🇦🇷 Argentina · Buenos Aires
Mercedes is a city in the northwest of Buenos Aires province, the seat of its district, set in the middle of the humid pampas, a little over a hundred kilometers from the capital. It is a typical Buenos Aires country town with a farming and ranching tradition, tree-lined streets, a central plaza and houses from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is known above all for its deep roots in gaucho culture and for its great tourist emblem: the historic Pulpería de Cacho Di Catarina (Pulpería 'Lo de Cacho').
That pulpería — an old country house and drinking den turned living museum of the gaucho and rural tradition — is an unmissable visit: with its general store, its walls covered in objects, photos and mementos, and its atmosphere from another era, it is one of the most photographed and best-loved places on the Buenos Aires pampas. Mercedes also offers a historic center with heritage buildings, estancias offering rural tourism, country cooking (the salame quintero cured sausage is a regional classic) and the quiet life of an inland town.
This guide covers the essentials of Mercedes with a practical eye: the Pulpería de Cacho, the historic center, the estancias and rural tourism, gaucho cooking, and how to get there and get around. It is an ideal break from Buenos Aires for immersing yourself in gaucho tradition and pampas country life, a short distance from the big city.
Mercedes was founded in 1745 as a frontier fort (the Guardia de Luján), one of the outposts that defended the Buenos Aires countryside from raids. Over time it became a prosperous farming and ranching city in the northwest of the province, deeply tied to gaucho tradition and country life. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The agro-export heart of Argentina: the endless pampa that was the land of the Querandí and the Pampa peoples, the domain of governor Rosas, the engine of cattle and wheat with La Plata as its purpose-built capital, cradle of the gaucho and of the Atlantic Coast where the whole country spends its summer.
Read the history of Buenos Aires Province →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
It was February 1741 when general Gaspar de Bustamante, alarmed by the raids sweeping the Buenos Aires countryside, ordered the building of 'forts on the frontiers of every district'. Four years later, in early 1745, field marshal Juan de San Martín carried out that order at the spot known as the Luján river frontier: there he built a stockade fort covering a block and a half that would become the Guardia de Luján, the military capital of the entire Buenos Aires frontier and the origin of today's city of Mercedes.
Like other forts along the frontier line, the Guardia de Luján marked the boundary between the territory effectively controlled by Spaniards and criollos and the lands held by the Indigenous peoples of the pampas. In 1752 a key reinforcement arrived: under captain José de Zárate the First Cavalry Regiment was formed, the legendary 'Blandengues de la Frontera', organized into paid companies with names as telling as La Valerosa, La Atrevida and La Invencible — the last of these with some 53 soldiers, the first unit to take the field.
Life in these frontier forts was hard and dangerous: isolated garrisons, permanent alert against raids, and open country where the state's presence was weak. Around the Guardia a settlement gradually grew of residents, militiamen, gauchos and traders, which would give rise to the future city. The present name comes from the devotion to Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes, the patron saint under whose protection the fort was placed.
That frontier origin left a deep mark on the identity of Mercedes. The figure of the gaucho — the rider of the pampas, a skilled tracker and horseman — is intimately tied to this history of frontier, estancias and open country. The gaucho culture that is now one of the great draws of Mercedes has its roots in those days of forts, raids, blandengues and life out in the open on the plains. It was only in 1865, by then consolidated as a civilian settlement, that Mercedes was officially declared a city.
As the frontier with the Indigenous peoples moved south and west through the 19th century, the Mercedes area stopped being a dangerous edge and became safe, productive land. The humid pampas around it, with their fertile soils, turned into one of the country's great farming and ranching regions, and Mercedes grew as a service and trading town for that output, the seat of its district in the northwest of the province.
The arrival of the railway and the agro-export boom of the late 19th and early 20th centuries brought prosperity, reflected in the city's historic center: institutional buildings, the cathedral, large houses and shops with Italianate facades around the plaza. Mercedes took on the profile of a typical prosperous inland Buenos Aires city, tied to the land and its rhythms.
But unlike other pampas cities, Mercedes held on to and cultivated its gaucho identity with particular force. The survival of criollo culture — the horse, the asado, the gaucho skills, the pulperías — made it, along with San Antonio de Areco, one of the great reference points for gaucho tradition near Buenos Aires. That identity found its most famous symbol in an old pulpería on the outskirts.
Through the 18th and 19th centuries, pulperías were a fundamental institution of Argentine rural life: general stores and drinking dens that served at once as shop, tavern, staging post and meeting place for gauchos, country people and travelers in the immensity of the pampas. You bought everything there, drank, gambled, told stories and, sometimes, settled disputes. With the modernization of the countryside most disappeared, and pulperías became the memory of a vanished world.
In Mercedes one of the most famous survived: the Pulpería de Cacho Di Catarina, known as 'Lo de Cacho', an old country house and drinking den from 1830 turned, thanks to the determination of Roberto 'Cacho' Di Catarina — the so-called 'last pulpero', who ran it until his death in June 2009 — into a genuine living museum of tradition. Today his family carries it on, already the fourth generation behind the counter. Its walls, papered with photos, old objects, mementos and visitors' signatures, and its warm, endearing atmosphere recreate the spirit of the old pulperías. People go there for a drink, to try the salame and the vermouth, to talk and to feel the gaucho past.
The pulpería became the tourist emblem of Mercedes and one of the best-loved and most photographed places on the Buenos Aires pampas, a spot where frontier history, criollo culture and nostalgia for the countryside come together in one place. Together with salame quintero, the estancias and the historic center, it makes Mercedes an ideal break for reconnecting with gaucho tradition a short distance from Buenos Aires.
Between the end of the 19th century and the start of the 20th, Mercedes received a strong wave of Italian immigrants, who settled above all on the edges of the town and set up the prestigious market gardens that still surround it. With them came the recipe for a cured sausage that would define local food identity for good: salame quintero, made with 80% pork and 20% beef, hand-cut fat and whole peppercorns, cured in the region's dry, temperate climate. The quinteros — the growers on those small farms — became famous for the quality of the cured meat they originally made for their own families.
The festival that made that product famous was born of a conversation between friends. In 1969, a group gathered at the old Berterreix store, at the corner of calles 29 and 42, floated the idea of organizing a festival dedicated to salame. Among those behind it were the brothers Luis Alberto and Juan Antonio Vanin, and under mayor Dr. Julio César Gioscio the job of organizing the event was given to Ulises D'Andrea. The idea took six years to ripen, until in August 1975, in the hall of the Club Ateneo de la Juventud, the first Fiesta Nacional del Salame Quintero was held. It has been held without a break ever since: it grew so much that in 2001 it moved to the Instituto Martín Rodríguez and later to Parque Municipal Independencia, where it now runs for three days with a salame competition, a crafts market, a food court and live music, and has already passed its 50th edition.
That food culture intertwined with the survival of gaucho tradition. The jineteadas, the criollo skills, the pulperías and the reverence for the horse and the asado kept alive in Mercedes a rural identity that faded in many other pampas towns. Being close to Buenos Aires, far from erasing that identity, turned it into a tourist draw: every weekend, city dwellers and travelers come looking for authentic contact with country culture.
Over recent decades, Mercedes has built a profile as a weekend-break and heritage-tourism destination. The Pulpería de Cacho — with almost two centuries of history — the estancias with their days in the country, salame quintero and its long-running festival, the historic center and the Ameghino Museum with its Pleistocene fossils make up an offering that combines heritage, food and gaucho memory. The frontier town born in 1745 to defend itself against raids is today one of the best-loved gateways to pampas tradition, a little over a hundred kilometers from the big city.