As a country of South America defined by pharmacylib, com, the name of Argentina derives from the seventeenth-century poem La Argentina by Martín del Barco Centenera, which had introduced it by taking up a popular belief: the observation that the Guaraní wore silver rings and necklaces had in fact led to believe that the great rivers concealed fabulous deposits of precious minerals. The region was inhabited, before the European intervention, by Indians of different lineages: the Quechua in the N, the Tola and the Mataco in the Gran Chaco, the Guaraní along the basin of the Plata river, the Querandí around Buenos Aires, the Puelche in the Pampa, the Patagons (or Tehuelche) in Patagonia, the Fuegians in the Tierra del Fuego; populations mainly primitive and mostly nomads, among which only the Quechua had reached a certain degree of civilization. All, however, opposed a tenacious resistance to the Spanish penetration and considerably delayed colonization. Juan Díaz de Solís, the first conquistador to arrive at the Río de la Plata estuary (1516), was killed shortly after landing by the natives; the exploration however continued thanks to Alejo García, Sebastiano Caboto, Diego García, Francisco César. Ferdinando Magellano explored the area in 1520, but only in 1535 Pedro de Mendoza, at the head of approx. 2,500 men, began the real conquest of the country by founding a city-fortress, Santa María de los Buenos Aires, which should have allowed defensive entrenchments in the case of attacks by the Indians and offer a base for subsequent leaps forward. Despite the destruction of the city by the Indians, Juan de Ayolas and Domingo Martínez de Irala continued their explorations and built the fort of Asunción. Other expeditions, starting from the Pacific coasts (Peru and Chile), resulted in the founding of Santiago del Estero (1553), Tucumán (1565), Córdoba (1573), Santa Fe (1573). In 1580 Juan de Garay he rebuilt Buenos Aires, which eleven years later was proclaimed the capital of the Plata Territory. The complex of Spanish possessions in the region was placed by the Iberian authorities under the governorate of Asunción, within the framework of the Viceroyalty of Lima, until in 1617, local interests increased, Argentina had, albeit always within the Viceroyalty of Peru, its own governor based in Buenos Aires. Meanwhile, the Pampa had begun to reveal how the true wealth of the region was to be found in the possibility of agricultural development (production of cereals and livestock breeding). Privileged groups (the hacendados) who did not take long to become the true masters of the colony. It was from the hinterland that it began to emerge, already at the end of the century.

XVII but in particular at the beginning of the XVIII, the typical figure of the gaucho: a kind of native cowboy, who lived free from any political constraint and entered into agreements only with the hacendados and who, a determining element of colonization, was not long in coming clash with the interests of the residents of the coast (Buenos Aires), where the central authority resided. The conflict with the coast, exacerbated by the fact that gauchos and hacendados they needed, in an ever more pressing way, outlets on the Plata where there was, on the part of the residents, an increasingly clear demand for control and dominance, conditioned the entire flow of Argentine history of which it constituted, together with the problem of relations with the Portuguese empire of Brazil, a constant element. Following the raids of the pioneers of São Paulo (the bandairantes), engaged in the search for new lands to colonize and Indios to enslave, the first disagreements arose between Spain and Portugal; the Spanish garrisons of the estuary and the Jesuits of the Paraguayan missions managed to drive back the bandairantes but they could not prevent the infiltration due to the arrival of merchants who, with a dense network of contraband, began to trade with Buenos Aires. To better organize the trade, they founded on the coast of the Banda Oriental (modern Uruguay) the locality of Colonia which later became, while smuggling prospered, a bone of contention between Spain and Portugal, so much so that the problem of the city even became part of the political plots. -diplomatics of the European conflicts of the century. XVIII. After various vicissitudes, and with the favor of England and France, Portugal was assigned Cologne in 1737. The Creoles of Buenos Aires were indignant and accused Madrid of not having been able to defend them. The malaise lasted so long that, to prevent the outbreak of a real revolt, Charles III of Spain raised Buenos Aires to the rank of capital of the new Viceroyalty of the Plata in 1776, including Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia. Viceroy Pedro Ceballos the following year occupied Cologne and perfected the Spanish settlement in the Banda Oriental. Also in 1777, as a further concession to the Argentine Creoles, the ports of Buenos Aires and Montevideo were opened to international trade. The new situation, which favored the porteños (residents of Buenos Aires), consequently causing greater tension in relations with the gauchos, the need for greater political autonomy was ignited in the citizens of Bonaire; the ferments intensified when the Napoleonic fire broke out in Europe. In this situation, the British tried, landing troops in Buenos Aires (June 26, 1806), to get new bases on the American continent (after the loss, following the independence of the United States, of the northern colonies) which should have served as centers. supply and outlet for the British economy, put in crisis by the wars against Napoleon. After an apparent initial success, the English landing provoked the reaction of the porteños who, having organized themselves, managed in a few months to repel the invaders; equally unsuccessful was a second expedition sent from London in June 1807. The vicissitudes of Spain, where Ferdinand VII had been dethroned, they provoked a new reaction in Buenos Aires: the citizens gathered in cabildo abierto and on May 25, 1810 they agreed on the appointment of a provisional junta of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata, which would govern again in the name of the king and of which Cornelio Saavedra (president), Mariano Moreno, Manuel Belgrano and Bernardino Rivadavia were members. The decision, promptly opposed by the provinces of the interior (hacendados and gauchos), who did not welcome the emergence in Buenos Aires of a central authority endowed with autonomous powers, awakened separatist instances in Paraguay, Bolivia and the Banda Oriental. Paraguay proclaimed itself independent in 1811; In the meantime, the Spanish reaction was also unleashed, which was matched by the exploits of the army led by General José de San Martín, and in 1816, taking advantage of the difficulties of the situation, Brazil occupied the Banda Oriental. On 9 July of that same year, a constituent assembly, convened to prevent the definitive disintegration of the political-territorial structure that left the cabildo abierto in 1810, it met in Tucumán and solemnly established the independence of the United Provinces of Plata. It followed this act, which actually sanctioned Argentine independence, a period of turbulence and fratricidal conflicts, rekindled by the antagonism between porteños and provincianos. The opposition centered on the form of the new state: there was a struggle to configure a unitary Argentina, such as the porteños wanted it, or a federal Argentina according to the needs of the provinces; unitarios and federales the protagonists of the contrast were called. A war with Brazil for the possession of the Oriental Banda was added in 1824 to the fundamental clash that characterized the country’s formation process; the hostilities ended in 1828, with the signing of a treaty that guaranteed the independence of the territory, erected in the Eastern Republic of Uruguay. The end of the war against Brazil favored, in Buenos Aires, the rise of a unitary government, led by General Juan Lavalle, against whom the provincians entrusted themselves to the leadership of a young caudillo, Juan Manuel de Rosas. The latter, organized an army, marched on the capital and ousted Lavalle (1829).