Santiago del Estero Province

Santiago del Estero, often called just Santiago, is a province in northern Argentina. It borders Salta, Chaco, Santa Fe, Córdoba, Catamarca, and Tucumán.

Before the Spanish arrived, the land was home to the Juríes-Tonocotés, Sanavirones, and other Indigenous groups. Today, around 100,000 people in the province speak a local form of Quechua, making this the southernmost place where the Inca language is still spoken. How and when Quechua reached this area is uncertain—it might have come with Indigenous troops who accompanied the first Spanish expeditions.

Diego de Rojas first entered this territory in 1542. In 1553, Francisco de Aguirre founded the city of Santiago del Estero, the northernmost settlement established by Spanish conquistadors arriving from the Pacific. The region then shifted between different administrations: it was part of the intendency of Tucumán, then the Audiencia de Charcas, then back to Tucumán, where it later became the capital. However, the bishop moved to Córdoba in 1699, and the government relocated to Salta two years later. The silver trade route between Buenos Aires and the Viceroyalty of Peru also bypassed Santiago, passing through Tucumán instead. These changes greatly diminished the city’s importance, and by the early 1800s, it had fewer than 5,000 residents.

When the intendency of Salta was created, Santiago del Estero was reassigned to the new intendency of Tucumán. During the national turmoil, Santiago broke away from Tucumán in 1820 and came under the control of Governor Juan Felipe Ibarra, who favored autonomy. One of the province’s most effective early advocates was Amancio Jacinto Alcorta, a composer of sacred music who represented Santiago from 1826 to 1862. He helped modernize commerce and taxation in the unstable young nation and promoted domestic banking and credit. The provincial constitution was written in 1856.

At the start of the 20th century, Santiago gained some land that had been disputed with Chaco Province. By then, the province had four cities and 35,000 inhabitants, most living in poor conditions. The Los Quiroga dam, built in 1950, allowed irrigation to boost productivity in the otherwise dry landscape.

In the 1890s, national officials learned of a little-known tourist route northwest of the city of Santiago del Estero. Despite having no transportation or lodging, a steady stream of visitors rode on horseback for hours over rough terrain to reach a cluster of mineral springs that had barely been mentioned since Spaniards first saw them in 1543. The Argentine Department of Agriculture asked University of Buenos Aires chemistry professor Hercules Corti to study the springs. His 1918 report declared the Río Hondo Hot Springs among the most therapeutic on earth. At a time when mineral springs were popular for health tourism, Río Hondo quickly drew visitors from across Argentina. It was designated a public resort in 1932, and the first formal hotels opened in the late 1940s.

In 1948, the province elected Peronist activist Carlos Arturo Juárez as governor. He became Santiago’s central political figure in the late 20th century, energetic and ambitious, and soon indispensable to local politics, often through proxies. Considered a caudillo, by the 1990s he was ordering the deaths of opponents, including former Governor César Iturre in 1996 and Bishop Gerardo Sueldo in 1998. However, the murders of two local young women exposed Juárez’s assassin, Antonio Musa Azar. Faced with undeniable links to Musa Azar’s history of killings and extortion, Juárez resigned in late 2002. His wife, Nina Aragonés de Juárez, was chosen to replace him; she was removed from office by President Néstor Kirchner in March 2004.

Geographically, the province lies almost entirely in the flat Gran Chaco region, with some depressions. These depressions have formed lagoons, especially at Bañado de Figueroa, Bañado de Añatuya, and near the Salado and Dulce River basins. The Sumampa and Ambargasta sierras result from the Pampas’ influence in the southwest. The soil, rich in lime and salt, is arid, supporting semi-deserts and steppes. The climate is subtropical with a dry season and high temperatures year-round. The annual average temperature is 21.5 °C, rising to 24 °C in recent years, with highs up to 50 °C and a noticeable warming trend since 1970. Surprisingly, the maximum was 38 °C before 1910; minimums have risen from -5 °C to -2 °C. The dry winter season gets about 120 mm of precipitation, while the annual average is 700 mm.

According to the 2022 national census, the province has 1,054,028 inhabitants. The economy, like most in northern Argentina, is relatively underproductive. In 2006, it totaled an estimated US$2.863 billion, with a per capita output of US$3,559—the lowest in the nation.