Formosa Province - History

History

Native inhabitants of these lands include the Pilagás, Wichis and Tobas, whose languages are still spoken in the province.

Sebastián Gaboto and Diego García first explored the area at the beginning of the 16th century trying to find a route from Viceroyalty of Peru to Asunción. Because the rivers Pilcomayo and Bermejo are so shallow, the attempts to set a route towards Asunción was abandoned.

The area's first European settlement, Concepción del Bermejo, was established in 1585. Following the establishment of Argentine and Paraguayan independence in the 1810s, the area fell under dispute between the two nations, a matter not settled until after the War of the Triple Alliance (1865–70). Commander Luis Jorge Fontana founded the settlement of Formosa in 1879, bringing the remote area into national attention and helping to secure a territorial status in 1884.

Formosa had less than 20,000 inhabitants in 1914; but in 1955, when it acquired the status of Province by decree of President Juan Domingo Perón, it had already more than 150,000. Following the Rincón Bomba massacre by white locals of nomadic Amerindians in 1947, President Perón initiated a program of land reform in the province; the program, by the time of his 1955 overthrow, had issued only around 4,000 land grants, however. Continuing to grow slowly, though relatively steadily, the Formosa campus of the National University of the Northeast was established as the National University of Formosa in 1988.