Yapeyú is a town in the

province A province is an administrative division within a country or sovereign state, state. The term derives from the ancient Roman , which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire, Roman Empire's territorial possessions ou ...

Corrientes Corrientes (; Guaraní: Taragui, literally: "Currents") is the capital city of the province of Corrientes, Argentina, located on the eastern shore of the Paraná River, about from Buenos Aires and from Posadas, on National Route 12. It has ...

, Argentina, in the San Martín Department. It has about 2,000 inhabitants as per the , and it is known throughout the country because it was the birthplace of General

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 ...

(1778–1850), hero of the

War of Independence Wars of national liberation, also called wars of independence or wars of liberation, are conflicts fought by nations to gain independence. The term is used in conjunction with wars against foreign powers (or at least those perceived as foreign) ...

. One of its notable monuments is the Arco Trunco.

Etymology

The word ''Yapeyú'' comes from the

Guaraní language Guarani (Avañe'ẽ), also called Paraguayan Guarani, is a language of South America that belongs to the Tupi–Guarani branch of the Tupian language family. It is one of the two official languages of Paraguay (along with Spanish), where i ...

and means "ripe fruit"; in other times, it was also the name of the river that is called today Guaviraví. Presbyter Eduardo J. Maldonado considers it a combination of the guaraní words "Yaye" ("The place where") and "Peyú" ("blowing of the wind"). Under this perspective, "Yapeyú" would mean in guaraní language "The place where the wind blows".Galasso, p. 12

History

The town was founded on December 4, 1626 by the

Jesuit The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...

Pedro Romero, who gave it the name ''Villa de Nuestra Señora de los Santos Reyes Magos y Yapeyú''. The town was one of the 30 missions established at the beginning of the 17th century that were destroyed in 1817 by the Portuguese army. The town was later rebuilt, and the ruins of the little fortress, which by the end of the 18th century had been the home of Lt. Juan de San Martín and his wife, Gregoria Matorras, were preserved.

Bibliography

References

External links

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Basic info about the town
Populated places in Corrientes Province {{Corrientes-geo-stub