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In mid-1536, destroying hostile India, Don Pedro de Mendoza's troops, some 300 men, engaged in combat with the pampas on the banks of a river. It is not known very well, perhaps led by the current, or by spear, a certain Diego Luján dies, according to certain chronicles. However, the man is not in the records. There is, yes, a Captain Pedro de Luján.

They say that the name of that Christian gave name to the place, where death took, this without a doubt, the head of the party, Diego de Mendoza, brother of the Adelantado.

On a map attributed to Ruy Díaz de Guzmán, that Paraguayan soldier who wrote the first history of Argentina, since its discovery in the 16th century, this river appears with the name of Sehuyán. And when in 1580 Juan de Garay distributed Indians and lands in the Corpus Christi Valley, ´´by another name Luján River´´, he points out, there are indigenous nations shuffling euphonic similarities like suyán, delaján, luyán.

Therefore, perhaps a precise surname or derivation of natural tribes, giving a name to the place.

The truth is that in that solitude of plain and sky, Luján will be a necessary post on the Camino Real, route to Chile and Peru in 1663.

Lying on the river is also an antemural of pampas, serranos and pehuelches, which will ravage in malones, killing men and taking captive boys and women. A long struggle for civilization that will continue until the 19th century is well over.

The settlement was due to a miracle that happened around 1630. At that time, a convoy of carts splashed the Luján River through the Arbol Solo ford and spent the night on the banks of the Cañada de la Cruz, five leagues northwest of the current city of Luján . They brought two images of the Virgin, of the Consolation and of the Pure and Clean Conception, made in humble fired clay. They were going to Sumampa, Santiago del Estero, brought from Brazil by order of a Portuguese who wanted to enthrone Our Lady in those places.

The following dawn they set out on their journey. Except for the cart of the Virgins, as bogged down and oblivious to the girth of oxen. Once the images were downloaded, he only wanted to continue one of them. The attempt was repeated several times with the same success. Just set, gentlemen. Our Lady of the Pure and Clean Conception stayed there, in love with the land.

Pure grassland and surrounding desert, Don Rosendo de Oramas, patron of the area, erects an oratory for it. Soon, on land belonging to Sergeant Major Marcos de Siqueyra, a new temple will be built in adobe and firewood, no longer alone, as he is now accompanied by some scattered ranches without haste. Year 1670.

Grown in prayer and silence, over the mouth of the arnas, the already Villa de Luján has its own Cabildo around 1756. It will be the first to recognize the Mayo Board and will have a death certificate at the end of 1821, by the hand of Mr. Bernardino Rivadavia, Minister of Martín Rodriguez, Governor of Buenos Aires.

Precisely a local lobbyist, Juan de Lezica y Torrezuri, cured of serious illness by the grace of the Virgin, erects a Shrine in gratitude. It will be the first. To the full. On December 8, 1763, it was inaugurated by the town that helped to raise it.

Thirteen years later -1776- the last viceroyalty of America was created, that of the Río de la Plata, in front of which the crown appoints Lieutenant General Pedro de Ceballos, a good soldier and knight of Santiago. The ´´last flare of Spain in America´´. It comes with 100 ships and 9000 troops to command a geopolitical strategy against the Portuguese advance piloted by England.

The following year Luján had his first school, with teachers who, before fighting illiteracy, had to do it with parents, who refused to send their children to him, to the point that one of them beats him fiercely, "destroying the human machine." , according to a charter of the Cabildo.

He has a school and the first rented doctor. And soon two initial lawyers. Both received in Charcas. And Americans. One is José Francisco de Ugarteche, Paraguayan, future deputy in the assemblies of 1813 and 1825. The other, Julián de Leiva, a resident of Luján, who as trustee of the Buenos Aires City Council, on May 25, 1810 will have a famous question and no less obvious: ´´Where is the town? ´´. Sanctuary, post, town, whereabouts of Blandengues, defense against the savage, ´´population´´ in the middle of the field, Luján sees the nitrate carts passing from time to time, coming from the Salinas Grandes, near Bahia, heading to Buenos Aires.

In 1806, with a different course, this time from Buenos Aires to the north, other carts brought the flows of the Fort to save them from the first English invasion. They are deposited in the Town Hall. Sobremonte is housed in an adjoining house, apparently with the intention of establishing the capital of the Viceroyalty in Luján. The invader arrived before intentions. The viceroy left for Córdoba and the treasure for London.

They say that a Spaniard living in Luján, Andrés de Migoya, managed to hand over a cash drawer. And they add that with that money he built a large house, in which General Belgrano will stay eight years later after his defeats in Vilcapugio and Ayohuma.

The Reconquest had its beginning and epilogue in Luján. Volunteer troops came out from here, joined by Juan Martín de Pueyrredón to fight the English in Perdriel. And here General Carr Beresford and several of his officers landed defeated, among them Colonel Pack, commander of the 71st Scottish Rifle Regiment. Confined in the heights of the Cabildo, in 1807 both are sent to Catamarca before the imminence of a second British invasion. Saturnino Rodriguez Peña and Aniceto Padilla arrive near Pergamino, who argue verbal orders from Liniers for the prisoners to be handed over to them. This was done. And they all fled. Rodríguez Peña and Padilla will settle in Rio de Janeiro with a lifetime pension of 300 pounds per year, drawn by the English crown.

Then came the war for Independence and the fortunes of arms were fickle. On the way to Paraguay, General Belgrano crosses Luján and places his troops under the protection of the Virgin in 1810. God's designs are different. But in three years it will be a party of rings and victories. The general - defying orders from the Triumvirate to the contrary - triumphs in Salta and Tucumán. The flags taken from the enemy are offered in the temple of Our Lady, they are received by the neighbors and the parish priest Francisco Javier de Argerich, primary teacher of Rosas.

In 1820, sniffing death, Belgrano returned to the town to say goodbye to his brother, head of the Cabildo, major in the army and military commander of Luján.

Civil disputes also pass through here. Vespers of Cepeda. They cross the montoneras of Estanislao López and Pancho Ramírez. A kind of boleadoras overthrew General Paz and in 1835 he was taken prisoner to Luján. The whole town by destination and will sleep four years in its Cabildo. On September 8, 1840, Juan Lavalle retraces his streets in retreat to the north. French ships in war against the Confederacy had crossed it from Martín García. Accompany him

Lujanense spearmen who also fought -with different luck and design in Ituzaingó and Navarro. About the silence of the Los Talas ranch, Esteban Echeverría wrote some poems and news of the Insurrection of the South, which occurred in Dolores in October 1839.

At the beginning of 1852, on the morning of January 29, the vanguards of the Argentine-eastern-Brazilian coalition of Urquiza, from Chivilcoy and in pursuit of Caseros, slowly passed through the quiet hostility of the neighborhood. Right there, Campos de Alvarez, the Luján Guard under the orders of Colonel Hilario Lagos confronts the enemy that doubles them in number. The federal cavalry contains those of Urquiza and retreats in order towards Puente Márquez.

Below the struggles that are constituting the country, the soil feeds other facts that identify it.

In payments of Luján, Francisco Javier Muñiz -medical and soldier- obtains with cows from the area the anti-smallpox cow pox, which its discoverer Eduardo Jenner, asserted was only possible to achieve with Glowcester animals. In 1844 he sent Rosas a valuable report on scarlet fever, dated in Luján, where he was then working as a police doctor. His excavations carried out since 1825 uncovered remains of glyptodon and other fossils, an important collection that occupied 11 drawers.

Precursor of these paleontological works was the Dominican Manuel Torres, from Lujane, who found parts of a megatherium, on the banks of the Luján River in 1788, currently exhibited in the Natural History Museum of Madrid.

And a classic from America, Florentino Ameghino, according to documents ´´nato´´ in Moneglia, Italy, but according to his own will and word born in the town of Luján. As a naturalist, paleontologist, phylogenist and anthropologist his works span 24 books, 179 working titles. It brought together the largest collection of fossils on the continent and supported the theory of the tertiary origin of American man. He made studies on the water behavior of the Buenos Aires plain, which are still awaiting who considers them.

The Virgin afflicted in Luján, small, dark, barely cooked earth, stands in a monument that congregates pieties that do not cease, and more than a million pilgrims on certain precise dates. Unique case in the world. The second cause of this construction, as the ancients would say, was a French lazarist, Jorge María Salvaire, who arrived in Luján in 1874. He walked in the pampas evangelizing Indians, and saving his skin in the mission, consecrates his gratitude to the Mother of God . The gratitude will be in stone and concrete. The whole community participates and the Basilica has been climbing to heaven for almost half a century. From 1890 to 1935.

First of all, as a full queen, Our Lady of Luján had a legitimate coronation: May 8, 1887. To protect her material fragility, in 1917 she was covered with a silver mesh.

Gone is the past. But faith and memory remain. As it should.







Luján (34 ° 34 e 8242; 02 e 8243; S 59 ° 06 e 8242; 24 e 8243; O e 65279; / e 65279; -34.56722, -59.10667) is a city in the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina, capital of the homonymous Buenosairean party. Its distance to the city of Buenos Aires is 67 km. It is the first city in the interior, leaving Greater Buenos Aires. Its urban center is located on the banks of the Luján River.



Its main source of tourism and interest is based on a Catholic religious center and pilgrimages to the sanctuary of the huge and neo-Gothic basilica of Nuestra Señora de Luján (34 ° 33 e 8242; 51 e 8243; S 59 ° 7 e 8242; 16 e 8243; O e 65279; / e 65279; -34.56417, -59.12111) where a famous statuette of the Virgin Mary has been found since the seventeenth century, which is considered miraculous, so pilgrimages are made annually to pay homage to this invocation .



In Luján you can find the ´´Enrique Udaondo´´ Provincial Museum Complex, one of the most important museums in South America, riverside tourist recreation areas and the National University of Luján. Its area of ​​influence has great agricultural potential and has food and manufacturing industries. It is linked to the City of Buenos Aires by a highway and by rail.



It had 67,266 inhabitants (INDEC, 2001), which represents an increase of 15.4% compared to 58,299 inhabitants (INDEC, 1991) in the previous census.





Since 1936 it has had its heraldic shield on the initiative of the then deputy Don Juan G. Káiser, and it was approved by the Honorable Deliberative Council. The author said when founding his project: “The tradition, the honorable historical tradition of our people, a glorious past full of facts and events, its Cabildo, unique in the province; its participation in the Reconquest, its glorious guests, true heroes and martyrs of our country: this in the social, political and historical order; His Virgin, the First Foundress of this Villa, glorious in her wonderful tradition of three centuries, full of exterior and interior life within the entire people of the Republic, venerated by all the greats of the Nationality, invoked and sworn by the Fathers of the Homeland: San Martín and Belgrano; its National Sanctuary, center of peace and unity among the individuals of this land; its culture of yesterday and today, all its glories, all its past, amply justify the initiative that comes to give Luján its shield ”.



Its Meaning: The ellipse of the shield, symbolizes the material and political unity with the Nation and the Province. The red filiera represents the blood of Captain Luján and the efforts and victories of the conquerors of the place that, for a long time, was the first outpost towards the interior. The Chief in Silver, represented by the color White, indicates dependence and compliance with the Queen of Heaven in her desire to remain in place. The wavy blue strip reproduces the Luján River in its beauty. The lower Barracks in Gold, which appears in Yellow, symbolizes the wealth of the Pampean Region on the edge of which the city looms. The Cabildo Rosado, was designed to be characteristic of the colonial building. The Tower, symbolizes the power of the Cabildo, unique in the campaign, and the battlements are for the struggles it sustained. His closed door and windows indicate he ended his mission in history in blue for dispensed justice. The Lateral Walls with red tiles represent the colonial and Argentine tradition of the heroes and martyrs who performed there. The Silver Ribbon, speaks eloquently: 1630 LUJÁN 1756, the year of the Miracle and the year of the Cabildo Foundation and between the two dates, the Name LUJÁN gives the idea of ​​the miraculous and human origin of the city in blue, symbol of truth that affirms.

Lujan contains 41 neighborhoods in their entirety: Centro, Estación, Villa del Parque, Los Paraísos, 12 de Abril, Valle Verde, Los Laureles, Elli, A. Estación Basílica, Padre Varela, San Cayetano, Sarmiento, El Trébol, University, Park Laza, American, Los Gallitos, Luna, Constantini, El ceibo, La Palomita, Santa Elena, San Juan de Dios, Champagnat, Hostería, San Emilio, Zapiola, El Mirador, Parque Esperanza, San Bernardo, El Milagro, Juan XXIII, La Loma, Santa Marta, San Jorge, San Fermín, San Pedro, San Francisco, San Eduardo, Las Casuarinas, Cortínez, Ameghino.

Very important, constituting a religious and pilgrimage center to the sanctuary of the Basilica of Our Lady of Luján, which rises about 110 meters above the pampas. Luján has the ´´Enrique Udaondo´´ Provincial Museum Complex, one of the most important museums in South America, riverside tourist recreation areas and the National University of Luján. Numerous cultural activities take place, both recreational, religious and historical. The Luján River offers a place to rest, with green, and recreational places around it. There are also stays to spend beautiful days in the country.

Its area of ​​influence has great agricultural potential and has food and manufacturing industries. Linked to Buenos Aires by highway and rail. Historically it was a rich textile flax producing area. Luján has always been an important livestock center from the beginning, leaving this activity as the main base of the local economy. When it began to grow, it became one of the most important textile centers in the area, with very important industries in this area, another great step for the city. However, agriculture continued to weigh heavily in the region. Tourism is also a source of employment and thus contributes to the local bases of the economy. It is a historical, religious, rural, and cultural center. Tourism in Luján is based on religion, history and estancias, as well as important cultural shows at the country level.

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