Ignacio Núñez (1792 - 1846) was an Argentine politician, journalist, and historian. In 1806 he joined the military to repel British invaders of the Río de la Plata; still in service in 1809 he fought against the attempted coup of Martín de Álzaga. He was a supporter of the Buenos Aires May Revolution in 1810, but afterwards was expelled from the army due to the First Junta's factionalism. He left for the Banda Oriental (Uruguay) in 1811, where he would participate in the siege of royalist-held Montevideo that year. He returned to Buenos Aires and entered politics, holding an array of bureaucratic positions, but turmoil would send him to take refuge in Montevideo. In 1817 he returned. He participated in the drafting of the abortive 1819 constitution. The 1820s would see him develop as a journalist in support of the minister and future president of Argentina Bernardino Rivadavia; in turn, the minister appointed him chief of staff. He edited several newspapers in support of the government and Rivadavia's party. In 1825 he accompanied Rivadavia to London, thereafter being appointed ambassador to the United Kingdom. During this time he published his 1825 Noticias históricas, geográficas y estadísticas del Río de la Plata, an effort to encourage European recognition of Buenos Aires and gain support against Brazil in the Cisplatine War then underway. He would return to Buenos Aires to become Rivadavia's Minister of the Interior, a post he would retain in successive regimes. From his position in Buenos Aires he lent support to the Uruguayan revolution in 1837, for which he was arrested by the governor of Buenos Aires Juan Manuel de Rosas. His refusal to support the federalists at this point would lead to his political downfall. He died in 1846. More by this mapmaker...

Azara, Félix de (May 18, 1742 - October 20, 1821) was a Spanish military officer, naturalist, and engineer. He joined the Army, and received training as an engineer in a Spanish military academy. His thirteen year career in the Army would see him promoted to Brigadier General. He spent twenty years in the Rio de la Plata region of South America as a delegate under the treaty of San Ildefonso, during which period he undertook to create an accurate map of the region. On the surveys, he also recorded the fauna the region, in particular cataloguing nearly four hundred species of bird. On his return to Europe in 1801 he wrote and published in Paris his Voyage dans l'Amerique meridionale depuis 1781 jusqu'en 1801 (1809) which contained his observations on the region's geography, natural features, and indigenous groups. His work was praised for thoroughness and accuracy, and was well regarded by Darwin. He died of pneumonia on October 20, 1821. Learn More...

Jose Maria Cabrer (1761 - 1836) was a Spanish military engineer and geographer. Born in Barcelona, the son of a military engineer Carlos Cabrer y Suñer. He studied engineering at the Royal Academy, and was a student of cartographer Félix de Azara (as well as his own father.) With the onset of the American Revolution, he set aside the academy to join Spanish naval efforts to support America against the British Empire. Initially targeted at Jamaica, he was sent instead to the Buenos Aires as attaché of the Royal Corps of Engineers to assist in demarcating the boundary of Spanish territory in South America with Brazil. He arrived there in 1781, then completing his training as a cartographer. In 1783, with the military rank of Captain, he surveyed the border region of the Banda Oriental, which would largely become Uruguay. He would become a commissioner and geographer of the second demarcation party under Diego de Alvear, reconnoitering the Paraná River and the course of the Uruguay River. In 1789, he surveyed the Pepirí Guazú River, the middle of the border set by the Treaty of San Ildefonso (1777). He returned to Buenos Aires as a Lieutenant Colonel in 1801, where he would choose to stay upon learning of the deaths in Spain of his father and brothers. He settled and married a barber's daughter over the objections of his superiors, who thought the match below him. The following twenty years seem to have been, politically, poorly navigated: following the Revolution of 1810 he was appointed to direct a mathematics academy, but the project did not proceed; he would be appointed secretary to the Argentine General Staff, but he refused the position. In 1831 following the estblishment of the Argentine Confederation, he accepted a posting to the Topographical Department, but did not enjoy the position long: He died in 1836 as the result of an improperly prescribed medicine. Although many of his boundary commission maps would be published, his superb 1802 he map of the La Plata region, including Uruguay and Paraguay, would not be published until 1853 in a Paris edition. Learn More...