"Your Excellency the Inspector General, I report to you with an incomparably complicated and heavy heart." In Buenos Aires, General García, who has been in office for more than a year, is writing at his desk. His brows furrowed slightly, as if he was bothered by something, and the manuscript was changed again and again, showing his hesitation and irritability when he put down the pen.

"As you know, we are dwarfed by the fact that in early August, the East Bankers set up a Reclamation Bureau in the area west of the Great Kuchilia Mountains to coordinate illegal reclamation activities in the entire area west of the mountain range. On Christmas Eve last year, I made a survey of the production and management of the Kingdom's new settlements east of the Uruguay River, but I have to admit that we have managed them badly. There was a lack of proper roads between the two neighbouring settlements, and during the rainy season the roads were washed away by floods, and tax collectors had to wallow in muddy water. ”

"As of last Christmas, we had only 1,149 settlers there – mostly from Spain, more than two-thirds of whom were newcomers who had been living for less than three years. It is important to know that the colonization of the area east of the Uruguay River was a long-term plan formulated by the West Indies of the Kingdom, but the two domestic companies responsible for colonizing the area were not enthusiastic about it. It is not unusual for them to be suspicious of the huge upfront investment and to charge exorbitant and untimely fees for farmers who wish to settle in the East Bank, which are based in Seville but do not have even a branch administration in the East Bank. ”

"Despite the courage and pioneering spirit of our Spaniards, and despite the fact that we in the General Territory of La Plata have sent an administration to the east coast, our colonization has been very slow. Sparsely populated, disconnected (neither roads nor ports were scarce), funds were scarce (peasants even had to borrow money to buy grain, livestock and farming implements), and defenses (to cope with barbarians and gauchos). All of this has led to a lot of disappointment in the land. The colonial companies were disappointed that they had not been able to reap sufficient economic benefits. The pioneer farmers were disappointed that they had been burdened with heavy debts from the start. This has drawn us harsh criticism. ”

"We asked the pioneers to push as far inland as possible and in the greater Cuchilian mountains, but they always preferred to stay along the Uruguay or La Plata rivers. Even when we evicted and forcibly relocated them, they always stopped and stopped, and eventually settled down on the way with their wives, children, and belongings. Due to the poor state of transportation between settlements and the lack of ships in our country, many settlements, especially those in the interior, often need to pass information between them manually. In order to ensure the timely and smooth transmission of information, many people are forced to take on the duties of postmen, which greatly reduces the time they spend working in the fields. Plus there are a few other reasons. In the years since the colonization of the East Coast, our brave settlers have only just become self-sufficient. It is clear that they do not have surplus food for our army to fight there for a long time, and the failure in agriculture has greatly affected our national strategy. For this reason, we have been forced to abandon our plans to establish military posts in the interior, which will obviously delay our ability to receive any news of any disturbances in the east coast. ”

"Some of the military outposts we were forced to abandon have not had much of a bad impact in the south, but in the north, in what the people on the east coast call 'Huxi Hills', they have already caused irreparable damage. Much of the position there was in favor of our tribes being uprooted by the East Bank Army, and some of the wavering Middle Tribes were also under the control of the East Bankers. Here is an extreme example, in the Yakui River valley there are three sedentary tribes with a total population of more than 400 people. Since we abandoned our attempts to build a military post there because of supply problems. Shouldn't it be a wake-up call for us that the Easterners succeeded in convincing the three tribes of hundreds of people collectively with only five administrators that it was completely under the rule of the Easterners? ”

"Since the defeat in the last war (1633). We are now in its thirteenth year of colonizing people in La Plata and the East Coast, but we have achieved very little success. The reason for all this is mainly our own lack of attention, and the environment of the New World and Spain is completely different, and although it has a warm climate and fertile land, our pioneers are still very new to it. Moreover, many of them were not experienced farmers, and it is understandable that they had failed in colonization and were psychologically disillusioned with the royal government in the absence of the necessary economic assistance and security. I propose that the Colonial Company, the West Indies of the Kingdom and the Viceroyalty of Peru allocate a special sum of five million pesos per year for the financing of settlers who settled east of the Uruguay River and for the improvement of roads, ports, and other transport facilities; And the Viceroyalty of Peru must agree to tax exemption for 20 years in new settlements to encourage more people to come and develop in the area. Only then will we be able to establish ourselves on the East Coast and compete with the infidels. ”

After writing these paragraphs, Supervisor Garcia breathed a sigh of relief. Then he stood up, paced the room a few times, then turned back to his desk, took up his pen, and continued to write, as if he had made up his mind:

"In addition to our failures in agriculture, our failures in business are also evident. As everyone knows, the only reason for the existence of the Colonia market is to provide a safe haven for blatant smuggling. The East coasters, the Dutch, the English, the Portuguese, the Germans of the Hanseatic League, and even the damned French, all came to the port in ships laden with goods, even if they didn't get any trade permits. Needless to say, the existence of this port has enriched the market in La Plata, Chalcas, and even Chile, but for some gentlemen who have long traded between Lima and Santiago, Lima and Potosí, Santiago and Asunción and Asunción and Buenos Aires, the existence of this market is devastating. The Kingdom of Spain benefited very little from it, but the merchants of other countries made a lot of money, and it was like a severed vein, where a group of vampires sucked the blood of the Kingdom of Spain with impunity. I don't want to dwell on how many loyal Kingdom officials have been caught up in the money trap, but the situation is so serious that I am determined to close this trade market and cut off all the black hands that reach us. ”

"There is ample evidence as to what I say about the kingdom not receiving a reasonable benefit in this market. Our merchants did not have enough handicrafts (in fact, industrial goods produced by the machines of the Easterners) to sell to foreign merchants, and all they could export were cheap wool, grain, fruit, livestock, furs, fat, hardwood, and so on, and the largest buyers of these goods were the Easterners. And what do we import? Hardware products, metal farm tools and kitchen utensils, building materials, tanned leather or finished leather products, dyes, various textiles, steel, processed ship plates, antiseptic tar, soda ash and other goods. There is no doubt that our position in this trade is unfair, and the market of the New World is flooded like a tidal wave of goods from outside, which weakens us and strengthens the enemy at the same time. ”

"Throughout last year, according to the statistics of my faithful subordinate, Mr. Simenez from the newly built Montevideo post on the north bank of the La Plata River, the people of the East Bank sold through the Colonia trade market more than 800,000 pesos of all kinds of goods, which can be found everywhere in Buenos Aires, Asunción, Potosí, Santiago, Compleción, Valparaíso, and even Lima and Guayaquil, and it occupies almost all the markets in our Peruvian Viceroyalty. At the same time, we have only exported to them about 400,000 pesos of all kinds of goods, and the disparity between them is very large. Needless to say, our interests have been seriously compromised. ”

"Monsieur Simenez also tells us, by his painstaking inquiry, that in the last year (1645) there were many merchants of all nationalities active in the Colonian market, including 78 merchants from the East coast (including the managerial employees of their state stores), 36 Portuguese merchants, 29 Dutch merchants, 18 English merchants, 14 French merchants, and a pitiful 11 Spanish merchants, all of whom were representatives of the major chambers of commerce. What do we see? Saw a carnival of smuggling feast! Filthy and shameless smugglers are wantonly plundering the interests that belonged to the Spanish merchants, plundering the king's proceeds! The gentlemen of the West Indies have been complaining to me about the shrinking business in which they have a stake, the dwindling income, and they do not understand why business in the Peruvian market has suddenly become so difficult. Perhaps now it is perfectly clear to us who exactly took their interests away? ”

"Finally, I have to report to you an emergency. It's hard to say whether this is good news or bad news, because if this matter is handled well, it will bring an unimaginable new source of wealth to the kingdom, and if it is not handled well, then a large-scale war is imminent. The reason for the incident is simple, the soldiers we sent were ...... when they were surveying the terrain."

It took Garcia half an hour to write down the discovery of the gold deposits, and when he had done this, he put the pages of the letter in an envelope, sealed it, and called to his confidant servant, who told him to send it to Santiago at once, and hand it over to His Excellency the Inspector General. (To be continued......)