Chaco Province

Chaco Province

The Province of Chaco (in Spanish: Provincia del Chaco) is a province in northeastern Argentina. With an area of 99,633 km2 (38,469 sq mi) and a population of 1,055,259 as of 2010, it is the 12th most extensive and the 9th most populated of the 23 Argentine provinces. Chaco is bordered by Salta and Santiago del Estero to the west, Formosa to the north, Corrientes to the east, and Santa Fe to the south. The province also has an international border with the Paraguayan Department of Ñeembucú. The capital and largest city is Resistencia.

The area was originally inhabited by various hunter-gatherers tribes of the Mataco-Guaicuru language family. The first European settlement was founded by Spanish Conquistador Alonso de Vera y Aragón in 1585 under the name of Concepción de Nuestra Señora, but it was abandoned in 1632. The region remained largely unexplored and uninhabited by either Europeans or Argentines until the late 19th century, when after the Paraguayan War several Argentine military expeditions seized it from the aboriginals and the National Territory of Chaco was created in 1884. The territory was finally provincialized in 1951 under the name Provincia Presidente Perón, and in 1955 adopted its current denomination.

Chaco is among the provinces with the worst social indicators in the country, with 49.3% of its population living below the poverty line, and 17.5% of children aged between 2 and 5 in a state of malnutrition. Among Argentine provinces, it ranks last by GDP per capita and 21st by Human Development Index, above neighbors Formosa and Santiago del Estero.