Read down for an insight into Argentina's period under colonial rule.
Throughout the colonial period the Argentine territories were an outlying part of the Spanish empire and of minor importance since Spanish colonial settlement and government was based in Peru, busy with exploiting the vast mineral wealth of Potosi in Alto Peru (and large supplies of indigenous labour). Argentine lands offered only sparse population and little mineral wealth by comparison. Also, the nomadic nature of many indigenous groups made any attempt at control difficult, whereas in Peru, Spanish rule was more readily superimposed on the centralized administration of the defeated Incas.
Buenos Aires failed to become an important port for a couple of centuries because from 1543 all the Spanish territories in South America were governed from Lima, the Vice-Regal capital, and trade with Spain was routed via Lima, Panama and the Caribbean. In fact, Buenos Aires was prohibited from trading directly, though the Paraná delta north of the city near Tigre provided ample opportunities for smuggling British and Portuguese goods into the city, and it rapidly expanded as a centre for contraband.
By 1776 the city's population was 24,000, double the size of any of the cities of the interior. However, the Governorship of Tucumán was more important as a centre, due to the success of the encomienda system here, in which lands belonging to indigenous peoples were seized and redistributed to Spanish settlers. The idea was that the encomenderos in charge would exchange work done for religious education, but in reality these men were ruthless exploiters of slave labour and offered little in the way of spiritual enlightenment. In the Valles Cachaquiés the substantial indigenous population resisted conversion by Jesuit missionaries, and was effectively wiped out when they rose up against the Spanish landowners. So great was the need for workers in Potosí and Tucumán that black slaves were imported in the late 18th century.
Settlers in the northeast of the country too had their conflicts with the indigenous population. The Pampas and Buenos Aires province were dangerous areas for white settlement, since in these lands wild cattle had long been hunted for their hides by Tehuelches and Mapuches. They drove cattle to Chile over the Andes for trade, and their violent armies, or malones, clashed regularly with newly arrived settlers. Around the early 18th century, the figure of the gaucho emerged, nomadic men of mixed criollo (early Argentine settlers) and indigenous origin, who roamed free on horseback, living off cattle. Once the Argentine state started to control land boundaries, these characters became emblematic of freedom and romanticized in important fictional works, Martín Fierro and Don Segundo de los Sombras. The gaucho is still a much admired figure all over Argentina today, though less wild and certainly no longer an outcast.
Jesuits came to civilize the native population under the protection of the Spanish crown in the late 16th century. They quickly set up missions which employed the reasonably pliant Guaraní residents of the upper Paraná in highly organized societies, with a militant component, equipped to resist the frequent raids by Portuguese in search of slaves. The Guaraní were compelled to comply with their educators since this exempted them from working in the silver mines, and as many as 4000 Guaraní lived in some missions, also producing yerba mate and tobacco as successful Jesuit businesses. The remains of their handsome architecture can be admired in Córdoba city and province, as well as at San Ignacio Mini in Misiones.
Buenos Aires at last gained some considerable power when the new viceroyalty of the River Plate was created in 1776, with the rapidly growing city as head of the large area and now able to trade with Spain and her other ports. However, as the trade of contraband into the city increased, flooding the market with cheaper European- produced goods, conflict increased between those advocating free trade, such as Manuel Belgrano, and those who wanted to retain a monopoly. The population of Buenos Aires increased enormously with the viceroyalty, along with its economy, as estancias sprang up to farm and export cattle, instead of rounding up the wild beasts, and with great success.
