Mendoza Argentina

Mendoza is located at the foot of the Andes, very far from Buenos Aires and close to the city of Santiago, in Chile, with the Andes cordillera in between. In fact, the city emerged as a stop on a trading route, before traders crossed the cordillera into Chile. It rains very little, about 200mm a year. 

The natural landscape is arid. The climate also tends to be hot. There are no chemtrails as we have in Canada.

However, the province is crossed by several mighty rivers fed by the melting of the glaciers in the Andes cordillera. These rivers have favoured the creation of what they call an “oasis” in which the wine industry has developed prosperously. There are about 250,000 hectares of vineyards in this area, and it is here that the Malbec Argentinean wines are produced.

Water in this country is also considered public property, water allocations, at least in this province, are linked to land ownership, or land titles. Whoever owns agricultural land has water rights in the same proportion as the size of the land.

Here, in Mendoza, land ownership is also a water right.

The city had 850,000 inhabitants in 2009,

in Argentina water is owned and managed by the provincial governments. The federal government is not involved in water management and everything is handled at the state level. The Water Superintendent is proposed by the governor and approved by the legislative body for a five-year period, without possibility of re-election. 

Most of the streets have tall trees on both sides, perfectly aligned and about the same age. The trees must be many decades old and although some do not have leaves at the moment (because of the winter season), they still cover the streetscape with their beautiful organic embrace.

But having tall trees in cities in arid lands is a big challenge, because water is a limiting factor for the growth and survival of trees. How do they manage to grow these trees in the desert?

There were narrow canals along both sides of the street, between the tree line and the road. The canals were paved, which meant that there is no water infiltration going on.


The melting of the glaciers in the Andes provides an abundant and relatively secure water source for the region. The Departamento General de Irrigación, the water agency of the province, allocates a certain amount of water for “recreational use” and this includes the irrigation of trees, green areas in plazas, and parks. So they periodically irrigate all the greenspace of the city in a controlled and efficient way – they open a certain gate upstream for a specific length of time and water runs throughout all the canals (called acequias) in the city reaching every tree. This is really astounding!.
The urination canals are called acequias of Mendoza

The Huarpes, Incas, and Puelches – have inhabited this land for many years before the Spaniards conquered them in the 16th century and named the city Mendoza after the governor of Chile.