Cuyo (Central Andes) historical timeline

Cuyo was settled from across the mountains rather than from the Atlantic, and that orientation shaped it for centuries.

Huarpe and the channels

The Huarpe farmed these valleys using irrigation channels fed from the rivers, growing maize, beans and squash in a landscape that supports nothing without water. Their system was adopted wholesale by the Spanish and is the basis of what exists today; the Huarpe themselves were largely destroyed by forced labour and disease within a century.

Governed from Chile

Mendoza was founded in 1561 by an expedition from Santiago de Chile, and Cuyo was administered from across the Andes until 1776, when it was transferred to the new viceroyalty at Buenos Aires. The mountain passes mattered more than the plains, and the region looked west.

The Army of the Andes

Jose de San Martin, appointed governor of Cuyo in 1814, spent two years here raising, equipping and training an army, and in January 1817 took it over the Andes through passes above 4,000 metres to defeat the Spanish in Chile — a logistical feat routinely compared with Hannibal’s. It is the region’s central historical claim.

The earthquake

On 20 March 1861 an earthquake destroyed Mendoza and killed a large share of its population. The rebuilt city was laid out with wide avenues and four squares around a central one, explicitly as earthquake refuges.

Wine and the railway

The railway from Buenos Aires arrived in 1885, Italian and Spanish immigrants brought vines and technique, and the modern industry followed — reinvented again in the 1990s when the focus shifted from volume to quality.