Long valued for its many springs and fertile land, the area had been home to the
Charrúa and
Araucanian people when it was first noticed by
Spanish colonist around 1620. Becoming a posada along the trade route between colonial
Buenos Aires and
Córdoba, the settlement was given its name on 3 January 1626, for the
parchment paper (document lost by a group of Spaniards) found there and conforming to an Araucanian term meaning "red soil." The settlement's first businesses were established in 1700 and in 1749, recurrent attacks by displaced natives led to the construction of a fort. These attacks did not cease, however, and on 8 August 1751 the settlement was destroyed. The site continued to be of interest, and Commander Juan González ordered the village rebuilt on orders from the Buenos Aires colonial government in 1769. The Curate of nearby
Arrecifes ordained a Parish in Pergamino in 1779 and the new
Viceroyalty of Río de la Plata assigned the area a
partido (county) in 1784. The fort played a prominent role during the initial battles in the war for independence and, in 1815, was the site of a mutiny led by Col.
Ignacio Álvarez Thomas against the fledgling nation's Head of State, Director
Carlos María de Alvear. Col. Álvarez Thomas' coup d'état against Director de Alvear's brief though highly divisive autocracy averted the dissolution of the
United Provinces of the River Plate, the confederacy that later became Argentina. Following the struggle for independence, the progressive new Governor of Buenos Aires,
Martín Rodríguez, assigned Pergamino a
Justice of the Peace in 1822 and the first school was opened in 1828. The town soon became home to a number of
abattoirs and following the 1829 rise of Governor
Juan Manuel de Rosas (whose family interests centered around cattle-raising) a close alliance developed between the governor and Pergamino's most prominent families, the Acevedos and the Anchorenas; Rosas' repressive regime, however, resulted in the sole school's closure in 1838. Pergamino's population, now mostly European immigrants and their children, nearly tripled to almost 30,000 between 1895 and 1914; this era saw the establishment of important
Basque,
Piemontese,
Provençal and
Lebanese communities, as well as the inauguration of the
Hotel Roma in 1913, one of the best-known
Art Nouveau structures in the area. One immigrant from the
Piedmont, Enrique Venini, founded Pergamino's first newspaper,
La Opinión, in 1917. The city's growing immigrant communities also included a sizable contingent of British
railway engineers and other technicians associated with the rapidly expanding
railways. A number of these staffers and the Central Argentine Railway's director, Ronald Leslie, organized Pergamino's first
football team on 18 November 1918, christening it in honor of a British Field Marshal famed for his roles in the
Boer War and in
World War I, Gen.
Douglas Haig.
Club Atlético Douglas Haig has enjoyed regional prominence in the
Argentine B League. Pergamino's main church and city hall were both completed in 1930. Following a decade of prosperity, however, the
Great Depression led to the ruin of the majority of the area's small landholders. The city soon began to recover, and celebrated the opening of the Municipal Fine Arts Museum in 1936, for instance. A devastating flood in 1939 led to construction of levees and canals along the Pergamino River. Growing to nearly 50,000 people by 1947, the city's first large manufacturing establishments began to operate at this time. Pergamino's agricultural sector, however, was strained by the creation of a national export grain purchaser, the
IAPI, by President
Juan Perón in 1946; although Pergamino benefited from IAPI investment in irrigation and other infrastructure works, the low prices the agency paid local growers also led to the bankruptcy of number. The dissolution of the IAPI following Perón's overthrow in 1955 and the 1956 establishment of the
National Agricultural Laboratory (INTA) in Pergamino helped revitalize the sector in the area and nationally. The
elections of 1963 carried a native of Pergamino, Dr.
Arturo Illia, to the Presidency; President Illia prioritized economic growth while keeping national budgets nearly balanced, the combination of which helped lead to unprecedented growth in Pergamino. The city's first high-rises were built, as well as the industrial district; President Illia graced his birthplace with numerous visits during his tenure. The city was chosen as the site for the prestigious
National Viral Research Institute (INEVH) in 1978, and was home to one of the nation's first
cable television stations in 1985. The city's main daily,
La Opinión, closed in 1989 amid a national economic crisis. Financially distressed, the daily's founders, the Veninis, sold the company to local cable TV entrepreneur Hugo Apesteguía, the current owner. amid rising unemployment, crime rates and general pessimism, one of the most notable achievements in that difficult era was the establishment of the Pergamino Regional University, the city's first institution of higher learning, in 1993. The school was absorbed into the
National University of Northwestern Buenos Aires upon that latter entity's creation in 2002, and its Pergamino campus today enrolls about 500 students yearly. ==The city today==