Mendoza (province)

Mendoza, officially Province of Mendoza, is a province of Argentina, in the western central part of the country in the Cuyo region. It borders San Juan to the north, La Pampa and Neuquén to the south, San Luis to the east, and the republic of Chile to the west; the international limit is marked by the Andes mountain range. Its capital city is the homonymous city of Mendoza.

Covering an area of 148,827 km², it is the seventh biggest province of Argentina with 5.35% of the country's total area. The population for 2010 is 1,741,610 inhabitants, which makes it the fourth most populated province of the country, or 4.35% of the total national population.

History

Pre-Columbian times

Archeological studies have determined that the first inhabitants in the area date from the Holocene, but there are few remains of those people to know their habits. The earliest sites of human occupation in Mendoza Province, Agua de la Cueva and Gruta del Indio, are 12,000–13,000 years old. In the basins of the Atuel River, in 300 BC, lived a group of people that lived via hunting and the cultivation of maize, pumpkins and beans. Those valleys saw the rise of the Agrelo culture, ancestor of the Huarpes. They were later influenced greatly by the Inca empire during the 15th century. Oral tradition sets the arrival of the Inca Túpac Yupanqui to Coquimbo in 1470.

Puelches and other groups received a strong influence of the Mapuches.

Spanish colony (1550–1810)

The first Spanish conquerors came around 1550, from the Viceroyalty of Peru. In 1561, Mendoza was founded by the conquistador Pedro del Castillo. Until the creation of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata in 1776, the area of what is now Mendoza Province belonged to the Captaincy General of Chile.

Independence

With the creation of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, its 30,000 inhabitants became part of the intendency of ''Cuyo de Córdoba del Tucumán'', but in 1813, the intendency was separated and the Province of Cuyo created, with José de San Martín as its first Governor. He received important support from Mendoza when he led his Army of the Andes from ''Plumerillo'' to the 1817 crossing of the Andes, in his campaign to end Spanish rule in Chile.

19th century

The Province of Cuyo was ultimately divided in 1820, and Mendoza parted ways with San Luis and San Juan Provinces.

The 1861 earthquake nearly destroyed the city of Mendoza, which had to be almost entirely reconstructed. In 1885, railways were built to the province, allowing for easy transport of the region's wines to the country's trade hub of Buenos Aires.

Following the development of the wine industry in the province around 1900, Mendoza began to grow quickly, attracting tens of thousands of European immigrants, particularly Spaniards. In 1939, the National University of Cuyo, one of the more important universities of the country, was founded in the province.

20th century

Partly in reaction to President Juan Perón's populist policies, some of which taxed agriculture heavily to finance urban development and public works, Mendoza landowners formed the conservative Democratic Party, which secured the Vice Governor's post in 1958. Increasing their presence in the Mendoza Legislature, the Democrats became an obstacle to progressive Governor Ernesto Ueltschi, an ally of president Arturo Frondizi's. With majorities in both houses by 1961, they had Gov. Ueltschi removed and Democrat Vice-governor Francisco Gabrielli appointed in his stead. Elected governor in his own right in 1963, Gov. Gabrielli was deposed following the June 1966 coup against President Arturo Illia; but still benefiting from conservative credentials, he was appointed ''de facto'' governor by the same military regime in 1970.

In contrast to the pragmatism that had distinguished his 1963–66 term, Gabrielli governed with a hard line, freezing state salaries and ordering large utility rate increases, used the Mendoza police to repress dissent and took foreign policy prerogatives like collaborating with Chilean saboteurs opposed to their country's new Marxist president, Salvador Allende. These events came to a head in April 1972, however, when violent protests forced the newly unpopular Gabrielli to resign.

Upon the return to democracy in March 1973, Mendoza voters turned to a left-leaning Peronist, Alberto Martínez Baca. Quickly enacting needed labor and land reforms, Martínez Baca, however, made the mistake of appointing affiliates of the extreme-left Montoneros movement, an organization whose armed wing had perpetrated a string of violent crimes since 1970 (and would continue to do so). Alarmed by this move from the otherwise pragmatic Martínez Baca, President Perón had him removed in June 1974.

Becoming more politically independent-minded following these two disappointments, Mendoza voters elected centrist Radical Civic Union as well as populist Justicialist Party lawmakers since Argentina's return to democracy in 1983. Though Mendoza has generally prospered since then, its critical wine industry was left reeling from the 1983 collapse of state-owned vintner Bodegas GIOL, whose dictatorship-era receivers had run the wine conglomerate (then the world's largest outside Europe), and accumulated over US$6 billion of debt; GIOL closed in 1991.

Elected in 2003, Radical Civic Union Governor Julio Cobos highlighted this independent sentiment by parting ways with many in his party and endorsing newly elected Peronist President Néstor Kirchner's policies in 2004. Over the opposition of his party, Julio Cobos accepted the post of running mate to first lady Cristina Fernández de Kirchner of the ruling Front for Victory, in the presidential elections of October 2007. Fernández and Cobos won in the first round, and Cobos became Vice President of Argentina; he was replaced by pro-Kirchner Justicialist candidate Celso Jaque as governor. The province is represented by three senators in the Argentine Senate, currently María Perceval, Ernesto Sanz and Mónica Troadello. Mendoza is represented by 10 deputies in the Argentine Chamber of Deputies.

On July 16, 2008, Vice President Cobos stunned observers by casting the tie-breaking vote against a presidentially-sponsored measure in the Senate that would have raised export taxes on an array of agricultural goods. His faction of the UCR won a significant victory in the 2009 mid-term elections in Mendoza.

Geography

The geography of the province descends from at the summit of Aconcagua to the semi-flat lands of the east. A series of longitudinal valles, such as the Uspallata, separate the Andes from the ''Precordillera'' lower mountains. To the east, the Cuyean plains are crossed by tributaries of the Desaguadero River. Other important rivers include Mendoza River

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