Ramos Mejia

Ramos Mejía is a city in La Matanza Partido, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina. The city has an area of 11.9 km² and a population of 98,547. The city is one of the largest commercial districts in the Western Zone of Greater Buenos Aires. The land where the city is now located was originally purchased from Martín José de Altolaguirre by Francisco Ramos Mejía in 1808. Ramos Mejía was the son of a merchant from Seville, and had returned from a nine-year stay in the Upper Peru, where his business interests had met with success. The ranch became noteworthy as the site of the first public religious controversy in Argentina, when Ramos Mejía's differences over the interpretation of biblical canon with the local parish priest, Father Castañeda, led to the former's exile from the parish in 1821.