The Conquest of the River Plate (1535-1555)

Ulrich Schmidel's account is among the earliest European testimonies to survive from the Rio de la Plata, preserving a rare, unflinching look at the chaotic first decades of Spanish colonization in what would become Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay. A German mercenary who arrived with Pedro de Mendoza's disastrous 1535 expedition, Schmidel spent twenty years navigating starvation, brutal conflicts with the Querandí and other indigenous peoples, the failed founding of Buenos Aires, and the endless power struggles among conquistadors. His narrative captures what official histories omit: the desperation, the improvised survival, and the raw encounters between Europeans and native populations before the colonial machinery smoothed itself into myth. This is not propaganda or glorification but a participant's ledger of failure, cannibalism under siege, and the slow, violent birth of an empire's southern frontier. For historians of Latin America and anyone fascinated by how empires actually begin, in blood and mismanagement, this text remains indispensable.