Isla Martín García
A small river island that served as a colonial fortress, a 19th-century Indigenous detention camp, and a prison for four Argentine presidents.
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Share a photoHistory & haunting lore
Fortified by the Spanish in the 18th century, the island later held Indigenous prisoners captured during the 19th-century "Conquest of the Desert" campaigns in harsh conditions, and through the 20th century became a political prison for deposed presidents Hipólito Yrigoyen, Marcelo T. de Alvear, Juan Perón, and Arturo Frondizi. Perón's brief 1945 detention here helped trigger the mass protests that reshaped Argentine politics.
Today the island's overgrown ruins, art-deco theater, and cemetery with its distinctively tilted crosses draw day-trippers from Buenos Aires, and local guides address the site's layered history — from Indigenous internment to presidential exile — with the gravity it warrants.
Current site status
Open as a nature reserve and historic site accessible by a roughly 90-minute ferry from Tigre; guided day-trip walking tours are the standard way to see the ruins.