleSection":"U.S.","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/us/","name":"U.S."}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/archive/6798610/uruguay-hands-across-the-river/","name":"URUGUAY: Hands Across the River"}}]}] ```