Discovery and Occupation
Columbus' voyages generated a wave of scientific curiosity and adventure in the minds of Europeans, who saw the possibilities of wealth and prestige associated with the discoveries. Spain's main objectives were to find a new, shorter route to Asia and to stop the Portuguese, who, after the discovery of Brazil in 1500, began to explore the interior beyond the Tordesillas line of demarcation.
The communities founded after 1553 by Spaniards who had originally settled other areas of the New World became the main centers of Argentine life throughout the colonial period. Urban settlement of the Northwest was linked to the presence of sedentary Indian populations whose labor was used for the production of goods and the breeding of pack animals that supplied the rich silver mines of Upper Peru (present-day Bolivia). The settlement of coastal Argentina took several decades more because of the resistance of coastal elites in Panama and Peru—merchants, shippers, and financiers—who did not want competition from settlers in a region beyond their control.
The most important men associated with the exploration of the eastern shores of South America were Juan Diaz de Solis, who discovered the Mar Dulce (Sweet Sea), later known as the Rio de la Plata, in 1516; Ferdinand Magellan, who reached the shores of Patagonia and the strait (later named after him) in 1521; and Sebastian Cabot, who in 1527-28 explored the Rio Uruguay and the Rio Paraná and upstream discovered the Rio Paraguay and the Rio Pilcomayo. Cabot also founded the fort of Sancti Spiritus, the first Spanish settlement in the Rio de la Plata basin, at the site of the present-day city of Rosario. It was destroyed, however, by a surprise Indian attack in September 1529.
Cabot's frustrated attempt to establish a permanent settlement in the area was later repeated by Pedro de Mendoza. Mendoza was a Spanish nobleman whose mission was to assert Spain's military control of the area and to establish a base of operations for the conquest of the interior. He arrived at the Rio de la Plata in February 1536, and after exploring the estuary he founded a settlement, Nuestra Señora de Santa Maria del Buen Aire (later to become Buenos Aires), on a harbor protected by large sandbars and a small stream.
But the presence of hostile tribes and the lack of sedentary Indian populations to provide labor thwarted Mendoza's initial plans. Still lured by potential mineral wealth in the interior, scouting parties went up the Rio Paraná and contacted the only agricultural people in the area—the Guaranis. In 1537 most of Mendoza's expedition went up the Rio Paraná and the Rio Paraguay to settle Asuncion (in present-day Paraguay), and four years later Buenos Aires was left deserted.
By the late sixteenth century Asuncion was a well-established colony from which expeditions went downstream to found new settlements, such as Santa Fe (1573) and Buenos Aires (1580) by Juan de Garay and Concepcion del Bermejo (1585) and Corrientes (1588) by Juan Torres de Vera y Aragon.
Using old Inca routes, another wave of Spaniards arrived from Peru, Upper Peru, and Chile. They established the first Spanish towns in the Northwest: Santiago del Estero (1553) by Francisco de Aguirre; Catamarca (1559) by Juan Perez de Zorita; Mendoza, founded in 1561 by Pedro del Castillo and resettled in 1562 by Juan de Jufre; Tucumán (1565) by Diego de Villaroel; Córdoba (1573) by Jeronimo Luis de Cabrera; Salta (1582) by Hernando de Lerma; La Rioja (1592) by Juan Ramirez de Velazco; Jujuy (1593) by Francisco de Arganaraz; and San Luis (1594) by Luis Jufre.
The discovery of the Falkland/Malvinas Islands and their dependencies, a group of about 200 islands in the South Atlantic located some 480 kilometers east of the Strait of Magellan, also dated from the early colonial period. Under the auspices of either the Spanish or the British crown, several navigators sighted the islands: Amerigo Vespucci in 1502; Esteban Gómez in 1520 (the islands appeared on Spanish maps for the first time in 1522, following this voyage); Sarmiento de Gamboa, who laid claim to the Strait of Magellan and adjacent islands and founded a settlement there in 1580; Thomas Cayendish in 1592; John Davis in the same year; Richard Hawkins in 1594; Dutch sailor Sebald de Weert in 1600; and Antonio de la Roche, who headed another British expedition in 1675.
The first actual landing on the islands was headed by Captain John Strong in 1690. He named the islands after Viscount Falkiand, treasurer of the British navy. The Spanish name for the islands—Islas Malvinas—was derived from the designation given them by French seal hunters, Isles Malouines, named after the French port of St. Malo.
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