The Colorado River Basin is a fluvial axis that runs in a west-east direction from the Andes Mountains to its mouth at the Argentinean Sea, crossing the provinces of Mendoza, Neuquén, Río Negro, La Pampa and Buenos Aires, with a surface area of 47,458 km2. Our hypothesis is that the use of water resources implied a marked socio-environmental deterioration in the Colorado River Basin in the period 1960-2020. The historical-environmental study of the agro-export and extractivist models of the second half of the 19th and 20th centuries would allow us to understand the socio-environmental costs of certain policies and economic models, and to suggest evaluations that differ from those promoted by other viewpoints. These dynamics imply a deterioration of the environment and the consequent expulsion of local peasant communities. There is a process of territorial redefinition driven by the expansion of the agricultural frontier and the promotion of hydrocarbon activities. Our interest is to study the transformations in land use during the second half of the 20th century and the first two decades of the 21st century. This research can contribute socially to generate a debate on the formulation of public policies, due to its pretension to analyze the changes, continuities around the scale of analysis between society, territory and water. This research is framed within the theoretical approach of environmental history, which rescues a series of concerns related to the complex relationship between social and environmental dynamics over time. On the other hand, a fundamental contribution to this research is the concept of hydro-social cycle, understood as a socio-natural process through which water and society create and remake each other through space and time" (Linton and Budds, 2014). This approach will allow us to understand the various forms of appropriation, distribution and uses of water.
