Misiones Province

This was an early area of Roman Catholic missionary activity by the Jesuits in what was then called the province of Paraguay, beginning in the early 17th century. In 1984, the ruins of four mission sites in Argentina were designated World Heritage Sites by UNESCO.

History

Indigenous peoples of various tribes lived in the area of the future province for thousands of years. At the time of European encounter, the area was occupied by the Kaingang and Xokleng tribes, later followed by the Guarani tribe. The first European to visit the region, Sebastian Cabot, discovered Apipé Falls while navigating the Paraná River in December 1527. In 1541 Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca reached the Iguazú Falls.

In the 17th century, members of the Society of Jesus came to the region as missionaries, initially led by Diego de Torres Bello (1551–1638). From 1609 onwards the Jesuits established a string of Jesuit Reductions, most notably that of San Ignacio (founded in 1610). In a few years they set up 30 mission villages. They taught the Guarani western-style agriculture and crafts. Their crafts were sold and traded along the river and they shared in the Reductions' prosperity.

In 1759 the Portuguese government, at the insistence of its anti-Jesuit Secretary of State, the Marquis de Pombal, ordered all Reductions closed in its territory (which then included much of present-day Misiones Province). The Marquis eventually prevailed in 1773 on Pope Clement XIV to have the Jesuit Order suppressed. With the abandoning of the missions, the prosperous trade surrounding these Reductions quickly vanished. Colonists imposed a brutal plantation economy in the region, forcing the Guarani to act as slave labor.

In 1814, Gervasio Posadas, the Director of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata, declared Misiones annexed to Argentina's Corrientes (at this time Argentina was quasi-independent but nominally still a Spanish colony). Argentina did not exert de facto control over Misiones, which was claimed by several countries and effectively governed itself. In 1830 Argentine military forces from Corrientes Province took control of Misiones.

In 1838, Paraguay occupied Misiones, claiming the area on the basis that the Misiones population consisted of indigenous Guarani, the major ethnic group of Paraguay. In 1865, Paraguayan forces invaded Misiones again in what became the War of the Triple Alliance (1864–1870). Following the defeat of Paraguay and its peace agreement with Argentina (eventually signed in 1876), Paraguay gave up its claim to the Misiones territory.

Although Argentina had claimed Misiones since 1814, academics tend to interpret Argentine possession of Misiones as beginning with the defeat of Paraguay in the War of the Triple Alliance. John Lynch writes that "the treaty of alliance [i.e. against Paraguay] contained secret clauses providing for the annexation of disputed territory in northern Paraguay by Brazil and regions in the east and west of Paraguay by Argentina [...]. After a long and harrowing war (1865–70), Argentina prised from a prostrate Paraguay territory in Misiones between the Paraná and the Uruguay and other land further west." Scobie states that "the political status of Misiones remained vague" and that Argentina gained the region "as a by-product of the Paraguayan war in the 1860s".

The War of the Triple Alliance left Paraguay much impoverished, and Misiones benefited economically from belonging to Argentina. In 1876 the Argentine President Nicolás Avellaneda, assisted by his close friend, General Pietro Canestro (an Italian nobleman who devoted much of his life and wealth to the achievement and sustainability of the peace in the region), proclaimed the Immigration and Colonization Law. This law fostered the immigration of European colonists in order to populate the vast unspoiled Argentinian territories.

On 22 December 1881 the national government in Buenos Aires detached the National Territory of Misiones from the province of Corrientes.

Several colonizing companies formed under the Immigration and Colonization Law. One of them, Adolf Schwelm's Eldorado Colonización y Explotación de Bosques Ltda. S.A., founded the city of Eldorado in 1919 with a port on the Upper Paraná. Its agricultural colonies and experimental farms, the orange- and grapefruit-tree plantations, and the cultivation of yerba mate, the mills and the dryers for such product are characteristic of this area. Swedish-Argentines became well known for growing yerba mate.

Misiones received many immigrants, mostly from Europe, coming mainly via Southern Brazil. Some came from Buenos Aires, and from Eastern Europe, in particular large numbers of Poles and Ukrainians. Since then, Misiones has continued to benefit economically and has developed politically within Argentina. It has been successfully integrated into the Argentine state. As of 2016 control of the province is not contested. On December 10, 1953, the "National Territory of Misiones" gained provincial status in accordance with Law 14.294, and its constitution was approved on April 21, 1958.

Misiones received more attention from national policy-makers following a 1973 international agreement to construct the Yacyretá hydroelectric dam on a point in the Paraná River shared by Paraguay and Corrientes Province. When the dam became fully operative in the 1990s, the Paraná's waters all along the Misiones shores rose. They flooded lands that the dam's authorities had failed to clear and condition adequately, resulting in the onset of mosquito-transmitted illnesses, such as leishmaniasis, yellow fever, dengue, and malaria. The entire Misiones shores along the Paraná River is now confined by two dams, one of them Yaciretá, downstream of the river, and the other Itaipú, located in Brazil and Paraguay, upstream of the river and north of Puerto Iguazú. As of 2016 Argentina was pursuing an agreement with Paraguay to expand the reservoir works in order to double the facility's electricity production.