Pampas in the context of Desert Campaign (1833–1834)

Temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands are terrestrial biomes defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature. The predominant vegetation in these biomes consists of grass and/or shrubs. The climate is temperate and ranges from semi-arid to semi-humid. The habitat type differs from tropical grasslands in the annual temperature regime and the types of species found here.

The habitat type is known as prairie in North America, pampas in South America, veld in Southern Africa and steppe in Asia. Generally speaking, these regions are devoid of trees, except for riparian or gallery forests associated with streams and rivers.

The Mapuche (/məˈpuːtʃi/ mə-POO-chee, Mapuche and Spanish: [maˈputʃe]), also known as Araucanians, are a group of Indigenous inhabitants of south-central Chile and southwestern Argentina, including parts of Patagonia. The collective term refers to a wide-ranging ethnicity composed of various groups who share a common social, religious, and economic structure, as well as a common linguistic heritage as Mapudungun speakers. Their homelands once extended from Choapa Valley to the Chiloé Archipelago and later spread eastward to Puelmapu, a land comprising part of the Argentine pampa and Patagonia. Today the collective group makes up over 80% of the Indigenous peoples in Chile and about 9% of the total Chilean population .The Mapuche are concentrated in the Araucanía region. Many have migrated from rural areas to the cities of Santiago and Buenos Aires for economic opportunities. More than 92% of the Mapuches are from Chile.

The Mapuche traditional economy is based on agriculture; their traditional social organization consists of extended families, under the direction of a lonko or chief. In times of war, the Mapuche would unite in larger groupings and elect a toki (meaning "axe" or "axe-bearer") to lead them. Mapuche material culture is known for its textiles and silverwork.

Prairies are ecosystems considered part of the temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biome by ecologists, based on similar temperate climates, moderate rainfall, and a composition of grasses, herbs, and shrubs, rather than trees, as the dominant vegetation type. Temperate grassland regions include the Pampas of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, and the steppe of Romania, Ukraine, Russia, and Kazakhstan. Lands typically referred to as "prairie" (a French loan word) tend to be in North America. The term encompasses the lower and mid-latitude of the area referred to as the Interior Plains of Canada, the United States, and Mexico. It includes all of the Great Plains as well as the wetter, hillier land to the east. From west to east, generally the drier expanse of shortgrass prairie gives way to mixed grass prairie and ultimately the richer and wetter soils of the tallgrass prairie.

In the U.S., the area is constituted by most or all of the states, from north to south, of North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma, and sizable parts of the states of Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas in the west, and to the east, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana. The Palouse of Washington and the Central Valley of California are also prairies. The Canadian Prairies occupy vast areas of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. Prairies may contain various lush flora and fauna, often contain rich soil maintained by biodiversity, with a temperate climate and a varied view.

According to IBGE (2004), Brazil has its territory occupied by six terrestrial biomes and one marine biome.

Puelmapu is the traditional Mapuche territory located east of the Andes. It covers much of Patagonia and the Pampas. Since the Conquest of the Desert (1878–1885) Puelmapu is part of Argentina. It is a theater of the Mapuche conflict.

Megatherium (/mɛɡəˈθɪəriəm/ meg-ə-THEER-ee-əm; from Greek méga (μέγα) 'great' + theríon (θηρίον) 'beast') is an extinct genus of ground sloths endemic to South America that lived from the Early Pliocene through the end of the Late Pleistocene. It is best known for the elephant-sized type species Megatherium americanum, primarily known from the Pampas, but ranging southwards to northernmost Patagonia and northwards to southern Bolivia during the late Middle Pleistocene and Late Pleistocene. Various other species belonging to the subgenus Pseudomegatherium and ranging from sizes comparable to M. americanum down to considerably smaller, are known from the Andean region.

The first (holotype) specimen of Megatherium americanum was discovered in 1787 on the bank of the Luján River in what is now northern Argentina. The specimen was then shipped to Spain the following year wherein it caught the attention of the pioneering French paleontologist Georges Cuvier, who named the animal in 1796, making it one of the first prehistoric animals to be scientifically named, and was the first to determine, by means of comparative anatomy, that Megatherium was a giant sloth.

A gaucho (Spanish: [ˈɡawtʃo]) or gaúcho (Portuguese: [ɡaˈuʃu]) is a skilled horseman, reputed to be brave and unruly. The figure of the gaucho is a folk symbol of Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil, southern Bolivia, and southern Chile. Gauchos became greatly admired and renowned in legend, folklore, and literature and became an important part of their regional cultural tradition. Beginning late in the 19th century, after the heyday of the gauchos, they were celebrated by South American writers.

According to the Diccionario de la lengua española, in its historical sense a gaucho was a "mestizo who, in the 18th and 19th centuries, inhabited Argentina, Uruguay, and Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil, and was a migratory horseman, and adept in cattle work". In Argentina and Uruguay today, gaucho can refer to any "country person, experienced in traditional livestock farming". Because historical gauchos were reputed to be brave, if unruly, the word is also applied metaphorically to mean "noble, brave and generous", but also "one who is skillful in subtle tricks, crafty". In Portuguese the word gaúcho means "an inhabitant of the plains of Rio Grande do Sul or the Pampas of Argentina of European and indigenous American descent who devotes himself to lassoing and raising cattle and horses"; gaúcho has also acquired a metonymic signification in Brazil, meaning anyone, even an urban dweller, who is a citizen of the state of Rio Grande do Sul.

Buenos Aires, officially the Buenos Aires Province, is the largest and most populous Argentine province. It takes its name from the city of Buenos Aires, the capital of the country, which used to be part of the province and the province's capital until it was federalized in 1880. Since then, in spite of bearing the same name, the province does not include Buenos Aires city, though it does include all other parts of the Greater Buenos Aires metropolitan region, which include approximately three-fourths of the conurbation's population. The capital of the province is the city of La Plata, founded in 1882.

It is bordered by the provinces of Entre Ríos to the northeast, Santa Fe to the north, Córdoba to the northwest, La Pampa to the west, Río Negro to the south and west and the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires to the northeast. Uruguay is just across the Rio de la Plata to the northeast, and both are on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Almost the entire province is part of the Pampas geographical region, with the extreme south often considered part of the Patagonia region.