General José de San Martín is a city in the north-east of the . It is named after
José de San Martín
José Francisco de San Martín y Matorras (; 25 February 177817 August 1850), nicknamed "the Liberator of Argentina, Chile and Peru", was an Argentine general and the primary leader of the southern and central parts of South America's succe ...
,
the Argentine general who played a major role in
South America
South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a considerably smaller portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also be described as the southern Subregion#Americas, subregion o ...
's fight for independence from
Spain
Spain, or the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the Punta de Tarifa, southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Eur ...
(see
Argentine War of Independence
The Argentine War of Independence () was a secessionist civil war (until 1816) fought from 1810 to 1818 by Argentine patriotic forces under Manuel Belgrano, Juan José Castelli, Martín Miguel de Güemes, Martin Miguel de Guemes and José de ...
).
History
The town was founded under the name of ''El Zapallar'' on 25 April 1907, although the measurement and division of the terrain was not properly finished until 2 July 1913. Its progress was slow due to the lack of communications, which began only in 1917 when Juan Godoy opened a precarious
bus
A bus (contracted from omnibus, with variants multibus, motorbus, autobus, etc.) is a motor vehicle that carries significantly more passengers than an average car or van, but fewer than the average rail transport. It is most commonly used ...
line that linked El Zapallar with the provincial capital
Resistencia, 120 km away.
By 1924 El Zapallar had 5,000 inhabitants and was the head town of the Toba Department. It had a police station, a court, a civil registration, a social club, and mail and telegraph services. That year the El Zapallar Agricultural Cattleman Association was established. The Quijano railroad line also contributed to the growth of the town, by connecting it to
Lapachito
Lapachito is a village and municipality in Chaco Province in northern Argentina
Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a country in the southern half of South America. It covers an area of , making it the List of South America ...
.
A Development Commission was created by decree of
Hipólito Yrigoyen
Juan Hipólito del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús Yrigoyen (12 July 1852 – 3 July 1933) was an Argentine politician of the Radical Civic Union who served as President of Argentina from 1916 to 1922 and again from 1928 until his overthrow in ...
in 1928. In 1934 the town was turned into a
municipality
A municipality is usually a single administrative division having municipal corporation, corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate.
The term ''municipality' ...
, which was renamed General José de San Martín in 1955.
Communications
The area is crossed southwest to northwest by National Route 90, asphalted, which links it to Resistencia, and also by the Provincial Routes 3 and 7, which cross it respectively from east to west and from east to southwest. The city has an airstrip of limited capacity.
References
External links
*
Populated places in Chaco Province
Cities in Argentina
{{ChacoAR-geo-stub