Mendoza Province

Mendoza (menˈdosa), officially Province of Mendoza, is a province of Argentina, in the western central part of the country in the Cuyo region. It borders San Juan to the north, La Pampa and Neuquén to the south, San Luis to the east, and the republic of Chile to the west; the international limit is marked by the Andes mountain range. Its capital city is the homonymous city of Mendoza. Covering an area of 148,827 km2, it is the seventh biggest province of Argentina with 5.35% of the country's total area. The population for 2022 is 2,014,533 inhabitants, which makes it the fifth most populated region of the country, or 4.38% of the total national population. Archeological studies have determined that the first inhabitants in the area date from the Holocene, but there are few remains of those people to know their habits. The earliest sites of human occupation in Mendoza Province, Agua de la Cueva and Gruta del Indio, are 12,000–13,000 years old. In the basins of the Atuel River, in 300 BC, lived a group of people that lived via hunting and the cultivation of maize, pumpkins and beans. Those valleys saw the rise of the Agrelo culture, ancestor of the Huarpes. They were later influenced greatly by the Inca empire during the 15th century. Oral tradition sets the arrival of the Inca Túpac Yupanqui to Coquimbo in 1470. Puelches and other groups received a strong influence of the Mapuches. The first Spanish conquerors came around 1550, from the Viceroyalty of Peru. In 1561, Mendoza was founded by the conquistador Pedro del Castillo. Until the creation of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata in 1776, the area of what is now Mendoza Province belonged to the Captaincy General of Chile. With the creation of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, its 30,000 inhabitants became part of the intendency of Cuyo de Córdoba del Tucumán, but in 1813, the intendency was separated and the Province of Cuyo created, with José de San Martín as its first Governor.