In Mendoza, the beautiful plazas that today shows us, were born with a logical aesthetic purpose and as a timely green lung that invited social recreation in the middle of a dry and arid climate. But, above all, they will emerge as an essential citizen protection against the tremors and earthquakes that hit the province. The memory was very fresh; Mendoza was devastated by that seismic catastrophe of March 1861. The earthquake of that year brought down the city. It totally destroyed it. It’s not exaggerated. It’s literal. Mendoza was devastated. A new city had to be rebuilt. Therefore, a new territorial planning launched an urban development plan in another space, which inevitably provided for a new construction scheme and a new defense system. In case of tremors, everyone had to run to the square. Therefore, the squares became strategic.
And so, far from that idyllic view that we all have of what a squarethe Frenchman Julio Balloffet, who came to Mendoza to look for his traveling companion, the scientist August Bravard (disappeared during the earthquake, later found dead under the rubble as one of the almost 5,000 victims of the catastrophe), was remained forever designing a city model that contemplated the construction of plazas public as absolutely necessary to protect society. He married Aurora del Corazón de Jesús Suárez from Mendoza in 1868 and helped create a new Mendoza.
The new City and its squares
After several projects to move the city to a new place (5 projects had been presented), and the Hacienda de San Nicolás (current center of Mendoza) was defined as the space where the new town would be built, the first thing Balloffet diagrammed was where they would be. located the plazas public. His starting plan was to build a square main at the center of a checkerboard and four squares at the different ends of the nascent city.
These spaces arranged for squares will be the first thing demarcated in the plans of the new city. At first, there was not a single weed in those plazas. But intelligence and strong political will determined that these places would be essential and could not be postponed. They had to be sustained, “against all winds and tides.” Building plazas meant protecting lives.
Thus, among ducks, cows, donkeys and street “chocos”, which crossed them daily, the central Plaza Parque (due to its extensive size) was born (open wastelands), later called Plaza Independencia, with a small lake in the center; Plaza Lima (current Plaza Italia); Plaza Montevideo, later Carlos Pellegrini and currently Plaza España; originally Plaza San Martín, which would later be Plaza Chile, when on June 5, 1904 the historic Plaza Juan Francisco Cobo was renamed and renamed San Martin Plaza taking the name of that one.
That precise day (June 5, 1904, 120 years of that name change are being commemorated) the monument with the equestrian image of the Liberator General San Martín was also inaugurated.
We must comment that in those times that the current San Martin Plaza It was called Juan Francisco Cobo (in honor of the Spaniard who introduced the poplar in Mendoza), it was also known as “the clock square”, since in 1883 an enormous tower was erected in the center of the square in which I found a 4-sided clock. The people of Mendoza were guided by that clock for years until the current equestrian monument of San Martín was inaugurated. That tower was demolished and the clock was donated to the Patricias Mendocinas school many years later.
San Martin Square
The initiative for the name change and the sculpture came from the Chilean friar Pacífico Otero (one of the great biographers of San Martín) who proposed the construction of a large monument to remember San Martín. It was inaugurated during the time of Elías Villanueva as governor and the work was carried out by José F. García in cast bronze. It is the figure of the General, mounted on horseback, with his index finger pointing towards the horizon towards the mountain, the glorious scene of the crossing of the Andes. It is a replica of the original sculpture by José Luis Daumas that is located in the homonymous square of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires.
The spectacular stone base that the central monument presents are granite rocks brought from Uspallata and transported by the Trasandino Railway. While the pillars that support the chains around the monument are iron cannon bodies cast in the Buenos Aires War Arsenal and donated by the National Army. Another historical symbol that the square offers is a sapling of the pine tree of the convent of San Lorenzo (Santa Fe), remembering the tree where General San Martín wrote the report of the victory of the battle of San Lorenzo.
“Until 1968, when it was decided to remodel it, the square had preserved its original, simple and French style, with cast iron streetlights and a vegetation of ancient trees and palm trees. Then, in 1970, the brand new works were inaugurated, led by Architect Graciela de Pagés and Architect Carlos Caporalini. At that time this square was provided with steep slopes, steps and asymmetrical gardens” (Information taken from the Municipality of Mendoza).
In the last remodeling carried out during 2018, the sidewalk levels were unified with the perimeter streets, burying the existing facilities and providing it with new furniture and ornamental elements.
The San Martin Plaza As if to reaffirm its connection with the Sanmartinian postulates, it has plaques that contain the “Sanmartinian Maxims” dictated by the Liberator to his daughter, arranged in a way that suggests a path that connects the central monument with the Basilica of San Francisco where the Tomb of Merceditas.
Today the square offers a renewed panorama, mixing the historic traditional elements with which it was born, combined with the desires of hundreds of children, neighbors and tourists who recreate the greatest liberating feat in America under the protection of the latest technological services provided by the space, always being the San Martin Plaza a good postcard that shows another of the enormous cultural riches of the province: its squares and monuments, and much more taking into account everything that José de San Martín represents and symbolizes for the history of Mendoza.
