Southern pulp friction

The solution, Mr. Caetano says, will likely have to come through bilateral talks.

The bulk of the blockades' economic pain falls on Fray Bentos, which depends on cross-border trade.

On Friday, dozens of community and business leaders met inside the town's two-story Colonial style town hall. Attendees spoke of lost jobs and dwindling revenues at service stations, restaurants, hotels, and transportation companies. Fiorella Lapalma, a cashier at La Rotunda, a restaurant that seats 500, says the place is normally full during the summer season. Now, a weekend night brings only 20 to 30 customers.

Mayor Omar Lafluf asked the group to tally how much they've lost from the roadblock, and later stressed the plants' importance to a region with 8 percent unemployment. Already the mills are providing 6,000 construction jobs, Lafluf says, and collateral benefits, such as the construction of some 300 new houses for workers and company officials, a remodeled golf course, a 60-room hotel, and and expanded pier.

Others are more concerned about the near future. Erica, a 26-year-old Uruguayan who along with 18 co-workers lost her job in a duty-free shop, says she is fed up with Uruguay being bullied by bigger neighbors Argentina and Brazil. "We are between two bigger countries and they always absorb us," she says. "When we finally get something that will bring jobs, they want to shut it down." What's more, she says, echoing many residents here, Argentines are "revolutionary types," with little respect for institutions, preferring to affect political change through radical protests.

Her mother, Mirian, agrees, adding that she now dreads doing business across the border in Gualeguaychú. She recently visited an Argentine seamstress who she contracted to design a wedding dress. "She was showing me the dress and then she mentioned the pulp mills and suddenly she became aggressive," she says.

Despite high-level diplomatic barbs, many Uruguayans and Argentines are quick to couch the confrontation in brotherly terms.

Elena Laguzzi, tourism coordinator for the nearby Uruguayan province of Soriano, says Uruguayans, and especially media outlets, should avoid prejudices and stress respect, tolerance, and solidarity.

Luis Otto, an Argentine agricultural engineer with friends in Uruguay, says he supports the blockade but hopes the conflict can be resolved and relations mended. Even Pivas, still peeling Argentine potatoes by the highway, points to an Uruguayan flag that's rolled up, leaning next to the red 20-foot trailer blocking the highway.

"I brought that flag here because I have family in Uruguay," she says. "We are brothers. This is not about Uruguayans. This is about the environment and nothing more."

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