Group in Argentina

An unusual carte-de-visite portrait showing a group of four seated men, all white-skinned, with a dark-skinned indigenous South American seated on the floor or a low stool in front of the man on the far right.

Photographed by S. Salinas of Gualeguay in Argentina. A wetstamp on the reverse of the mount reads S. Salinas, Fotografo Entreriano of Gualeguay. Entre Rios is a province of Argentina which, as the name suggests, lies between two rivers. Situated in the northeast of the country, it borders Uruguay to the east. Many European settlers, mainly French, Swiss, and German, set up agricultural colonies there in the latter half of the nineteenth century. People indigenous to the area include the Guaraníes, Charrúas, and Chanás.

Gualeguay is the name of one of the 15 departments into which the province of Entre Rios is divided, and also the name of the main town in that department, situated on the banks of the Gualeguay river. Even today, it only has a population of 39,000 so when this portrait was taken in the 1860s or 1870s, it must have been much, much smaller and photographers few and far between.