Fluvial scenarios and their surrounding territories have progressively gained notoriety in contemporary debates in Latin America. The great basins of the Amazon, Orinoco and Plata rivers, along with marshes, swamps and aquifers, i.e. the planet's largest drinking water reserve, have gained visibility as a result of the growing concern over the accelerated deterioration of the environment. However, the interest in this issue is not only due to the current political, social and environmental context full of uncertainties, but also to the fact that rivers constituted a fundamental topography both for colonial projects and for the national political-economic imaginaries of the 19th century about which we still, one way or another, debate.