Corrientes Province

Corrientes (, ‘currents’ or ‘streams’; ), officially the Province of Corrientes is a province in northeast Argentina, in the Mesopotamia region. It is surrounded by (from the north, clockwise): Paraguay, the province of Misiones, Brazil, Uruguay, and the provinces of Entre Rios, Santa Fe and Chaco. History Before the arrival of the Spanish conquest, the Kaingang, Charrua and Guaraní lived in a big area that also covered most of the current province of Corrientes. The city of Corrientes was founded on April 3, 1588 by Juan Torres de Vera y Aragón as a mid-stop between Asunción and Buenos Aires; the city flourished thanks to the traffic from the route. Jesuits erected missions in the north of the province, where they dedicated themselves to the expansion of the faith. In the wars of independence from Spain, Corrientes joined Artigas' Liga de los Pueblos Libres (1814–1820). The attack of Paraguayan forces on the province in 1865 marked the start of the War of the Triple Alliance. In 1919 the National University of the Littoral was founded, which in 1956 became the National University of the Northeast. Corrientes is legendary in the world of philately for the postage stamps it issued from 1856 to 1880. These are among the very early or "classic" postage stamps of the world (the first, from Great Britain, were issued in 1840; those by the United States in 1847). The Corrientes stamps were close copies of the first issue of stamps from France, which depicted the profile head of Ceres, the Roman goddess of agriculture, and were individually crudely engraved by hand, so that each die is noticeably different, and were printed in small sheets. The first issues, from 1856 to 1860, bore the denomination in the lower panel; in 1860, the value panel was erased; the different denominations thereafter being indicated by the color of the paper used. As locally produced "primitives", the early Corrientes stamps have long been prized by collectors. After 1880, stamps of Argentina were used.