Itinerarios coloniales: las expediciones a las Salinas Grandes pampeanas a fines del siglo XVIII

• Main Authors: Laura Aylén Enrique, Sabrina Lorena Vollweiler
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Centre de Recherches sur les Mondes Américains 2020-10-01
• Series: Nuevo mundo - Mundos Nuevos
• Subjects: Salinas Grandes; Hispano-Creole expeditions; “tierra adentro”; south colonial border; itineraries
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/nuevomundo/81213

We are given to the study of those expeditions that during the late colonial period connected the city of Buenos Aires to Salinas Grandes (great salines) – located today in La Pampa province, Argentina – with the purpose of proving the population with the extracted mineral, a fundamental resource for the preservation of produce. Towards the end of the 18th century, the territory which extended beyond the influence of the Salado river – in the nowadays province of Buenos Aires – and the series of small fortresses that protected it were under the control of indigenous groups non subdued to the authority of the viceroyalty. In this work we aim to reconstruct the itinerary known as “camino a salinas” (road to salines) and investigate its spots, for which we identified and localized the passage sites often employed by hispanic-creolle parties. The study of the salina roads allows us to analyze the spots and circulation routes of the expeditions, as constitutive part of the hispanic strategies for the use of the space such known as “the hinterlands”.