Between the Atlantic and the Andes: Trade and Transportation in Late Colonial Argentina

Gustavo L. Paz

From the development of Potosí in the late sixteenth century, the economy of the Rio de la Plata (Argentina) pivoted around the production and circulation of silver. The cities between Buenos Aires and Potosí supplied the urban and mining centers of the Andes with both raw and manufactured goods. Among those products sent to the Andean markets, mules raised and finished in various parts of the Rio de la Plata figured prominently. Mules and silver were the two key commodities involved in a long-distance trade route that linked the Atlantic to the Andes in an encompassing economic space that collapsed only in the nineteenth century.

[WP # 99014]