Palace of Mud (Palacio del Lodo) is the popular name of a walled post of the regime officially called Protection and Independence (Protección e Independencia), on the road to Protection of the Plata: a manor house in a self-sufficient farming enclosure, over historic tunnels.
| Type | Place (walled post) |
| Spanish entry | Palacio del Lodo |
Location
It lies almost twenty-five leagues (“a bit less”, 220 km) from where the account was written; “no one makes that ride in one day”. With the esplanade before the Tower of Shadow, it is one of the only two points in these territories the company has visited, and map distances are measured from it. Its official name puts it in the same administrative series as Protection of the Plata.
Layout
- A wall “not so high”, 2.5–3 m.
- A main house laid out as a principal family home: entrance passage, vestibule, entrance, service area, guest room, west hall.
- Pantries sunk “a little lower” to keep cool.
- Inner garden, “intramural crops they left”, a small lake and palms.
- At the back, trees and a field unwatched at night: “they can approach at night and it’s hard for them to be seen”.
- Outside the wall, graves, some unnamed; some of the dead “were in sculptures in the earth”.
Staff and supply
It houses officers and is one of the regime’s seats of power. Eight fixed staff, “more like the employees”, wear red caps and tattoos and take the children; there are also “a number of guards”. The crops are worked by “the deaf-mutes, the deaf, the mute, the wounded”. Only wine comes from outside, weekly, for the kitchen barrel.
Beneath the house run historic tunnels about 150 years old, from the Jesuit period before the Fort, which “potentially reached as far as the grounds of the university”.
Open questions
- Whether the “Royal Palace”, named in a damaged passage among the regime’s pillars, is this building; hence whether it is the central seat.
- Why it is “of Mud”.
- Its commander’s name and rank.
- The staff’s duties, tattoos and caps; whose the children are and where they go.
- How many graves, whose, and what the “sculptures in the earth” are.
- Its bearing from Protection of the Plata; the tunnels’ state and entrance; the wine’s source.