Current Time in Resistencia, Argentina

Resistencia is the capital of Chaco Province in the northeast of Argentina, standing on the Negro River a few kilometres from its confluence with the Paraná. It faces the city of Corrientes across the great river, to which it is joined by the long General Belgrano bridge. The surrounding country is the Gran Chaco, a vast plain of savanna, palm groves, wetlands and dry thorn forest, and the climate is subtropical, with humid, extremely hot summers and mild winters.

The city has around two hundred and ninety thousand inhabitants, and the metropolitan area including Barranqueras and Fontana approaches four hundred thousand. It is the administrative, commercial and educational centre of a province built on cotton, cattle, sunflowers, timber and the tannin extracted from the immensely hard quebracho tree, an industry that once made this region famous throughout the leather trade.

Resistencia was formally founded in 1878, when the national government settled a group of Friulian families from northern Italy on land at the edge of what was then a frontier region. The name refers to the resistance of the earlier settlement to hostile conditions, and the town grew quickly as the Chaco was opened to agriculture. Its founding population mixed Italian immigrants with criollo settlers and with the indigenous peoples of the region, above all the Qom, Wichí and Mocoví, whose communities remain an important part of provincial life.

What makes Resistencia unique is its identity as the city of sculptures. Since the middle of the twentieth century, largely through the work of a remarkable cultural society called El Fogón de los Arrieros, sculptures have been placed throughout the streets, squares and pavements, and there are now well over a thousand of them in wood, stone, metal and concrete. Every two years the city hosts an international sculpture biennial in which artists from around the world work in public over the course of a week, watched by thousands of spectators, and the finished pieces remain in the city. The result is one of the largest open air sculpture collections anywhere.

Other attractions include the Museum of the Chaco Man, which explores indigenous cultures and regional mythology, the provincial fine arts museum, the cathedral and the shaded central Plaza 25 de Mayo. The Río Negro ecological park and the wetlands nearby attract birdwatchers, and the Chaco National Park and the Impenetrable National Park lie further inland.

Buses provide public transport, the Belgrano bridge carries traffic to Corrientes and its airport, and the port of Barranqueras handles river cargo on the Paraná waterway.

The Universidad Nacional del Nordeste has several faculties here, including architecture and engineering, and there is a national technological university campus, giving the city a lively student atmosphere.

Resistencia is popular with visitors for its sculptures, its warm provincial culture and its position as the gateway to the wild landscapes of the Argentine Chaco.