author
Sebastian Undiano y Gastelu
Best known for a single surviving work, this little-known Spanish-language writer argued for moving the frontier of Buenos Aires to the Río Negro and Colorado. His book offers a revealing glimpse of early 19th-century ideas about territory, settlement, and state power in South America.
1 Audiobook
Proyecto de traslacion de las fronteras de Buenos Aires al Rio Negro y Colorado
by Sebastian Undiano y Gastelu
About the author
Very little biographical information about this author is easy to confirm from major library and digital-text sources. National library records and digital collections consistently identify him as Sebastián Undiano y Gastelu, and they associate him with the work Proyecto de traslación de las fronteras de Buenos Aires al Río Negro y Colorado.
That work was published in Buenos Aires in 1836 and survives today through major public-domain and scholarly libraries. In the text, the author presents himself as a captain in the volunteer cavalry militia of Mendoza in the former Viceroyalty of Buenos Aires, proposing what he describes as a peaceful expansion of the frontier toward the Río Negro and Colorado.
Because the historical record surfaced here is so thin, it is safest to remember him mainly through this book: a compact but striking document of frontier thinking in the Spanish-speaking world, and a useful source for readers interested in colonial legacies, military planning, and the shaping of Argentina's southern borderlands.