History of the Río de la Plata

Early European exploration and settlement

The Río de la Plata was first explored by Europeans in 1516, when an expedition led by Juan Díaz de Solís, chief navigator of Spain, traversed the estuary as part of its effort to find a route to the Pacific; the estuary was temporarily named in memory of Díaz de Solís after his death on its shores at the hands of unfriendly Charrua Indians. The Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan reached the estuary in 1520 and explored it briefly before his expedition continued on its circumnavigation of the globe. Between 1526 and 1529 the Italian explorer Sebastian Cabot made a detailed study of the estuary and explored the Uruguay and Paraná rivers. Cabot ascended the Paraná as far as the present city of Asunción, Paraguay, and also traveled some distance up the Paraguay River; at Asunción he obtained silver trinkets in barter with the Guaraní Indians, and his interest in these objects gave rise to the estuary’s permanent name, Río de la Plata, in the hope that it might indeed become a river of silver.

Several failed attempts at establishing settlements on the south shore of the estuary (notably near the present location of Buenos Aires) eventually led to explorations upriver and to the founding of Asunción in 1537; Buenos Aires was not refounded until 1580. By about 1610 Jesuit priests had established the first of more than 30 mission settlements that, until the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767, were the heart of what became known as the “Jesuit Empire.” Remarkable ruins of mission churches in Argentina’s Misiones province and in eastern Paraguay are all that remain of this extraordinary enterprise. Throughout the Spanish colonial era the Río de la Plata remained a backwash of the empire. The estuary was virtually closed to legal commerce, and Spain ignored the region until Portuguese and English ambitions threatened to expand into the estuary in the 1760s.

Mapping of the basin

The Spaniard Sebastián del Cano, who accompanied the Magellan expedition, was able to include relatively accurate markings of the Paraná, Paraguay, and Uruguay rivers in the map of the estuary that he drew up in 1523. Further cartographic work by agents of the Spanish crown was supplemented considerably by that of Jesuit missionaries, who first covered the entire basin of the Paraná (including the Paraguay River) in an extensive series of maps produced in the 17th century. In the second half of the 18th century, commissioners demarcating the frontiers between Spanish and Portuguese possessions produced a new series of maps. Of later cartographers, the Spanish naturalist and geographer Félix de Azara and the French physician and naturalist Martin de Moussy are the most important.

The region since 1800

Navigation of the river system became a problem when the independent states of Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, and Bolivia emerged on its courses. Territorial conflicts and restrictions on navigation caused several wars, culminating in the Paraguayan War, or War of the Triple Alliance (1864/65–70), in which Francisco Solano López led Paraguay in a disastrous struggle against Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina. In the 20th century, similar conflicts, sharpened by rumoured oil wealth, resulted in the Chaco War (1932–35) between Paraguay and Bolivia.

The development of agricultural wealth, particularly in Argentina, resulted in greater appreciation of the commercial value of these river systems after the mid-19th century. Beginning in the 1850s, thousands of German, French, and Italian colonists settled along the lower Paraná River in Santa Fe province. In the 1890s, German pioneers began to carve agricultural settlements from the forests along the Alto Paraná in Paraguay and Argentina. These people later were followed by other Europeans and by a significant number of Japanese.

Wheat, beef, wool, cotton, and hides entered the river and world trade in increasing quantities from Argentina and Uruguay, while from Brazil and Paraguay came forest and tropical products and maté. Port construction and dredging made Buenos Aires more valuable as a seaport, and by 1902 similar improvements had been completed at Rosario. Channel marking, soundings, dredging, and other aids to navigation became a responsibility of all the riparian states.