This Province is bounded on the North and North-East by the Province of Catamarca, on the West and South-West by Chile and the Province of San Juan, on the South by the Province of San Luis, and on the East by Catamarca, again, and the Province of Córdoba.
La Rioja is another outlying Province of which can be said, as of so many as yet comparatively unproductive parts of Argentina, that water, labour and transport alone are needed to make them rich far beyond any dreams of avarice which have yet occupied the minds of their few and easy-going inhabitants. Maize flourishes in this hot, dry climate, as do all manner of subtropical and even tropical fruits, including dates, wherever water is available. Even wheat grows splendidly in some districts, given irrigation. And, as in many other salty and saltpetre-impregnated soils, there are large areas in La Rioja highly favourable to the growth of Alfalfa.
At present this Province is more sparsely populated than any other in the Republic except Jujuy, but it boasts of a fair number of (mostly native) cattle. As in all the Andine Provinces and Territories there is a relatively considerable export trade of cattle on the hoof to Chile.
La Rioja produces some wine, and at some future date will, no doubt, produce more, in view of the advantages for vine culture of its soil in many parts and its warm, dry climate. At present the wine of La Rioja is mostly consumed in the province itself and the immediately neighbouring Provinces.
Large irrigating works are in progress, and more are under consideration by the National Government for the development of the agricultural industries of this Province.
Contemporaneously with or possibly before such development will have been able, on account of lack of population, to assume any very notable progress, one may reasonably expect to see a largely increased activity in the exploitation of La Rioja’s mineral wealth (apparently much greater than that of Catamarca) by reason of the enormously increased facilities for transport afforded by the National North Argentine Railway. La Rioja has rich deposits of silver, copper, nickel, tin, cobalt, topaz and many beautiful kinds of marble.
The mining district best known at present is that of La Famatina; from which a cable-way of 35 kilometres in length was constructed by the National Government some years ago to connect the hillside mines with the rail-head at Chilecito.
La Rioja has, however, many other evidently rich mineral areas, including some containing quartz and alluvial gold. The unsystematic exploitation of these has as yet given but small satisfactory results.
The city of La Rioja, the Capital, is still in a state of arrested development, similarly with Catamarca, only even more so. It has not yet experienced sufficient prosperity to enable it to recover from the paralysing effects of the civil disturbances which raged in and around it for very many years after the overthrow of the Spanish rule. The people, the great majority of whom have a large admixture of native Indian blood, are, however, of a rather more lively and energetic disposition than their Catamarcan neighbours. This is no doubt due to a difference in their racial origin; the Indian ancestors of the natives of La Rioja having apparently belonged to tribes which in bygone times inhabited, or were in close relations with those which inhabited, Peru and thus possibly absorbed something of the Inca civilization.