Argentina celebrates its countryside twice a year — in March, when Mendoza crowns a queen of the grape harvest with parades, a thousand dancers and fireworks, and in November, when some 2,000 gauchos ride through San Antonio de Areco for the Fiesta de la Tradición.
Photo: AnselmoesMaciel, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Argentina’s two entries in this atlas both grow out of rural life. The Fiesta Nacional de la Vendimia in Mendoza, held since 1936, celebrates the grape harvest and the work of the province’s winegrowers. The Fiesta de la Tradición in San Antonio de Areco, first organised by local residents in 1939 and considered the oldest criollo celebration in the country, honours the gaucho and the customs of the countryside around Argentina’s Day of Tradition on 10 November.
On the weekend nearest 10 November, Argentina’s Day of Tradition, San Antonio de Areco — the national capital of tradition — honours the gaucho with campfire music, ring races and roping contests, and a parade of some 2,000 riders and 60 herds of horses through the town.
November 7 – 8, 2026Estimated
Every March Mendoza celebrates the grape harvest with a night parade of illuminated floats from which the harvest queens throw fruit to the crowd, a morning procession of ox carts and gauchos, and a spectacle of more than a thousand dancers in an open-air theatre that ends with the crowning of the national queen.
March 5, 2027Estimated