ABSTRACT
The provinces of Mendoza, San Juan, and San Luis are together known as Cuyo. During the dip in Bolivian silver production in the eighteenth century, Cuyo partook of the same stagnation that settled over the rest of Spanish South America. Cuyo's wine is like other products of the interior of Argentina in that the combination of tariff protection and subsidies produced an excess supply. Protection of the wine industry, of course, brought substantial benefits to Cuyo at the expense of consumers and taxpayers on the pampas. Provincial governments in Cuyo, beginning in the 1880s, pursued an extremely aggressive and imaginative campaign to promote grape cultivation and wine production in the region. Despite the decline in the share of the contratista, the minifundio still predominates in the vineyards of Cuyo. Pastoral activities in Cuyo are even more primitive than in the Northwest because of the extreme aridity of the region.
