Charles V gives permission to Don Pedro…
1536 CE
The emperor also names Mendoza governor of Rio de la Plata and grants him the right to name his successor, but Mendoza, a sickly, disturbed man, proves to be utterly unsuitable as a leader, and his cruelty nearly undermines the expedition.
Choosing what is possibly the continent's worst site for the first Spanish settlement in South America, in February 1536 Mendoza builds a fort at a poor anchorage on the southern side of the Plata estuary on an inhospitable, windswept, dead-level plain where not a tree or shrub grows.
Dusty in the dry season, a quagmire in the rains, the place is inhabited by the fierce Querandí tribe, who resent having the Spaniards as neighbors.
The new outpost is named Buenos Aires (Nuestra Senora del Buen Ayre), although it is hardly a place one would visit for the "good air."
Mendoza soon provokes the Querandí into declaring war on the Europeans.
Thousands of them and their Timbu and Charrua allies besiege the miserable company of half-starved soldiers and adventurers.
The Spaniards are soon reduced to eating rats and the flesh of their deceased comrades.