Salgado, José (c. 1775–1845)

José Salgado and his wife Pascuala Rivas were the founders of Lobos, a town in Buenos Aires Province, Argentina. Originally a merchant from Buenos Aires, in the late 1790s Salgado received a grant of land from the viceroy, José Vertiz. The land was located seventy miles from the Buenos Aires port and two miles north of the fort called San Pedro de los Lobos constructed in 1779 to secure the region from Indian attacks. Salgado and Rivas traveled to San Pedro de los Lobos and began to work on their land. They were fervent Catholics, and had to travel for days to find the chapel closest to their new home. In 1802 the Salgados, although among the poorest families in the region, used their savings to have a humble chapel built, which they called Nuestra Señora del Carmen. It officially opened in 1803, and became the social center of the thinly populated countryside around the fort. Until the 1820s the chapel's priest and the Salgados, recognized as the founders of the town of Lobos, were the only residents. In the decades that followed Salgado's death, Lobos became one of the most important agricultural centers in Buenos Aires Province. Lobos was also the town in which Juan Domingo Perón was born in 1895.

See alsoArgentina: The Colonial Period; Perón, Juan Domingo.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Angueira, Juan R. El pago de los Lobos: Noticias y apuntes. La Plata, Argentina: Taller de impresiones oficiales, 1937.

Levene, Ricardo. Historia de la provincia de Buenos Aires y la formación de sus pueblos. Buenos Aires: Archivo Histórico de la Provincia de Buenos Aires, 1941.

                                        Valeria Manzano