Argentina travel guide

Argentina’s many indigenous groups produce fine handicrafts, and in the northeast, the Guaraní produce woodwork, much of it inspired by the rich animal and bird life all around them. Delicate fabric for bags is woven from the tough fibrous strands of tree creepers, and there are necklaces made from seeds.

Handicrafts are richest in the northwest, particularly the Valles Calchaquíes, near the puna and along the Quebrada de Humahuaca, where there is abundant llama wool and vicuña, which is woven into ponchos, or knitted into jumpers, socks, scarves and hats. Brightly coloured woven textiles from Bolivia can also be found at many markets. The ubiquitous pan pipes are the most available examples of instruments from the rich Andean musical tradition, and can be found in abundance at Tilcara and Purmamarca markets. Ponchos are woven throughout the northwest but particularly fine examples can be found in the Calchaquíes valleys and around Salta, where the red ponchos of Güemes are made, and in western Catamarca province, where there are the finest ponchos of woven vicuña are made. You can also fine beautiful woven wall hangings in Los Valle Calchaquíes, often depicting scenes of churches in the valleys, and the local symbol, the ostrich-like suri and wood from the giant cardón cactus is used for carving distinctive small objects and furniture, with the spines of the cactus leaving attractive slits in the wood.

Argentina (along with neighbouring Uruguay) is arguably the most European of Latin American cultures. Mass immigration and the 19th-century extermination of the few remaining indigenous peoples have created a mainstream culture, which defines itself largely in relation to Europe. The exception to this is in the northwest of the country, where Andean civilizations struggle to retain their identity against the irresistible tide of westernization and the tourist industry.

Much of the current rift between Buenos Aires and the rest of Argentina has its roots in a long-standing conflict, which emerged in the early 19th century. The achievement of independence brought neither stability nor unity, since the new junta was divided between Federalists and Unitarists, a conflict that was to rage for over 40 years. The Unitarists, found mainly in the city of Buenos Aires, advocated strong central government, free trade, education and white immigration, looking to Europe for their inspiration. The Federalists, backed by the provincial elites and many of the great estancieros of Buenos Aires Province, resisted, defending local autonomy and traditional values. Behind the struggle were also economic interests: Buenos Aires and the coastal areas benefited from trade with Europe; the interior provinces did not. As the conflict raged, the territory, known officially as the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata, had none of the features of a modern state: there was no central government, nor an army, capital city or constitution.

Order, of a sort, was established after 1829 by Juan Manuel de Rosas, a powerful caudillo (provincial leader) and Governor of Buenos Aires. In 1833, he attempted to gain widespread support from local caudillos with his Campaign of the Desert, which claimed vast areas of land from indigenous groups, granted to Rosas’ allies. However, his overthrow in 1852 unleashed another round of battles between Unitarists and Federalists and between Buenos Aires and the provinces. In 1853 a constitution establishing a federal system of government was finally drafted but the Buenos Aires province refused to join the new Argentine Confederation, which had its capital at Paraná, and set up its own separate republic. Conflict between the two states erupted over the attempt by Buenos Aires to control and tax commerce on the Río Paraná but the victory of Buenos Aires at Pavón (1861) opened the way to a solution: the city became the seat of the federal government. Bartolomé Mitre, former governor of Buenos Aires became the first president of Argentina. There was another political flare-up of the old quarrel in 1880, ending in the humiliation of the city of Buenos Aires, which was separated from its province and made into a special federal territory.

Although there was resistance to the new constitution from some of the western provinces, the institutions of a modern state were created in the two decades after 1861 by Mitre’s important period of government. He set up a national bank, bureaucracy, a postal service and an army. The building of railways across the Pampas did most to create national unity, breaking the power of the caudillos by enabling the federal government to send in troops quickly. The new army was quickly employed to defeat Francisco Solano López of Paraguay in the War of the Triple Alliance (1865-1870). They were used again in President Roca’s genocidal Conquest of the Wilderness (1879-1880), which exterminated the indigenous tribes of the Pampas and Patagonia.

As the British-built railways stretched across the country, the sheep industry flourished, making Argentina’s fortune through exporting both wool and meat. Refrigerator ships were invented in the 1870s, enabling meat to be shipped in bulk to the expanding industrial countries of Britain and Europe. One of the landmarks of modern Argentine history was the 1912 Sáenz Peña law, which established universal manhood suffrage, since until then power had been centralized in the hands of the elite, with no votes for the working classes. Sáenz Peña, president between 1910 and 1916, sought to bring the middle and working classes into politics, gambling that the Conservatives could reorganize themselves and attract their votes. The gamble failed: the Conservatives failed to gain a mass following and the Radicals came to power. The Radical Civic Union was created in 1890, but Radical presidents Hipólito Yrigoyen (1916-1922 and 1928-1930) and Marcelo T de Alvear (1922-1928) found themselves trapped between the demands of an increasingly militant urban labour movement and the opposition of the Conservatives, still powerful in the provinces and with allies in the armed forces. Through the 1920s, Argentina was the ‘breadbasket of the world’ and its sixth richest nation. Fifty years later, the country had become practically Third World, a fall from grace which still haunts the Argentine consciousness. The world depression following the Wall Street Crash of 1929 devastated export markets, but the military coup which overthrew Yrigoyen in 1930 was a significant turning point: the armed forces returned to government for the first time in over 50 years and were to continue to play a major political role until 1983. Through the 1930s a series of military backed governments, dominated by the Conservatives, held power; the Radicals were outlawed and elections were so fraudulent that frequently more people voted than were on the register. Yet the armed forces themselves were disunited: while most officers supported the Conservatives and the landholding elites, a minority of ultra-nationalist officers, inspired by developments in Europe, supported industrialization and the creation of a one-party dictatorship along Fascist lines. The outbreak of war in Europe increased these tensions and a series of military coups in 1943-1944 led to the rise of Colonel Juan Domingo Perón. When the military allowed a return to civilian rule in 1946 Perón swept into power winning the Presidential elections. His government is chiefly remembered by many Argentines for improving the living conditions of the workers through the introduction of paid holidays and welfare measures in his justicialismo: social justice. Perón was an authoritarian and charismatic leader, and especially in its early years the government was strongly nationalistic, taking control over the British-owned railways in 1948 by buying them back at a staggering £150 million. Opposition parties were harassed and independent newspapers taken over since Perón wasn’t at all interested in free press. Perón is also well known for his famous second-wife, Eva Perón, who became the darling of the country, helping her husband’s popularity no-end. Although Perón was easily re-elected in 1951, his government soon ran into trouble: economic problems led to the introduction of a wage freeze which upset the labour unions which were the heart of Peronist support; the early and tragic death of Evita in 1952 was another blow; and a dispute with the church in 1954-1955 added to Perón’s problems. In September 1955 a military coup unseated Perón who went into exile, in Paraguay, Panama, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic and, from 1961 to 1973, in Spain.

Perón’s legacy dominated Argentina for the next two decades. No attempt was made to destroy his social and economic reforms but the armed forces determined to exclude the Peronists from power. Argentine society was bitterly divided between Peronists and anti-Peronists and the economy struggled, partly as a result of Perón’s measures against the economic elite and in favour of the workers. Between 1955 and 1966 there was an uneasy alternation of military and civilian regimes. The military officers who seized power in 1966 announced their intention to carry out a Nationalist Revolution, with austerity measures to try to gain control of a spiralling economy, but they were quickly discredited by a deteriorating economic situation. The Cordobazo, a left-wing student and workers uprising in Córdoba in 1969, was followed by the emergence of several guerrilla groups such as the Montoneros and the People’s Revolutionary Army (ERP), as well as the growth of political violence. As Argentina became more ungovernable, Perón, from his exile, refused to denounce those guerrilla groups, which called themselves Peronist.

In 1971 General Alejandro Lanusse seized power, promising a return to civilian rule and calculating that the only way to control the situation was to allow Perón to return. When the military bowed out in 1973, elections were won by the Peronist candidate, Hector Campora. Perón returned from exile in Madrid to resume as president in October 1973, but died on 1 July 1974, leaving the presidency to his widow, Vice-President María Estela Martínez de Perón, his third wife, known as ‘Isabelita’. Perón’s death unleashed chaos: hyper-inflation, resumed guerrilla warfare and the operation of right-wing death squads who abducted people suspected of left-wing sympathies. In March 1976, to nobody’s surprise, the military overthrew Isabelita and replaced her with a junta led by General Jorge Videla.

The new government closed Congress, outlawed political parties, placed trade unions and universities under military control and unleashed the so-called ‘Dirty War’, a brutal assault on the guerrilla groups and anyone else who manifested opposition. The military leaders were not at all interested in trying and convicting those they suspected of being dissidents. They started a campaign of violence against anyone remotely trouble- some as well as anyone Jewish or Marxist, and journalists, intellectuals, psychologists and anyone, according to President General Videla, who was ‘spreading ideas contrary to Western Christian civilization’. As many as 30,000 people are thought to have ‘disappeared’ during this period, removed by violent squads who would take them to clandestine detention centres to be raped, tortured or brutally killed. This is one of Argentina’s bleakest memories, and that many Argentines maintain that a strong line was needed to deal with guerrillas is a sign of how hidden the reality was at the time. In order that the disappeared should never be forgotten, the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo still parade around the plaza in Buenos Aires with photographs of their lost children pinned to their chests .

Videla’s nominated successor, General Roberto Viola took over for three years in March 1981 but was overthrown by General Leopoldo Galtieri in December 1981, who failed to keep a grasp on a plummeting economy, and an increasingly discontent public. Attempting to win the crowds, Galtieri’s decision to invade the Falkland/Malvinas Islands in April 1982 backfired when the British retaliated by sending a fleet to the south Atlantic. After the war was lost in June 1982 General Reynaldo Bignone took over, and promptly created a law giving amnesty to all human rights abusers in the military .

Elections in October 1983 were won by Raúl Alfonsín and his Unión Cívica Radical (UCR) and during 1985 Generals Videla, Viola and Galtieri were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment for their parts in the dictatorship. While Alfonsín’s government struggled to deal with the legacy of the past, it was overwhelmed by continuing economic problems, the most obvious of which was hyperinflation. Workers rushed to the shops once they’d been paid to spend their earnings before prices rose, and supermarkets announced price increases over the tannoy since they were so unstable. When the Radicals were defeated by Carlos Menem, the Peronist (Justicialist) presidential candidate, Alfonsín stepped down early because of economic instability. Strained relations between the Peronist government and the military led to several rebellions, which Menem attempted to appease by pardoning the imprisoned generals. His popularity among civilians declined, but in 1991-1992 the economy minister, Domingo Cavallo, succeeded in restoring economic confidence and the government as a whole with his Plan de Convertabilidad. This, the symbol of his stability, was the introduction of a new currency pegged to the United States dollar, and preventing the central bank from printing money which could not be backed up by the cash in reserve. After triumphing in the October 1993 congressional elections at the expense of the UCR, the Peronists themselves lost some ground in the April 1994 elections to a constituent assembly. The party to gain most, especially in Buenos Aires, was Frente Grande, a broad coalition of left-wing groups and disaffected Peronists. Behind the loss of confidence of these dissident Peronists were unrestrained corruption and a pact in December 1993 between Menem and Alfonsín pledging UCR support for constitutional changes, which included re-election of the president for a second term of four years.

By the 1995 elections, the majority of the electorate favoured stability over constitutional concerns and returned President Menem. The Peronists also increased their majority in the Chamber of Deputies and gained a majority in the Senate. Menem’s renewed popularity was short-lived: joblessness remained high and corruption unrestrained. His decision to privatize the major industries scandalized traditional Peronists in his party, and his legacy remains a cause of despair, since electricity, gas, telephones and YPF, the country’s oil industry, all belong to huge Spanish companies. In July 1996, the Radicals won the first direct elections for mayor of Buenos Aires and in mid-term congressional elections in October 1997 the Peronist Party lost its ruling majority. Most votes went to the Alianza Democrática, formed by the Radicals and the Frepaso coalition. The latter’s candidate for Buenos Aires province, Graciela Fernández Meijide, defeated Hilda Duhalde of the Peronists, whose husband, Eduardo, was provincial governor. In addition to the Peronists’ poor showing, several senior members were embarrassed by alleged involvement with millionaire Alfredo Yabrán. Many suspected Yabrán of criminal activities, not least of ordering the murder of journalist José Luis Cabezas in January 1997. The case fuelled the rivalry between Duhalde and Menem but in May 1998 Yabrán, who was being sought by the police, committed suicide.

Within Argentina, critical discussion was kept alive in literary journals such as Punto de Vista (1978) and certain novels alluded to the current political climate within densely structured narratives. Ricardo Piglia’s (1941-) Respiración Artificial (Artificial Respiration, 1980) has disappearance and exile as central themes, alongside bravura discussions of the links between fiction and history and between Argentina and Europe.

The ‘swinging’ sixties were curtailed by a military coup in 1966. In the years which followed, Argentine political life descended into anarchy, violence and repression, as a result virtually all forms of cultural activity were silenced and well known writers, including Haroldo Conti and Rodolfo Walsh, ‘disappeared’. Many more had to seek exile including the poet Juan Gelman, whose son and daughter-in-law counted among the disappeared.

The complex urban societies evolving in Argentina by the turn of the century created a rich cultural life. In the 1920s a strong vanguard movement developed which questioned the dominant literary orthodoxies of the day. Little magazines such as Martín Fierro (another appropriation of the ubiquitous national symbol) proclaimed novelty in poetry and attacked the dull social realist writings of their rivals the Boedo group. Argentina’s most famous writer, Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) began his literary life as an avant- garde poet, in the company of writers such as Oliverio Girondo (1891-1967) and Norah Lange (1906-1972). Many of these poets were interested in expressing the dynamism and changing shape of their urban landscape, Buenos Aires, this Paris on the periphery. You can explore Borges’ haunts in Buenos Aires with a free tour organized by the tourist office: ask in their information centres for dates and times. Roberto Arlt also caught the dreams and nightmares of the urban under classes in novels such as El Juguete Rabioso (The Rabid Toy, 1926) and Los Siete Locos (The Seven Madmen, 1929).

Following Alfonsín’s election victory in 1983, the whole intellectual and cultural field responded to the new freedoms. Certain narratives depicted in harsh realism the brutalities of the ‘Dirty War’ waged by the military and it was the novelist, Ernesto Sábato, who headed the Commission set up to investigate the disappearances. He wrote in the prologue to the Commission’s report Nunca más (Never Again, 1984): “We are convinced that the recent military dictatorship brought about the greatest and most savage tragedy in the history of Argentina”.

Beyond Buenos Aires, the dominant musical traditions can be broadly described as folclore. This takes various forms over the north of the country, with the finest examples in Salta, but all the northern provinces have a very rich and attractive heritage of folk dances, mainly for couples, with arms held out and fingers clicked or handkerchiefs waved, with the ‘Paso Valseado’ as the basic step. The slow and stately Zamba is descended from the Zamacueca, and therefore a cousin of the Chilean Cueca and Peruvian Marinera, where the handkerchief is used to greatest effect. Equally popular throughout most of the country are the faster Gato, Chacarera and Escondido. These are the dances of the gaucho and their rhythm evokes that of a cantering horse with wonderfully stirring syncopation. Guitar and the bombo drum provide the accompaniment. Particularly spectacular is the Malambo, where the gaucho shows off his dextrous footwork, creating a complex rhythm using the heels of his boots, alternating with percussion created by whirling the hard balls of the boleadoras into the ground, with the spurs of his boots adding a steely note to the rhythm.

If your trip to Argentina includes any time in Buenos Aires, you’ll undoubtedly see some tango – probably danced on the streets of Florida or San Telmo, though its much more than a tourist attraction. Testimony to the enduring success of the music among Argentines are the radio stations which only play tango, and the milongas (dance clubs) filled with young people learning the old steps.

Although also sung and played, the tango was born as a dance just before the turn of the 20th century. The exact moment of birth was not recorded by any contemporary observer and continues to be a matter of debate, though the roots can be traced. The name ‘Tango’ predates the dance and was given to the carnivals (and dances) of the local inhabitants of the Río de la Plata in the early 19th century, elements of this tradition being taken over by settlers as the local population declined. However, the name ‘Tango Americano’ was also given to the Habanera (a Cuban descendent of the English Country Dance) which became all the rage in Spain and bounced back into the Río de la Plata in the middle of the 19th century, not only as a fashionable dance together with the polka, mazurka, waltz and cuadrille but also as a song form in the very popular ‘Zarzuelas’, or Spanish operettas. However, the Habanera led not a double, but a triple life, by also infiltrating the lowest levels of society directly from Cuba via sailors who arrived in the ports of Montevideo and Buenos Aires. Here it encountered the Milonga, originally a gaucho song style, but by 1880 a dance, especially popular with the so-called ‘Compadritos’ and ‘Orilleros’, who frequented the port area and its brothels, whence the Argentine Tango emerged around the turn of the century to dazzle the populace with its brilliant, personalized footwork, which could not be accomplished without the partners staying glued together.

As a dance tango became the exceedingly popular and, as the infant recording industry grew in leaps and bounds, it also became popular as a song and an instrumental genre, with the original violins and flutes being eclipsed by the bandoneón button accordion, then being imported from Germany. In 1911 the new dance took Paris by storm, thanks to the performance of the dance in a Paris salon by Argentine writer Ricardo Güiraldes, one of a group of aristocrats who enjoyed frequenting the dives where tango was popular. As soon as it was the fashion in Paris, it returned triumphant to Buenos Aires, achieving both respectability and notoriety, and becoming a global phenomenon after the First World War. Actor Rudolph Valentino helped the image of the dance, when his 1926 movie The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse included a tango scene.

The Comechingones, who inhabited what are now the provinces of Córdoba and San Luis, lived in settlements of pit-dwellings and used irrigation to produce a range of crops. In the far northeast on the eastern edge of the Chaco were the Guaraní; organized into loose confederations, they lived in rudimentary villages and practised slash-and-burn agriculture to grow maize, sweet potatoes, manioc and beans. They also produced textiles and ceramics.

Argentina has a rich history of pre-Hispanic indigenous civilizations, with the most important archaeological sites situated in the northwest and west areas of the most highly developed cultures south of the central Andes. Along a migratory path which followed the Andes, this region became a meeting place for established settlers from northern Chile, the central Andes, the Chaco and the hunter-gatherers of the south. Cave paintings and petroglyphs engraved on rocks remain from 13,000 to 10,000 years ago, made by cave dwellers who lived by hunting vizcacha, guanaco, vicuña and birds, some painted with pigments derived from minerals mixed with gesso. Their lines, dots and geometrical forms belong to a symbolic system impossible to interpret today. The extraordinary quantity of handprints visible in the Cueva de las Manos in Patagonia were made as long ago as 10,000 years, and again, their purpose and origin remains a mystery.

By about 1000 to 500 BC, the nomadic groups had grown in size and were too large to subsist on hunting alone and so started early attempts at agriculture. They grew potatoes and maize among other staples. A mummy found from this period (displayed in Cachi’s museum) with a few artefacts and belongings suggests that these peoples had a developed system of beliefs. By 2000 years ago, small communities had started to gather on the alluvial plains, living on agriculture and herding llamas. In many of the area’s museums, you’ll see large grinding stones made of granite, used to grind maize, as well as arrowheads and pipes used for smoking tobacco. Weaving began around this time, and there are some fine fabrics found at Santa Rosa Tastil.

There were three distinct periods in the cultural development of the northwest. The Early Period (500 BC to AD 650) witnessed the beginnings of agriculture as well as pottery and metalworking, with the remains of terraces near Humahuaca in Jujuy. The Middle Period (AD 650-850) was marked by the influence of the great culture of Tiahuanaco in present-day Bolivia. Fine metal objects, some of them of gold and silver, were made and new plant varieties were introduced. You’ll find stone vessels, anthropomorphic clay pieces, and ornate ceramics from this period all over the Northwest.

In the Later Period (AD 850-1480), known as the Period of Regional Development, small groups of settlers formed communities with individual dwellings, usually based on circular stone walls, next to water sources. Both ritual and functional ceramics were made by peoples known as the Santamariana or Diaguita culture. Although there was no system of writing, their language, Kakán, survived until the Inca invasion in the late 15th century. These cultures made large, beautifully painted funerary urns, thought to bury the bones of children, since the infant mortality rate was high. The predominant religious beliefs centred around worship of the mother earth goddess, the Pachamama and she’s still worshipped in rural communities all over the Northwest today, with lively festivals on 1 August.

The drive for independence in Argentina was partly a response to events in Europe, where Spain was initially allied to Napoleonic France. In 1806 and 1807 the British, at war with Napoleon and attracted by what they thought were revolutionary tensions in Buenos Aires, made two attempts to seize the city but were defeated. In 1808 Napoleon invaded Spain, deposing King Ferdinand VII, and provoking widespread resistance from Spanish guerrilla armies. Throughout Spanish America the colonial elites debated where their loyalties lay: to Napoleon’s brother Joseph, now officially King? To Ferdinand, now in a French prison? To the Viceroy? To the Spanish resistance parliament in Cadiz?

Geographically the Isla de los Estados forms the southernmost extent of the Andes, which then swing north to become the border between Chile and Argentina just north of the Paine mountains. The 350 km section north of Paine is one of the most dramatic stretches of the Andes. The crest lies under the Southern Patagonian ice cap, with glaciers reaching down to the valleys on both the Argentine and Chilean sides. On the Argentine side this has created the spectacular range of glaciers found in the Parque Nacional Los Glaciares, the most famous of which, the Perito Moreno Glacier, is one of the highlights for many travellers to Argentina. The northern end of this section is Cerro Fitz Roy, which, along with the Torres del Paine (in Chile) at the southern end, is among the most spectacular hiking and climbing centres in South America.

South of 33°S, the latitude of Mendoza and Rosario, is a great flat plain known as the Pampas. Extending almost 1000 km from north to south and a similar distance from east to west, the Pampas cover some 650,000 sq km, including most of Buenos Aires Province, southern Córdoba, Santa Fe and Entre Ríos, north eastern La Pampa and a small part of San Luís. This area is crossed by meandering rivers and streams, and there are many lakes, lagoons and marshes. Geologically the Pampas are similar to the Chaco, basic crystalline and granite rocks almost completely overlain with recent deposits, often hundreds of metres thick. Prevailing winds from the southeast and southwest help to create the fine loess type soils which make this one of the richest farming areas in the world, ideal for grasslands and cattle ranching. Being comparatively close to the ocean, extremes of temperature are rare, another favourable feature.

Patagonia extends from the Río Colorado (39°S) south to the Magellan Straits and covers some 780,000 sq km. Most of this area consists of a series of tablelands and terraces, which drop in altitude from west to east. The basic rocks are ancient, some classified as Precambrian, but the surface has been subjected to endless erosion. Rainfall is lighter and the winds stronger than in the Pampas frequently stripping the surface of cover and filling the air with dust. Only where rivers have scored deep valleys in the rock base can soil accumulate, allowing more than extensive sheep farming.

This grows along the eastern edges of the southern Andes, from Neuquén in the north to Tierra del Fuego and Isla de los Estados in the south. These are cool temperate forests including evergreen and deciduous trees. Species of nothofagus predominate, the most common being lenga (low deciduous beech), ñire (high deciduous beech), coihue and guindo. The Pehuen or Monkey puzzle tree (Araucaria araucana), is found in northwestern and northcentral Neuquén. The fungus llao llao and the hemiparasitic Misodendron are also frequent. Flowering bushes include the notro (firebush), the calafate (Burberis boxifolis) and the chaura (prickly heath).

Areas of the Lake District with annual rainfall of over 1500 mm are covered by Valdivian forest and a wider range of species. The coihue (southern beech) is the predominant species of nothofagus, reaching as far south as Lago Buenos Aires. Below colihue canes form a dense undergrowth; flowers include the amancay (alstromeria), mutisias, and near streams, the fuschia. Arrayán trees also grow near water, while the Andean Cypress and the Maiten grow in the transition zone with the Patagonian steppe. In areas where annual rainfall reaches over 3000 mm, there is a wider range of trees as well as epyphites, ferns, and lichens such as Old Man’s Beard. The alerce (larch) is the giant of these forests, rising to over 60 m and, in some cases over 3000 years old.

Often known as yungas, this extends into Argentina from Bolivia and covers parts of the sub-Andean sierras. It is found in eastern Jujuy, central Salta and Tucumán and eastern Catamarca. Its eastern sides receive the humidity of the winds which cross the Chaco from the Atlantic. Winters are dry but temperature, rainfall and humidity vary with changes in latitude and altitude. These forests are important regulators of the water cycle, preventing erosion and floods. It is best seen in three national parks: Baritú, Calilegua and El Rey.

This is found mainly in Misiones, extending southwards along the banks of the Ríos Paraná and Uruguay. The wet climate, with annual rainfall of up to 2000 mm, and high temperatures produce rapid decomposition of organic material. The red soils of this area contain a thin fertile soil layer which is easily eroded.

This area offers the widest variety of flora in Argentina. There of over 2000 known species of vascular plants, about 10% of which are trees. Forest vegetation rises to different strata: the giant trees such as the palo rosa, the Misiones cedar, incienso and the guatambú rise to over 30 m high. The forest canopy includes species such as strangler figs and the pindo palm, while the intermediate strata includes the fast growing ambay (Cecropia), tree-ferns, the yerba mate and bamboos. Llianas, vines and epiphytes such as orchids and bromeliads as well as ferns and even cacti compete in the struggle for sunlight.