President Luis Lacalle Pou leads the commemorative act at the Agraciada beach, on the Uruguay River, where the landing of those who started a crusade against the Portuguese occupant in the current department of Soriano, in the west of the country, took place. The Disembarkation of the 33 Orientales, also denominated Liberating Crusade, was an event carried out by about thirty patriots led by Juan Antonio Lavalleja and Manuel Oribe on April 19, 1825.

This group undertook an insurrection against the Portuguese occupiers who since 1820 had dominated the territory of the former Banda Oriental and had turned it into the Cisplatine Province.

The patriots secretly crossed the Uruguay River and disembarked in the Agraciada. There they raised what would later be known as the flag of the 33 Orientales, and swore to expel definitively the Brazilian government from the occupied Eastern Province under the slogan “Liberty or Death”.

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