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Formosa Province
Summary
Formosa Province (foɾˈmosa) is a province in northeastern Argentina, part of the Gran Chaco Region. Formosa's northeast end touches Asunción, Paraguay, and the province borders the provinces of Chaco and Salta to its south and west, respectively. The capital is Formosa.
The name of the city (and the province) comes from the archaic Spanish word fermosa (currently hermosa) meaning "beautiful". The name Vuelta Fermosa or Vuelta la Formosa was used by Spanish sailors in the 16th century to describe the area where the Paraguay River makes a turn, right in front of the actual city. These sailors were searching for the legendary Sierra del Plata.
Native inhabitants of these lands include the Pilagás, Wichis and Tobas, whose languages are still spoken in the province.
Sebastian Cabot and Diego García de Moguer first explored the area at the beginning of the 16th century trying to find a route from Viceroyalty of Peru to Asunción. Because the Pilcomayo and Bermejo Rivers 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 massacres by the Argentinean Gendarmerie 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.
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