, general and politician who governed the province and led the
Federalist Party. The first inhabitants of the area that is now Entre Ríos were the
Charrúa and
Chaná who each occupied separate parts of the region.
Spaniards entered in 1520, when
Juan Rodríguez Serrano ventured up the Uruguay River searching for the
Pacific Ocean. The first permanent Spanish settlement was erected in the current
La Paz Department at the end of the 16th century. As governor of
Asunción first and then of
Buenos Aires,
Hernandarias conducted expeditions to Entre Ríos unexplored lands.
Juan de Garay, after founding Santa Fe, explored this area, which he called
la otra banda ("the other bank"). However, the region remained entirely indigenous and uninhabited by
Europeans until a group of colonists from neighbouring Santa Fe Province settled on the Bajada del Paraná in the late seventeenth century, now the site of the provincial capital. At the same time towns appear, which we now know as
Nogoyá,
Victoria,
Gualeguay,
Gualeguaychú,
Concepción del Uruguay and
Concordia.
Tomás de Rocamora further explored the area in 1783 under the threat of a
Portuguese invasion from Brazil, and gave official status to many of the above-mentioned towns. He was also the first to refer to the region as
Entre Ríos. At this stage, European settlement was minimal, though during the
May Revolution, the few colonists in the cities along the Paraná shore supported
Manuel Belgrano and his army on his way to
Paraguay. On September 29, 1820, the leader (
caudillo)
Francisco Ramírez declared the territory an autonomous entity, the
Republic of Entre Ríos. This lasted until his assassination on July 10 of the next year. and
Germans in Entre Ríos. In 1853, in a meeting of all the provinces except
Buenos Aires, Paraná was elected as the capital of the
Argentine Confederation, and the Governor of Entre Ríos and leader
(caudillo) Urquiza as its first
president. The provincial capital was moved to Concepción del Uruguay. Later Urquiza, who had first won against Buenos Aires at the
Battle of Cepeda in 1859, let his troops move back in the even
Battle of Pavón in 1861, which allowed his rival
Bartolomé Mitre from Buenos Aires to become president. At the time he was fulfilling his third term as governor of the province from 1860 to 1864 and after a voluntary interruption was reelected in 1868, but he was assassinated in 1870 after altogether 16 years of governing before finishing his mandate, which had probably been ordered by his supportor
Ricardo López Jordán, not trusting him anymore. Urquiza encouraged
immigration through "colonization contracts", setting up many
agricultural colonies with European (mainly
Volga Germans,
Russians (including Russian
Jews and
Poles),
Italians,
Swiss and
French) settlers. According to data of the 1903 census, of the 425,373 inhabitants of the province, 153,067 were immigrants. ==Economy==