🇦🇷 Argentina · The Northeast
Esquina is a peaceful Corrientes city in the southwest of the province, looking out over the point where the Corriente river hands its water to the great Paraná. It is a classic Litoral destination for lovers of sport fishing, river nature and the quiet of a river town, far from the noise of the big tourist centers.
Its fame is tied to the pacú, the tasty river fish that gives its name to the city's big celebration: the National Pacú Festival, which brings together music, river cooking and a crowd of anglers and visitors. But Esquina is much more than fishing: it is the costanera at sunset, the islands and channels of the Paraná, wetlands full of birdlife and the serene rhythm of Litoral life.
This guide covers the essentials of Esquina with a practical eye: the city and its costanera, the sport fishing and the boat trips along the river and the wetlands, the National Pacú Festival and how to get around this corner of southern Corrientes, an authentic place to rest at the river's pace.
Esquina began as a settlement and port on the Paraná river, at the confluence with the Corriente river, in an area of Litoral river traffic and trade. Its name refers precisely to the 'esquina', the corner or angle the rivers form at that point. It was founded on 10 February 1806 on land donated by the postmaster Benito Lamela, who years earlier (1799) had built a chapel in honor of Saint Rita of Cascia, to this day the city's patron saint. The town was destroyed in 1839 after the battle of Pago Largo and rebuilt in 1846 on its present site. Over the years it settled into a town tied to cattle, river trade and fishing, and grew into a typical riverside Corrientes city. Today it is known above all for its sport fishing and for the National Pacú Festival, which celebrates the river culture of the region. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓Founded in 1588 as San Juan de Vera de las Siete Corrientes, it is the most Guaraní and most federalist province in Argentina: cradle of chamamé, declared Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, setting of the outbreak of the War of the Triple Alliance and home of the Esteros del Iberá, where the jaguar roars again after seventy years.
Read the history of Corrientes →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
There is a scene that repeats every February in Esquina, and has done for 39 editions: hundreds of registered anglers, boats lined up along the costanera at dawn, and a whole city of barely fifteen thousand people overrun by the biggest festival it has, devoted entirely to a fish, the pacú. That a small town in southwestern Corrientes should have built its entire identity around the river, to the point of organizing a national festival in its honor, is no accident: it is the culmination of more than two centuries of a life shaped, literally, by water.
Esquina was born and grew thanks to its privileged position on the water: the exact point where the Corriente river flows into the great Paraná, in the southwest of what is now the province of Corrientes. That strategic position, in the angle the two courses form when they meet, is the origin of the place's very name, which refers precisely to the 'esquina', the corner the rivers draw at their confluence, a place name as simple as it is descriptive, typical of riverside naming in the Litoral.
In colonial times and the early independent years, the rivers were the great routes of communication and trade in the Litoral, far more reliable and faster than the dirt roads, all but impassable in the rainy season. In that context, settlements and ports like Esquina served as points of passage, loading and supply for coastal shipping between Buenos Aires, Santa Fe, Corrientes and Paraguay, and for the rural life of the surrounding region. The place took the shape of a town around that river activity and the countryside around it, with ranchers, traders and fishermen sharing the same riverbank.
The area, subtropical and with soil suited to livestock, soon added cattle raising and trade in hides and their by-products as its economic base, alongside subsistence fishing and the constant movement of the port. So, on the bank of the Paraná, the town took shape that would in time become the seat of its own department, one of the twenty-five the province of Corrientes is divided into.
Through the 19th and 20th centuries, Esquina settled into a typical Corrientes city of the Litoral, with its life organized around the river and the countryside. Livestock was one of the pillars of its economy, along with farming, river trade and fishing, in a region of wetlands, lagoons and marshes that characterize the south of the province of Corrientes.
As the seat of its department, the city gradually acquired the institutions, shops and services of a regional center. Its population, criollo in origin and with immigrant additions, forged an identity tied to Litoral culture: chamamé, religious devotion, country life and, very particularly, the everyday relationship with the Paraná river and its riches.
Fishing, at first for subsistence and commerce, over time also moved toward sport fishing, as the Paraná established itself as one of the country's great destinations for the activity. That shift would open a new stage for Esquina, which began to look at fishing and nature tourism as an opportunity for development.
The settlement growing on the bank of the Paraná took on, over the course of the 19th century, the forms of an organized town, and its birth certificate has a name attached: the formal history of Esquina begins with Benito Lamela, the local postmaster, who in 1799 built a chapel in honor of Saint Rita of Cascia to keep a promise. The population gathered around that small church, and on 10 February 1806, on land donated by Lamela himself, the town was officially founded. Santa Rita is still the patron saint of Esquina today, and every 22 May her feast draws thousands of the faithful from all over the region: few Argentine cities keep such a direct link between their origin and their devotion.
Esquina's history, however, was far from peaceful. In 1839, after the Corrientes defeat at the battle of Pago Largo against the troops of Entre Ríos, the town was attacked and destroyed along with its chapel; the following year, the provincial government ordered it dissolved and the inhabitants scattered. Only in 1846 was Esquina rebuilt, moved a little further northwest, on the bank of the Corriente river, where the present town stands. As the province organized itself after the civil wars, the city gained standing as the seat of its department, with its authorities, its parish, its school and its institutions, following the swings of Corrientes history without losing its profile as a riverside town turned toward the countryside and the river.
Through the 20th century, the arrival of services, better roads and the connection to the rest of the country by land and water established Esquina as a regional center of southwestern Corrientes. The criollo identity, popular faith, chamamé and the everyday relationship with the Paraná wove the character of a community that, without losing its human scale, was getting ready to reinvent itself through river tourism.
In recent decades, Esquina has built its tourist profile around sport fishing and river culture, making the most of the fish stocks of the Paraná and the confluence with the Corriente river. Species such as pacú, dorado (known as the 'river tiger' for its strength and its fight), surubí, patí and boga draw anglers from all over the country and abroad, and the city has developed an infrastructure of dozens of licensed guides, lodges and operators geared to receiving them for much of the year.
Out of that fishing tradition came the National Pacú Festival, dedicated to one of the region's most prized river fish for its firm, tasty flesh. Over the decades it has grown into a full week of celebration: the 39th edition, held from 8 to 15 February 2026, combined the shore fishing tournament and the boat fishing tournament, the Pacú Truco Tournament, the traditional Gran Peña de Pescadores, the Festival and Queen Election, the Esquina Carnivals and, as a closing, the anglers' dinner and prize-giving, which that year handed out more than 40 million pesos. Entry to the tournament, AR$ 700,000 in 2026, includes access to all those events, a sign of the scale the festival has taken on over the years.
Beyond the competitive tournament, the festival combines typical cooking — where pacú is the undisputed star, grilled, in chupín or fried —, folk and chamamé shows with nationally known artists, and the festive atmosphere typical of the Litoral, making it the city's main event and a shop window for its riverside identity before the rest of the country.
Today Esquina offers the visitor a quiet, authentic destination in southern Corrientes: sport fishing for much of the year, boat trips among islands and wetlands, watching Litoral birds and wildlife, waterfront promenades for the sunset and the warmth of Litoral culture, with chamamé always in the background. A city that, true to its origin two centuries back, still lives facing the river, and that every February pays tribute to it in the most Corrientes way possible: with music, fishing and a good table.