Sancti Spiritu

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Sancti Spiritu (also Sancti Spiritus ) was the first Spanish settlement on the territory of what is now Argentina . It was founded on February 27, 1527 by Sebastián Gaboto on the Río Paraná about 60 km north of today's Rosario , but had to be abandoned again in 1529. Today, near the ruins of the settlement, the city of Puerto Gaboto is located .

history

The Gaboto expedition originally had the Moluccas as its destination, which was to be reached via the Strait of Magellan . On the island of Santa Catalina , however, she met survivors of the expedition of Juan Díaz de Solís , the discoverer of the Río de la Plata , who had died in an Indian attack in 1517. These told Gaboto of a Sierra de la Plata , a mountain range in which there should be large deposits of silver and by which today's Peru was meant. Gaboto then decided without authorization to break off the expedition to the Moluccas and to conquer these mountains instead.

Sancti Spiritu was then founded as a base on the banks of the Río Paraná , together with another fortress in present-day Uruguay , to which Gaboto gave the long-used name Banda Oriental . It consisted of 20 houses in which about 200 people lived. Relations with the Indians in the region were initially very friendly, so they helped both with the construction of the settlement and with the agriculture around the place. The first weddings between Indians and Spaniards in the region took place in the town's chapel.

Because of a misjudgment by Gaboto, who tried to gain respect by severely punishing the Indians for minor offenses, the relationship between the two groups tipped over in 1529. In September they attacked the settlement, captured it and killed many of the conquistadors. Gaboto himself was not in Sancti Spiritu when the incident occurred. When he found out about this, he returned to Spain, where he was sentenced to four years in exile for disregarding the rules of his superiors to travel to the Moluccas. His stories about the Sierra del Plata influenced numerous seafarers who set out for South America in the following decades with the aim of finding it.

In 1573 Jerónimo Luis de Cabrera tried to re-establish the place to get a port for the newly created city of Córdoba . However, due to a dispute with Juan de Garay , the founder of Buenos Aires , it did not materialize. It was not until 1891 that a new settlement was built on the site under the name of Puerto Gaboto .

Sancti Spiritu in literature

A legend widespread in Argentina, which was made famous in a poem by the Paraguayan writer Ruy Díaz de Guzmán in 1610, tells of the Andalusian Lucía Miranda , who lived with her husband Sebastián Hurtado in Sancti Spiritu. The chief of the local Indian group fell in love with her, but when she rejected him, Lucía and her husband were killed. According to legend, this is the real reason for the destruction of Sancti Spiritu. However, it has not yet been proven that a woman was involved in the expedition, but the existence of Hurtado has been proven.

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Coordinates: 32 ° 26 ′ 31 ″  S , 60 ° 48 ′ 19 ″  W