History of Río de la Plata: a timeline

15 moments in the history of Río de la Plata, in order, each with what happened and why it matters.

Eras

  1. Empire and the colonial Americas (1492–1808)
  2. Revolutions and new nations (1808–1898)
  3. Revolution, war and dictatorship (1898–1975)
  4. Democracy and today (1975–)

Empire and the colonial Americas (1492–1808)

  1. 1536–11 June 1580: Buenos Aires is founded, twice — Buenos Aires was founded twice.
  2. 1609–1768: The Jesuit missions among the Guaraní — From 1609 the Jesuits gathered Guaraní families into reducciones, mission towns on the Paraná and Uruguay rivers, in today's Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil.
  3. 26 March 1713–1750: The slave asiento goes to Britain — From the sixteenth century the Crown sold the asiento, a monopoly contract to supply enslaved Africans to its American colonies, to Portuguese, Genoese, Dutch…
  4. c. 1765–1788: The Bourbon reforms — Under Charles III (1759–88) the Crown set out to govern the Americas more tightly and profitably.
  5. 1767: Charles III expels the Jesuits — In 1767 Charles III ordered the Society of Jesus out of Spain and all its American and Asian dominions, as Portugal and France had already done.

Revolutions and new nations (1808–1898)

  1. 25 May 1810: The May Revolution in Buenos Aires — When news reached Buenos Aires that French armies had overrun Andalusia and that the Spanish government had retreated to Cádiz, the city's leading men demanded…
  2. 9 July 1816: Independence declared at Tucumán — Six years after the May Revolution, with Ferdinand VII back on his throne and royalist armies winning in the north, a congress of the United Provinces met in…
  3. January 1817–5 April 1818: San Martín crosses the Andes — After the patriots' defeat at Rancagua in 1814 and the Spanish reconquest of Santiago, Chilean exiles led by Bernardo O'Higgins joined José de San Martín in…
  4. c. 1870–1920: Lunfardo: the words of immigrant Buenos Aires — Between 1855 and 1914 Buenos Aires grew from 92,000 to 1.6 million people, and more than two million Italians arrived in Argentina before 1920; in 1895 almost…
  5. 1878–1885: The Conquest of the Desert — Between 1878 and 1885 the Argentine army campaigned against the Indigenous peoples of the pampas and northern Patagonia, Mapuche, Ranquel and Tehuelche, who…

Revolution, war and dictatorship (1898–1975)

  1. 17 October 1945–September 1955: Perón, Evita and the birth of Peronism — Colonel Juan Domingo Perón, labour secretary in Argentina's military government, had won the unions with wages, holidays and pensions.
  2. 30 April 1977–10 December 1983: The dictatorship and the Madres de Plaza de Mayo — On 24 March 1976 the Argentine armed forces seized power and ran a secret war against anyone they called subversive: people were kidnapped, held in clandestine…

Democracy and today (1975–)

  1. October 1982: García Márquez wins the Nobel: the Boom — In the 1960s a handful of Latin American novelists became world famous almost at once: the Argentine Julio Cortázar with Rayuela (1963), the Peruvian Mario…
  2. 19 December 2001–6 January 2002: Argentina's December 2001 — For ten years Argentina had fixed its peso to the US dollar one to one.
  3. 28 October 2025: Spanish today: almost 635 million speakers — According to the Instituto Cervantes's yearbook El español en el mundo 2025, presented in Madrid on 28 October 2025, almost 635 million people speak Spanish:…

Changes over time