User:Bleff/sandboxba

From top, left to right: the present-day Plaza de Mayo in 1831 by Charles Pellegrini, the Avenida de Mayo in 1905, the city center in 1936 and panorama of Puerto Madero in 2018.

The history of Buenos Aires, capital of Argentina, began with its first foundation by Pedro de Mendoza in 1536.

Pre-Hispanic inhabitants

Although there was never a permanent indigenous settlement on the shores of the Río de la Plata, the vast Pampas grasslands within which Buenos Aires was founded had been inhabited for millennia by several local ethnic groups, which at the time of the arrival of the Europeans included the Querandí, Guaraní, Chaná and Mbeguá, among others.^[1] As noted by Daniel Schavelzon: "Even though the Spaniards always considered the territory as a desierto—desert is the word that was used to define the hinterlands until the end of the nineteenth century—the territory in fact had other owners, namely, the natives."^[2] The indigenous peoples who inhabited the Pampas plains were small groups of a few dozen individuals, led by chiefs with limited authority.^[1] They were basically nomadic hunter-gatherers from the beginning of human occupation of the region (approximately 14,000 years ago) until the 15th century.^[1] Small-scale agriculture could only be found in the area of the Paraná Delta and, since at least two millennia before the conquest, fishing had acquired a central role on the coasts of the Paraná-Plata, the Salado and the Colorado rivers, especially seasonally.^[1] Due to the intermittent occupation of the area, pre-Hispanic artifacts have been found within the city of Buenos Aires on very few occasions.^[3] The original dwellers of the current territory of the city were specifically the Querandí, of which controversies persist regarding their actual population and ethnic composition.^[2] The explorer Ulrich Schmidl, who was part of the first founding of Buenos Aires, wrote in his chronicles that the land where they settled belonged to the Querandí.^[4] According to Schmidl, these people "'wandered all over the land, like gypsies do in German countries,' drank deer’s blood in times of drought [and] their women covered their 'private parts with a cotton cloth'."^[4]

The available sources suggest that the Spanish arrived at the Río de la Plata basin in the midst of a complex and volatile political landscape of native nations, who lived in diverse states of alliance and animosity.^[5] The city was established in an area that functioned as a frontier and point of contact between different indigenous cultures, mainly between the southern Guaraní and the so-called Pampa indians (which included the Querandí) to the west, as well as other smaller groups such as the Chaná.^[3] According to Schavelzon, they "would all share that area during the summer season to catch fish (...); when harvesttime came they would go away, leaving the Spaniards on their own. Even though their agricultural bases were unimportant, they did cultivate the fields, particularly with corn (maize). They were not nomadic like the Spaniards believed, but they moved along preestablished circuits depending on resources and on the seasons."^[3] It is estimated that the local population in the Pampas region at the time of the conquest amounted to 55,000 people, while in the Paraná Delta to 10,000 and that Guaraní groups altogether could have amounted to 33,000 people.^[3] The arrival of the Spanish produced a great dispersion of the native peoples, who escaped the confrontations and forced labor imposed by the conquistadors, to the extent that by the 17th century the "few Querandíes left were almost a curiosity".^[3] As a result, the Guaraní in the neighboring northern region remained closely linked to the history of Buenos Aires and the Spanish until the 19th century, while the Pampa peoples maintained their distance and freedom through a continuous and relentless series of armed confrontations.^[6]

http://revistascientificas.filo.uba.ar/index.php/MA/article/view/8383/7498

Colonial era

1536–1580: Foundation and destruction of the first Buenos Aires

Two engravings from 1599 illustrating explorer Ulrich Schmidl's chronicles of 1534–1554 in the Río de la Plata basin, depicting the newly-founded Buenos Aires (top) and its later destruction by indigenous groups (bottom).

The first European explorers to arrive at the Río de la Plata were part of naval expeditions sent by the Crown of Castile to the South Atlantic, to survey the territory and look for a passage by water to the Pacific Ocean to open a spice trade route with the East Indies.^[7] In 1514, the Crown appointed the chief pilot Juan Díaz de Solís to survey the cartography of the southern coast of the Americas in order to establish clear agreements with the Portuguese Empire.^[8] Solís arrived and entered the present-day Río de la Plata, which he named Mar Dulce (Spanish for "freshwater sea").^[8] In 1516, after the death of Solís, some members of the expedition managed to return to Spain, and based on their reports, the Mar Dulce received the name of Río de Solís (meaning "Solís river").^[8] Two years later, the Venetian explorer Sebastian Cabot was appointed as Solís' successor when he accepted the position of chief pilot of the Crown of Castile, and in 1526 he undertook an expedition that returned to the Río de la Plata.^[8] Cabot's contact with survivors of the Solís expedition in the area, who had managed to integrate into indigenous communities, as well as rumors of the travels of Aleixo Garcia, another castaway, gave rise to the Sierra de la Plata legend (Spanish for "mountain of silver"), an alleged mountain rich in silver that could be reached by going up the Paraná River.^[9] The idea of the existence of this great source of silver was the driving force behind the following expeditions to the Río de la Plata, which by 1536 had already been given this name in reference to the legend.^[10]

https://web.archive.org/web/20220121051711id_/https://journals.openedition.org/nuevomundo/59287

1580–1776: Second foundation and first two centuries of existence

During its first two centuries of existence, Buenos Aires was barely a small impoverished village.^[11]

Original plan of the city projected by Juan de Garay in 1580, with the typical Spanish colonial grid pattern.
View of Buenos Aires from the Río de la Plata, painted by an anonymous Dutch sailor c. 1628.
Buenos Aires as depicted by Florian Baucke in 1749.