ABSTRACT
Near the southern tip of South America, on the Atlantic coast, two rivers—the Uruguay and the Parana—come together and form an estuary that is almost 200 miles long and 140 miles at its widest. This estuary is known as Río de la Plata, or "river of silver," though in English, it is often called the River Plate. Much of the southern part of the continent is drained by these rivers, reaching as far north as Bolivia and as far east as Brazil. By the eighteenth century, the unwieldy Viceroyalty comprised virtually the entire southern continent except Brazil, so in 1776 it was divided, creating the Viceroyalty of the River Plate that included modern Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Bolivia. Argentina has a broad geographic and climate diversity that has greatly influenced its cultural development.
