Ravines

Barranqueras is a city and port in the southeast of the province of Chaco, Argentina. It is located in the department of San Fernando, on the right bank of the Barranqueras stream —a branch of the Paraná river—, in a generally low and floodable area. It is part of the metropolitan area of Gran Resistencia. It connects with the province of Corrientes through the General Manuel Belgrano bridge.

The Barranqueras area was originally intended for the founding of Resistencia as a city-port, however, the low and floodable land, plus the poorness of the land for the practice of agriculture, forced Resistencia to be founded a few kilometers further west. However, the presence of a port was an unavoidable necessity, and that was how the precarious pier that served to transport merchandise and people to and from Resistencia became the engine of growth for Barranqueras. The industries and the arrival of the railway were the remaining bases of growth.

The importance of the port has decreased significantly in recent decades, and although today it continues to operate and there are numerous projects to reactivate it, the city of Barranqueras lost its initial dynamism as a large productive city with an industrial profile and a port of great importance at a regional level in its time to become mainly a residential extension of Resistencia, with some industries of relative importance.

History

Before the town

There is archaeological evidence that the current area of Barranqueras was populated at the beginning of the second millennium AD. The archaeologist Antonio Serrano classified the evidence found (remains of mollusk shells, numerous ceramic fragments, bone tips and, to a lesser extent, carved stone objects) as belonging to the so-called "Entre Ríos Culture" in his "Facie Barranqueras".

When the Spanish first explored the Paraná River in the s. XVI, they find a very bellicose town that they baptized mepenes, which is believed to be the original Abipón people that would later form the indigenous reduction of San Fernando del Río Negro, which was the origin of the population of Resistencia.

The white settlement of the area began progressively, with the signing of a peace treaty between the Chaco chiefs and the governor of Corrientes Pedro Ferré. This treaty allowed the temporary settlement of obrajes on the coast of the Negro and Paraná rivers. In 1857 there were already permanent establishments in the area. Also in those same years, indigenous people from the Lule-Vilela group settled in the area. Due to their skill in the use of the canoe they soon began to trade with the neighboring city of Corrientes. Part of this population formed part of the reduction of San Buenaventura del Monte Alto, which existed from 1865 to 1873. When more workers began to settle in the area, these indigenous people used to rise up in raids, fearful of losing their lands due to the advance of the obrajes. However, in 1864 a new peace treaty between 17 indigenous caciques and the National Government favored the approach of more indigenous people to the place, which began to be employed in the logging factories.

The war of the Triple Alliance motivated the settlement of the first Creoles in the area, since the city of Corrientes had been taken by the Paraguayan army. Starting in 1870, the presence of a pier, the cheap indigenous labor and the high amount of forest resources motivated the presence of obrajes. Arms and drink trafficking, the arrival of individuals outside the law ended up forming a series of small white nuclei on the west coast of Paraná. According to the Chief Captain of the port of Corrientes, the opposite banks lived approximately 1,000 people who worked in the obrajes.

The Beginnings

The beginning of Barranqueras is closely linked to that of Resistencia, since the surveyor Juan Dillón -when he had to measure Resistencia in 1878- already designated the area as suitable for the arrival of products for the colony, and the trace The initial resistance movement reached the port, where some settlers had settled.

The rods are low, three or four meters only. Barranqueras currently has a shelter and several houses, of poor appearance, form a population nucleus. There they embark on woods, the main bouquet of trade in this region, and they see large quantities of huge beams, which recall that we are near the large forests.

Gabriel Carrasco (1854-1908), journalist and mayor rosarino

In 1891, surveyor Juan F. Arias measured approximately 12 ha, next to the Barranqueras stream, in lot 9 of the Ensanche of Colonia Resistencia. At that time the port was called Juárez Celman. The surveyor took as a base a pre-existing building (currently located in the port square) with an 83º angle, so the blocks have a rhomboid shape instead of the usual square shape.

In 1894 the growth of the place motivated the Municipal Council of Resistencia to decide to create the first school in the place, with rural characteristics. However, the first settlers ran the risk of being expelled at any time, since the lands in question belonged to Colonel Manuel Fernández Oro, who had won them as a prize for his expeditions through the desert. This situation was corrected by means of a decree of President Manuel Quintana in 1904 that revoked part of the concession to allocate it to the incipient town. In 1906, a new measurement had to be made due to the disorderly growth of the town, which covered twice the hectares of the initial measurement.

The Port

Barranqueras silos very close to the port.

The pier that from the beginning was used for the transport of merchandise, in 1885 already had a regular service (although without an established schedule) to Corrientes. Soon the traffic began to intensify, and several problems arose: the lack of appropriate roads to Resistencia, the lack of a pier, and the claim of former owners on neighboring lands. The first improvements came in 1906, with the installation of a small wooden jetty that allowed shallow draft ships to dock; the larger vessels depended on a pontoon owned by the shipping company Compañía Argentina de Navegación Nicolás Mihanovich Limitada. The following is the comment of a chronicler before the visit of the Minister of Foreign Affairs Dr. Manuel Montes de Oca to Barranqueras:

A port full of cargo and unloading vessels, goods everywhere, machinery, steam sawmills, trains in activity and a multitude of workers in full labor, railways of importance in construction and trace of new railways.

Years later -due to the intervention of Governor D. Gregorio López before the national government- the territorial claims of former concessionaires were dismissed, and the port thus had a greater extension. Since the river was the only safe means of transportation at that time, the port soon began to attract factories in its vicinity, and along with them more movement and workers who settled in the area. Agricultural production also began to grow in the interior of the -at that time- Chaco National Territory, and the lack of deposits caused the spoilage of numerous merchandise due to exposure to the elements.

The construction of the pier began in 1921, after intense local efforts. The local community already considered at that time that Barranqueras -even with its precarious facilities- surpassed all the ports on the Paraná River except Rosario. coastal defense of 600 m and 5 sheds with capacity for 2500 t each. These renovated facilities plus the cotton boom increased the volume and importance of the ports of Barranqueras and Vilelas considerably, going from 162,415 t of cargo in 1928 to 326,429 t in 1946. A year later the automobile raft trips began that would unite the ports of Corrientes and Barranqueras.

The Railroad

The first railway -which served to connect it with Resistencia and some neighboring colonies- arrived in 1905. Its success led to its being extended just two years later to reach the town of Puerto Tirol and then Colonia Popular.

The second railway line to arrive was the FF.CC. Francés from La Sabana to Barranqueras which was inaugurated on May 17, 1907. The railway was part of an extensive network, the Rosario - Barranqueras line being the longest at 740 km. The company that owned the train had strong ties to the logging companies that dominated the economy of the Chaco and northern Santa Fe province at the turn of the century XX. This railway line was later raised, except for the section that runs through the south of the Chaco province, which connects with the railway line inaugurated later, which was the most important for the Chaco.

This last railway was initially known as Barranqueras al Oeste, whose construction began in 1909, and its construction marked the path of colonization of the national territory, allowing the population up to that moment to around Resistencia you will enter the Chaco geography. Ultimately, it reached the town of Metán in Salta, allowing the direct connection of northwestern Argentina with the port on the Paraná River.

The road to Resistencia

Homenaje al Bicentenario de la Independencia Argentina.

Although Resistencia is located just 17 km from Corrientes, its growth was practically insular. To reach the Paraná coast, they had to make long detours on foot, or cross semi-submerged areas between estuaries and floodwaters. The road to Barranqueras was surrounded by high grasslands, sugar cane plantations and Indian huts, the only important point was a cotton gin in the La Liguria area (today the Resistencia neighborhood bordering Barranqueras).; all this made the paving of said route a work requested from very early on. The first attempt was made in 1893, although it did not materialize due to lack of financial resources. In 1904, Governor Enrique Luzuriaga reported that he had obtained $80,000 for the start of the work, although the filling only began in 1909 and the paving itself in 1925, to conclude 5 years later.

The road was the extension of the 9 de Julio avenue that starts in the central square of Resistencia. In the same avenue, at height 3500 is the Regiment, and it has an extension of approximately 1000 meters. In this way, the Regiment begins in Resistencia and ends at the limit with Barranqueras. Avenida 9 de Julio, was cut between numbers 700 and 1000 by the Argüello lagoon, and continued without curves until 4,000, the point where the "Villa Monona" mansion was located. As the residents of this place refused to donate the land to widen the street, it had to turn and follow a diagonal course to Villa Rossi de Fazio, where it would once again go straight to the port.

Consequently, at the beginning of the 1960s the diagonal section, along with the straight section from Villa Rossi to the port, would be ceded to Diagonal Eva Perón and the extension of Avenida Laprida respectively, when a new paved section was built from No. 4000 to the current Gaboto Avenue, connecting Villa Florida and Emilia with the then semi-descamped Las Malvinas neighborhood, extending the Avenue.

The church

In 1937, at the initiative of the Bishop of Resistencia, Monsignor Nicolás de Carlo, the Immaculate Conception of Mary Parish was created, with jurisdiction over Barranqueras and Vilelas. In 1943, the same bishop asked the Congregation of the Work of Luis Orione to take care of the new Parish, which was immediately accepted.

The municipality

In 1892, the residents of the place petitioned for the creation of an autonomous municipal entity. This request was denied under a law that required municipalities to have at least 20 km of sides, something impossible for Barranqueras because it has the river on one side and Resistencia on the other. This is how it was only in 1959, with Provincial Law No. 236, that the municipality could be created. This condition was lost, between 1963 and 1965 (thanks to the coup that overthrew Arturo Frondizi in the Presidency of the Nation), when Barranqueras and Puerto Vilelas were reintegrated into Resistencia, which was annulled with provincial law No. 555/64.

The Argentine economic crisis of 2001, plus some shady management of public accounts caused several shocks in the municipal structure, which was only able to be reestablished in 2003 thanks to the help provided by the nation. Barranqueras was elevated to a first category municipality, and is historically the third most important in the province of Chaco.

Statue of the Spanish Constitution

The statue of the Spanish Constitution, known locally as the "Estatua de Villa Monona", was sculpted by the Italian sculptor Leone Tomassi, between 1950 and 1954, being the sculptor in charge of sculpting the rest of the statues destined for the upper façade of the building of the Faculty of Engineering of the City of Buenos Aires, at that time used by the Eva Perón Foundation, so the first destination of the statue was in said enclosure.

After the Revolución Libertadora of 1955, with the subsequent cultural overthrow of Peronism in the country, most of the statues on the site were stolen or destroyed.

During the de facto presidency of José María Guido, 2 of the 10 statues that had been removed were rescued, being the Monument to General San Martín and the Statue of the Constituents, both donated to the province of Chaco, the first being placed in the access roundabout to the Resistencia Airport and the second one originally destined in the place where the building of the Chaco Government House is located, in the City of Resistencia, although without success, since the base where it would be located did not resisted the weight of it, presenting the risk of it being destroyed by a fall, for which the decision was made to place it at the intersection of Avenidas 9 de Julio and España on November 23, 1962, since then being an icon of Barranqueras and serving as a physical delimiter of the territorial jurisdictions of Resistencia and Barranqueras

Economy

In addition to the aforementioned port movement and lumber mills that gave rise to the town, commerce and industry would gradually take a place in the development of the region. At the end of the XIX century, the first wholesaler was already installed in front of the port: Nicanor Atuña, who supplied items to shops in the interior of the province and ports located on the Paraguay River.

Juan Manuel de Rossi was the pioneer of the industrialization of the place. In 1887 he arrived in the area and installed a sawmill, then began to manufacture spurge, peanut and cotton oil. Not only did he give rise to the neighborhood known as La Liguria, but he also donated land for the construction of a post office building and for what would later become the National School No. 13. Other businessmen who helped the town grow were the owners of the Producer of Tanino "Z", who helped build the first police station, a primary school and the road to Puerto Vilelas. In 1936 the first cotton gin would be installed. The facilities continued to appear, especially those dedicated to the distribution of products for the growing population, given the proximity of the port.

As of 2006, the port facilities do not have the movement that the port authorities and the local community would like them to have, despite the investments made in it during the 1990s, and not having major competitors in the area. Among the main shipments that leave the port are cotton, Jujuy mining production, quebracho extract, wood, leather and charcoal (one of the fastest growing products in recent years). The main works to promote greater use of the port include dredging from Santa Fe to the North so that deep-draft ships can arrive, and the reactivation of the General Belgrano Railroad, which links the city of Salta with this city. Slowly, with the help of the current government of Jorge Milton Capitanich, Barranqueras is returning to what it was at the beginning, but with less importance. The works carried out so far have improved connectivity with the port today with the view of the entire province since it is located in the heart of Mercosur. Population growth at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century occurred as a consequence of the extension of the city of Resistencia, for which Barranqueras serves as a commuter town, and not as part of its own economic movement, which was the situation in the the beginning. Commercial activity is increasingly important in the area, with the main businesses grouping around Diagonal Eva Perón. In Barranqueras, some upper-middle class neighborhoods are mixed together with some of the largest neighborhoods of the Gran Resistencia.

Toponymy

There is some evidence that the place was called Barranca de San Fernando in the middle of the s. XIX. The name comes from the high ravines present in the area (which includes some nearby islands such as Santa Rosa Island). The denomination of Barranqueras (synonymous with ravines) however was the one that was imposed at the same time, it is not well known why the term Barranqueras replaced that of Barrancas. With the appearance of the pier from where the wood was shipped, the name Puerto de Barranqueras arose.

Another version affirms that a barraca existed in the place since the middle of the last century, that is, a deposit of skins and skins that were previously dried and salted and accumulated there for later sale. The first settlers would then have referred to the place as the ravine. Anyway, the first version is much more accepted.

A final version refers to the barranqueras (women of the ravines or barracks), that is, the first women who inhabited the place almost at the same time as the obrajes. The barranqueras were prostitutes whose services were not only acquired by the workers, but also by the boats that linked Asunción with Buenos Aires, and they used to stay for several days due to their presence. In defense of this argument, some cite the sudden change of name that General Dónovan made to the place, calling it Puerto Juárez Celman, plus the reluctance of some priests to use that name.

Barranqueras was the name not only for the current city, but also for the branch of the Paraná River that flows there (Riacho Barranqueras), and the island located in front of it, which retained the name of Isla Barranqueras until 1958. The neighboring town of Puerto Vilelas was initially known as Barranquitas (probably because of its proximity to the larger town), and the mouths of the Atajo and Quiá streams were also known as Barranqueras. Finally, the Central Norte Argentino Railway station took the name of Barranqueras in 1942.

Methods of communication

Boats on the Barranqueras river in the viewpoint adjacent to the port.

• Fluvial access: all year round, minimum 10-foot channel heating from the south channel. The dredging of the Paraná River to the place and the Barranqueras river in all its extension are works frequently requested by local governments as measures for the hierarchization and reactivation of the port.
• Road access: the main access route is the National Route 16, which links with the Provincial Route 63 to 6.3 kilometers of the historic city. Provincial Route 63 is born in the historic centre and after intersecting Route 16, it reaches Puerto Antequera and the Island of Cerrito. With Resistance it is linked through the avenues 9 de Julio, Castelli and Sovereign Nacional, while the avenues Spain and Justo Peregrino Farías make up the demarcatory limit between the two municipalities. For its part, the Avenidas Soberanía Nacional, General San Martín and Río Paraná link it to Puerto Vilelas, with the avenues Castelli and Mosconi as the demarcatory limit of both municipalities.
• Access FF.CC.: linked with the Ports of Antofagasta and Iquique, Chile; with the cities of La Paz and Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, and with the Northwest Argentino, with access to the Main Pier of the Puerto de Barranqueras. Due to the poor condition of the tracks, there are currently few cargo trains that arrive only to Aviá Teraí (Chaco Province).
• Air Access: International Airports of Resistance and Corrientes, 10 and 20 km respectively.

Population

It has 54,698 inhabitants (Indec, 2010), which represents an increase of almost 8% compared to the 50,738 inhabitants (Indec, 2001) in the previous census. This growth is somewhat less than that of the Gran Resistencia conglomerate in part due to the scarcity of land for housing construction, with almost all buildable sectors currently being occupied. Due to its population, Barranqueras is the second most populated city in Gran Resistencia and the third in the province. In the municipality the total amounted to 50,823 inhabitants (Indec, 2001).

Graphic of demographic evolution of Barranqueras between 1980 and 2010

Source of National Censuses of INDEC

Parishes of the Catholic Church in Barranqueras

Personalities

It is the town where the actor Claudio Levrino was born.