Santiago del Estero, Argentina

🇦🇷 Santiago del Estero is the capital of Santiago del Estero Province in northern Argentina. It is the twelfth largest city in the country. It lies on the Dulce River and on National Route 9, at a distance of 1,042 km north-north-west from Buenos Aires. Estimated to be 455 years old, Santiago del Estero was the first city founded by Spanish settlers in the territory that is now Argentina. As such, it is nicknamed "Madre de Ciudades". Similarly, it has been officially declared the "mother of cities and cradle of folklore".

The city houses the National University of Santiago del Estero, founded in 1973, and the Universidad Católica, founded in 1960. Other points of interest include the city's Cathedral, the Santo Domingo Convent, and the Provincial Archeology Museum.

The Santiago del Estero Airport is located 6 km north of the city, and has regular flights to Buenos Aires and San Miguel de Tucumán.

The climate is subtropical with cool dry winters and wet humid summers. It receives an average annual precipitation of 600 mm, and the climate is warm.

Santiago del Estero and its region are home to about 100,000 speakers of the local variety of Quechua, making it the southernmost outpost of the language of the Incas. It is one of the few indigenous languages surviving in modern Argentina.

History After a series of exploratory expeditions from Chile starting in 1543, Santiago del Estero del Nuevo Maestrazgo was founded on July 25, 1553, by Francisco de Aguirre (although some historians consider its true foundation to be in 1550). Although it is the oldest city in Argentina, it preserves little of its former Spanish colonial architecture, except for several churches.

In 1576, the governor of a province in northern Argentina commissioned the military to search for a huge mass of iron, which he had heard that Natives used for their weapons. They called the area "Heavenly Fields", translated into Spanish as Campo del Cielo. (This term now refers to a protected area situated on the border between the provinces of Chaco and Santiago del Estero, where a group of iron meteorites were found, estimated as having fallen in a Holocene impact event some 4,000–5,000 years ago. In 2015, Police arrested four alleged smugglers trying to steal more than a ton of protected meteorites.)

The city was the capital of the Intendency of San Miguel de Tucumán during the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, and first seat of its bishop; those were later moved to Salta and Córdoba respectively.

Santiago del Estero stands in the middle of an extensive but largely semi-arid agricultural region. Originally a dry forest area, the abundance of quebracho attracted timber industries of British capital during the 19th century, leading to extensive deforestation; the British-owned Central Argentine Railway reached the city in 1884.

The province, in 1948, elected a young Peronist activist, Carlos Arturo Juárez, as its Governor. Santiago del Estero's central political figure during the second half of the 20th century, he soon became indispensable to local politics (even out of power). A true Caudillo (strongman), his amiable demeanor belied a record of ruthlessness towards opposition figures.

The construction of the nearby Quiroga Dam (on the Río Dulce) in 1950, eased the city's chronic water shortage and spurred the growth of local agriculture, based on cotton and olives. The city's first school of higher education, the Instituto Superior del Profesorado (a normal school), was established in 1953. The city developed a sizable manufacturing sector based on textile mills and other light industry from the 1950s on, though the public sector remained the largest employer. Santiago del Estero's population reached 100,000 in 1970.

The province, however, remained one of the poorest in Argentina, falling further behind. In 1993, the city made international headlines when rioting erupted around the governor's mansion. What began as a protest by government workers who had not been paid in three months, soon grew to 4,000 demonstrators who burned cars, destroyed government buildings and even invaded the homes of prominent politicians.

Juárez, by the 1990s, was readily ordering his opponents' deaths, notably that of former Governor César Iturre in 1996 and of Bishop Gerardo Sueldo in 1998. The 2002 deaths of two local women, however, were traced to Juárez's assassin, Antonio Musa Azar, and in an attempt to retain power, Juárez resigned (appointing his wife, Nina Juárez, governor).

The bid failed, however, as President Néstor Kirchner signed an executive order removing Mrs. Juárez from her post in March 2004. The Juárez couple, in their nineties, subsequently lived under house arrest in the city of Santiago del Estero; the former strongman died in 2010.

Villages • Beltrán • Chauchillas • El Arenal • El Bobadal • El Charco • El Colorado • El Mojón • El Zanjón • Estación Simbolar • Estación Taboada • Estación Tacañitas • Gramilla • Ingeniero Forres • Lavalle • Los Núñez • Nueva Francia • Taquetúyoj.

Culture Some important figures related to the history of Santiago del Estero are Colonel Juan Francisco Borges, who led the local battalion of the Army of the North during the Argentine War of Independence (and an ancestor of writer Jorge Luis Borges), the 19th-century painter Felipe Taboada, as well as Francisco René and Mario Roberto Santucho, founders of the Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores (Workers' Revolutionary Party, PRT) and the Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (People's Revolutionary Army, ERP), the two leading guerrilla organizations during the wave of unrest in the 1970s.

The city is home to numerous important Argentine artists, such as Ramon Gómez Cornet, Carlos Sánchez Gramajo, Alfredo Gogna, Ricardo and Rafael Touriño in visual arts, and Jorge Washington Ábalos, Bernardo Canal Feijóo, Clementina Rosa Quenel, Alberto Tasso, Carlos Virgilio Zurita and Julio Carreras (h) in literature.

Santiago's musical heritage is one of the most important cultural aspects of the city, with typical folklore chacarera and zamba. Some renowned artists and groups include the Manseros Santiagueños, the Ábalos Brothers (led by Adolfo and Alfredo Ábalos), Jacinto Piedra and Dúo Coplanacu.

Sport The city is home to the Asociación Atlética Quimsa, 2015 champion of Argentina's Liga Nacional de Básquet. The team plays its home games at the Estadio Ciudad de Santiago del Estero.

In 2021, the Estadio Único Madre de Ciudades was inaugurated in Santiago del Estero. The stadium is expected to host ten matches of the 2023 FIFA U-20 World Cup.

Transport: Public The Vicecomodoro Ángel de la Paz Aragonés Airport was built in 1959 and currently has flights to and from Buenos Aires operated by Aerolíneas Argentinas. In recent years it has been refurbished and expanded given that it was operating at full capacity.

The city's main road connection to other provinces is National Route 9, which connects it to the cities of Cordoba, Rosario and Buenos Aires to the south and San Miguel de Tucumán, Salta and San Salvador de Jujuy to the north. National Route 64 connects the city to San Fernando del Valle de Catamarca, the capital of Catamarca Province. In November 2008, a new long-distance bus terminal was inaugurated, replacing the previous bus terminal in the city.

Transport: Rail The city has historically been connected through the Belgrano and Mitre railways. An elevated commuter rail line known as Tren al Desarrollo is under construction in the city, connecting Santiago del Estero to the city of La Banda.