Posadas

Posadas traces its earliest roots to 25 March 1615, when the Jesuit Roque González de Santa Cruz founded a mission called Anunciación de Itapúa on this bank of the Paraná; ten years later it was moved across the river to the site of today's Encarnación. In the 19th century the left bank was disputed between Paraguay and Argentina. Between 1838 and 1840 the Paraguayan ruler Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia built a defensive wall here, and the trinchera gave the place the name Trincheras de San José; the settlement grew as a supply post for the allied armies in the War of the Triple Alliance from 1865.

In 1870 Corrientes made the village the head of a new department, and on 22 September 1879 it was renamed Posadas after Gervasio Antonio de Posadas, an early supreme director of the United Provinces. In 1884 Congress transferred it to the new national territory of Misiones as its capital. Its river port shipped out the province's yerba mate and timber, and in 1953 Misiones became a province with Posadas as its capital.

The National University of Misiones was founded here in 1973. On 2 April 1990 the San Roque González de Santa Cruz Bridge opened to Encarnación, after a decade of delays, and the Yacyretá dam downstream raised the river along the shore. Its binational authority financed the Costanera, opened in 1999 and extended through 2012, and in 2014 an international commuter train began running across the bridge.

Misiones has the peculiarity of sharing about 90 per cent of its borders with other countries, and Posadas lives that closeness. Families, shoppers and workers cross the bridge to Encarnación every day, the local Spanish is full of Guaraní words, and music, food and habits are shared between the two banks. Andresito, the Guaraní leader Andrés Guacurarí who governed Misiones during the independence wars, is the city's hero, with a monument by the river and a museum in his name.

The city also reflects the immigrant history of the province. Swedish, Polish, Ukrainian and other European settlers arrived in Misiones from the end of the 19th century, and their descendants live alongside Guaraní and Paraguayan families and migrants from the interior of the province. The city's Manuel Antonio Ramírez amphitheatre hosts the Festival Nacional de la Música del Litoral.

Posadas is a student city as well as a government one, and life gathers by the river. Carnival brings comparsas, costumed dance troupes, to the streets, and on warm evenings the Costanera fills with people walking, cycling, fishing and sharing tereré, with the lights of Encarnación across the water.

The municipality of Posadas counted about 327,500 people at the 2022 census and the metropolitan area about 391,500, close to a third of the province's 1.28 million people. It was the fastest-growing city in Argentina in the decade to 2010, and new housing estates and districts have spread across the municipality.

The provincial government, the university, hospitals and commerce are the main employers, along with yerba mate and rice mills, citrus juice plants and other light industry. Trade with Paraguay is a constant, rising and falling with the exchange rate, and when prices favour one side, queues build at the bridge. The Costanera has made the riverside districts sought after, while informal settlements that first appeared in the 1960s, after a crisis in yerba mate farming pushed families off the land, are still part of the city.

The heat sets the pace: early starts, a long break after lunch when shops close, and busy evenings. Schools, offices and shops reopen in the late afternoon, and at night people gather on the Costanera and in the squares of the centre.

The food of Posadas belongs to the upper Paraná and is shared with Paraguay across the river. Chipá, small cheese breads made with cassava starch, are sold by vendors on the streets and buses. Sopa paraguaya, a dense cornbread with cheese and onion despite its name, chipá guazú, made with fresh maize, and mbeyú, a cassava-starch pancake with cheese, are everyday foods, and reviro is a simple dish of the region.

River fish are the pride of the table. Surubí, a large catfish, is grilled, stewed or breaded as a milanesa, and pacú and dorado are cooked over coals or wrapped in foil. Mandioca, cassava, is boiled or fried as a side, and chicharrón, fried pork, is common. Asado, often with beef from the grasslands of Corrientes, is the weekend meal, and the parrillas on the Costanera serve it every evening.

Yerba mate is the product of Misiones, grown on plantations in the province, and it is drunk hot as mate in the cool hours and cold as tereré, often with herbs, through the day. Sweets include dulce de mamón, papaya in syrup, and cakes of cassava flour.