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Argentina is a Spanish-speaking country in southern South America, situated between the Andes in the west and the southern Atlantic Ocean in the east. It is bordered by Paraguay and Bolivia in the north, Brazil and Uruguay in the northeast and Chile in the west. The country is formally named the Argentine Republic, while for purposes of legislation the form Argentine Nation (Nación Argentina) is used.
República Argentina
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National motto: En Unión y Libertad
(English: In Union and Liberty)
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| Official languages
| Spanish
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| Capital
| Buenos Aires
34°20'S, 58°30'W
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| Largest city
| Buenos Aires
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| Government
| Democratic Republic
Néstor Kirchner
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Area
- Total
- Water (%)
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2,766,890 km² (8th)
1.1%
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Population
- 2004 est.
- 2001 census
- Density
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39,144,753 (30th)
36,260,130
14/km² (200)
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GDP (PPP)
- 2002 total
- Per capita
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$403,800 (23th)
$10,500 (70th)
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| Currency
| Argentine Peso (ARS)
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Time zone
- Summer (DST)
| ART (UTC-3)
ARST (UTC-3)
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Independence
- May Revolution
- Declared
- Recognised
| from Spain
May 25, 1810
July 9, 1816
in 1821 (by Portugal)
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| National anthem
| Oid, Mortales
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| Internet TLD
| .ar
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| Calling code
| +54
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| * Argentina also claims 1,000,000 km² of Antarctica, the Falkland (Malvinas) Islands and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands
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Origin and history of the name
The name Argentina is derived from the Latin argentum (silver). The origin of this name goes back to the first voyages made by the Spanish conquerors to Río de la Plata. The survivors of the shipwrecked expedition mounted by Juan Díaz de Solís found indigenous people in the region who gave them silver objects as presents. The news about the legendary Sierra del Plata – a mountain rich in silver – reached Spain around 1524. Since then, the Spaniards named the river of Solís, Río de la Plata (River of Silver).
History
Main article: History of Argentina
Europeans first arrived in the region in the early 16th century (the first to see and colonize the land being the Spanish seaman Juan Díaz de Solís, in 1516).
Subsequent Spanish colonization of the area led to the colony of Buenos Aires in 1580. After the May Revolution in 1810 and independence from Spain achieved in 1816, a conflict between centralists and federalists developed until a new constitution was proclaimed in 1853.
Argentina was then marked by periods of internal political conflict between conservatives and liberals and between civilian and military factions. In the beginning of the 20th century, Argentina was one of the leading economies in the world.
After World War II, the country saw the rise of the populist Peronist movement, which to a large extent polarised Argentina. Increasingly bloody military juntas alternated with proscribing democratic governments until 1983, following increasing economic problems, corruption, public revulsion and defeat in the Falklands War (also known as the Malvinas War, after the Spanish name for the islands, Islas Malvinas).
Since then, five free elections have underscored Argentina's progress in democratic consolidation, albeit with an unprecedented economic implosion at the end of 2001.
Politics
Main article: Politics of Argentina
The Argentine constitution of 1853, as revised in 1994, mandates a separation of powers into executive, legislative, and judicial branches at the national and provincial level. The president and vice president are directly elected to 4-year terms. Both are limited to two consecutive terms; they are allowed to stand for a third term or more after an interval of at least one term. The president appoints cabinet ministers, and the constitution grants him considerable power as both head of state and head of government, including authority to enact laws by presidential decree under conditions of "urgency and necessity" and the line-item veto.
Argentina's parliament is the bicameral National Congress or Congreso de la Nación, consisting of a senate (Senado) of 72 seats and a Chamber of Deputies (Cámara de Diputados) of 257 members. Since 2001, senators have been directly elected, with each province, including the Federal Capital, represented by three senators. Senators serve 6-year terms. One-third of the Senate stands for reelection every 2 years via a partial majority system in each district. Members of the Chamber of Deputies are directly elected to 4-year term via a system of proportional representation. Voters elect half the members of the lower house every 2 years.
Administrative Divisions
Main article: Provinces of Argentina
Argentina is divided into 23 provinces (provincias; singular: provincia), and 1 autonomous district (formerly known as capital federal), marked with an asterisk:
Note: The current official name for the federal district is "Ciudad Autónoma de
Buenos Aires".
The official name for the alphabetically second-to-last province is
"Tierra del Fuego, Antártida e Islas del Atlántico Sur".
Major cities
About 3 million live in Buenos Aires, and roughly 11 million people live in Greater Buenos Aires, making it one of the largest cities in the world. Many European immigrants to Argentina settled in the cities. These cities offered jobs, education, and other opportunities that enabled newcomers to enter the middle class. Compared to most Latin American countries today, Argentina has a very large middle class. Many of these middle class people work in industry, own small businesses, or have government or professional jobs. They live in tall modern apartment buildings or bungalows that have small yards or gardens. Wealthy Argentines and business executives live in mansions and luxurious apartments in the cities or in fashionable suburbs.
Since the 1930's many rural workers have moved to the big cities to seek work, causing a shortage of housing. Many slums have sprouted in the city outskirts and slum dwellers live in shacks. Most of them can only find part-time work.
Argentina's urban areas have a European look, reflecting the influence of their European settlers. Many towns and cities are built like Spanish cities around a main square called a plaza. A cathedral and important government buildings face the plaza.
Geography
Main article: Geography of Argentina
Argentina can roughly be divided into three parts: the fertile plains of the Pampas in the northern half of the country, the centre of Argentina's agricultural wealth; the flat to rolling plateau of Patagonia in the southern half down to Tierra del Fuego; and the rugged Andes mountain range along the western border with Chile, with the highest point being the Cerro Aconcagua at 6,960 m.
Major rivers include the Paraguay, Bermejo, Colorado, Uruguay and the largest river, the Paraná. The latter two flow together prior to meeting the Atlantic Ocean, forming the estuary of the Rio de la Plata (River of Silver). The Argentine climate is predominantly temperate with extremes ranging from subtropical in the north to arid/sub-Antarctic in far south.
Economy
Main article: Economy of Argentina
Argentina benefits from rich natural resources, a highly literate population, an export-oriented agricultural sector, and a diversified industrial base. However, since the late 1970s the country had piled up huge external debts, inflation had reached 200% per month in some months of 1989-1991, and output was plummeting. To combat the economic crisis, the government embarked on a path of trade liberalisation, deregulation, and privatisation. In 1991, it implemented radical monetary reforms which pegged the peso to the US dollar and limited the growth in the monetary base by law to the growth in reserves.
Though initially a success, with inflation dropping and a recovering GDP growth, subsequent economic crises in Mexico, Asia, Russia and Brazil contributed to ever worsening conditions from 1999 onward. The government sponsored tax increases and spending cuts to reduce the budget deficit, which had ballooned to 2.5% of GDP in 1999, though both domestic and foreign investors remained skeptical of the government's ability to pay debts and maintain the peso's fixed exchange rate with the US dollar.
The economic situation worsened still further in 2001 with the widening of spreads on Argentine bonds, massive withdrawals from the banks, and a further decline in consumer and investor confidence. Government efforts to achieve a "zero deficit", to stabilise the stricken banking system, and to restore economic growth proved inadequate in the face of the mounting economic problems. On December 21st President De La Rua was expelled from the government by the pressure of massive movilizations from the middle class (who saw its bank accounts frozen) and the lower class (who was instigated in part by the PJ -"Partido Justicialista", justicialist party, peronist- to began rioting and stealing to generate a climate of social unrest), and the congress elected Eduardo Duhalde (one of the most involved leaders in de destabilization of De La Rua's governement) as provisional head of the state. Duhalde met with IMF officials to secure an additional $20 billion loan, but immediate action seemed unlikely. The peso's peg to the dollar was abandoned in January 2002, and the peso was floated from the dollar in February.
On December 23, 2001, interim president Adolfo Rodriguez Saa declared a short-lived debt moratorium.
According to Argentine Agronomist Alberto Lapolla, who has written extensively on the transformation of Argentina from the "granary of the world" to a "soy republic," 450,000 Argentines died of hunger between 1990 and 2003. Citing the Institut d'études sur l'État et la participation (IDEP), a thinktank, Lapolla adds that every day, 55 children, 35 adults and 15 elderly die in the country from illnesses related to hunger.
As of January 2004, the economical situation of the country showed a slight improvement over the past few years, apparently due to the internal growth of 2003. Economic restoration was expected by some to continue over the next few years with constant, internal growth rates. However, during the weekend of October 1-2, at the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund/World Bank, leaders of the IMF, the European Union, the Group of Seven industrialized nations, and the Institute of International Finance (IIF), warned President Néstor Kirchner that Argentina must come to a debt-restructuring agreement right away with the speculative "vulture funds", increase its primary budget surplus in order to pay more debt, and impose "structural reform" to prove to the world financial community that it deserves their loans and investments.
Demographics
Main article: Demographics of Argentina
Argentines are a mixture of diverse national and ethnic groups, with descendants of Italian and Spanish immigrants predominant (at least 88% of Argentina's total population). Waves of immigrants from many European countries arrived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Patagonian Chubut Valley has a significant Welsh descended population and retains many Welsh placenames and aspects of Welsh culture. Syrian, Lebanese, and other Middle Eastern immigrants number about 500,000, mainly in urban areas.
Other important immigrant groups came from Germany (German colonies were settled in the provinces of Entre Rios, Misiones, Formosa, Cordoba and the Patagonian region, as well as in Buenos Aires itself), France (mostly settled in Buenos Aires city and province), the United Kingdom and Ireland (Buenos Aires and the Patagonia) and Eastern European nations, such as Poland, Russia, the Ukraine and the Balkans region (especially Croatia and Serbia) and others. The only official language is Spanish, though some immigrants have to an extent retained their original languages in specific points of the country.
Argentina's population is overwhelmingly Roman Catholic, and Roman Catholicism is economically supported by the Argentine state, without being an official religion. It also has the largest Jewish population in Latin America, about 300,000 strong, and is home to one of the largest Islamic mosques in Latin America. Protestant communities are also present. The indigenous population, estimated at 700,000, is concentrated in the provinces of the northeast, northwest, and south. Mestizos of mixed European and Indian origin form at least 40% of the total population, and have a very strong presence in these zones though for historical and cultural reasons the local population do not perceive such a composition.
Spanish in Argentina is the most widely spoken and the official language. Argentina is also the largest country that uses the "vos" form of Spanish instead of "tú". It also uses the "vos" conjugation as do other countries such as Uruguay and Nicaragua as well as in some zones of Venezuela. The most prevalent dialect is known as Rioplatense (from its location in the basin of the Río de la Plata).
Culture
Main article: Culture of Argentina
Miscellaneous topics
External links
Argentine newspapers
- Clarín (http://www.clarin.com), "Clarin", Argentina's most popular newspaper.
- La Nación (http://www.lanacion.com), "The Nation", a conservative newspaper in Spanish.
- Página/12 (http://www.pagina12.com.ar), formerly a progressive newspaper in Spanish. It now belongs to Clarín.
- La Razon (http://www.larazon.com.ar), Buenos Aires free evening newspaper, belongs to Clarin
- InfoBae (http://www.infobae.com), a right-wing newspaper in Spanish.
- Buenos Aires Herald (http://www.buenosairesherald.com), a newspaper in English.
- La Nueva Provincia (http://www.lanueva.com.ar), "The New Province", a conservative newspaper of Bahía Blanca, a city south of Buenos Aires.
- Argentinisches Tageblatt (http://www.tageblatt.com.ar), a newspaper in German
- Diario La Capital (http://www.lacapital.com.ar), a newspaper from Rosario, Argentina's third largest city
- La Voz Del Interior (http://www.lavozdelinterior.com.ar), the newspaper of Córdoba, Argentina's second largest city
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