Uruguay is a country whose national identity has been created in the image of European modernity. The search for a national imaginary has exalted symbolic attributes of rectitude and (European) homogeneity. A crisis of national identity and the global fracture of modernity broke this model. As part of this process, beach tourism emerged based on the ideal of a paradise which promotes the use of native palms as an important element of the physical and symbolic landscape. This paper analyses the relations between postcolonialism, tourism, modernity, identity and palm trees in Uruguay. It argues that the growing trend of beach tourism is part of a process that articulates tropical and traditional arguments, promoting undulated, local features over rectilinear, global ones. •Tourism has played an important role in the Uruguayan postcolonial identity.•Straightness and undulation are the aesthetic criteria that are behind postmodern tensions.•Tensions between exotic and native palms are key in the postcolonial image of tourist destination.•Global tourism models adopted for post-colonial purposes are expressed locally in neocolonial tensions.