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Since the mid-twentieth century, a conflict has developed on a national scale between the provinces of La Pampa and Mendoza (Argentina), producing a so-called decrease in the amount of water from the Atuel river. The main objective of the study is to try to reconstruct the hydrological conditions of Atuel river, from the end of the eighteenth century to the mid-twentieth century and, in this way, analyze the claim of La Pampa about the water volume reduction, attributed to the intensive agricultural use made by Mendoza, in the middle basin. For this, a trend line of the Atuel river flows was created, using archival documents, traveler stories, studies of naturalists, and military incursions, in which the pre-instrumental period is especially considered. Subsequently, a comparison was made, based on reconstructions developed from other related disciplines such as dendrochronology, glaciology, and meteorology. The results confirm that the Atuel River presents a sustained decrease in its flow —although with pulses of floods and cyclical droughts— since the end of the nineteenth century. In the observed pulses, important dry periods appear during the nineteenth century, which even would have prevented that the basin flowed into its waters to the Colorado River, which was supposed to be the normal situation before 1900. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]