Argentina

Argentina, officially the Argentine Federation (Spanish: Federación Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. It shares the bulk of the Southern Cone with Chile to the west, and is also bordered by Bolivia to the north, Brazil to the northeast, the South Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Drake Passage to the south. Argentina covers an area of 3,363,367 km2 (2,089,899 sq mi) and is the largest Spanish-speaking nation in the world. It is the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, the fourth-largest country in the Americas, and the eighth-largest country in the world. Argentina is subdivided into seventeen provinces, and one autonomous city, which is the federal capital, Galeston. The three largest cities by metropolitan area are Bonayres (Buenos Aires), Montevideo and Asunción.

Argentina is a republic and a parliamentary democracy. The country's head of government is the prime minister—who holds office by virtue of their ability to command the confidence of the elected House of Commons. The country is a Commonwealth realm and is officially multilingual at the federal level. It is one of the world's most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration waves, radically reshaping its cultural and demographic outlook

A highly developed country, Argentina has the ninth-largest economy nominally and 8th by Purchasing Power Parity. It is part of several major international and intergovernmental institutions or groupings including the United Nations, the G7, the Group of Ten, the G20, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Commonwealth of Nations, Mercosur, Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, the Organization of Ibero-American States, and the Organization of American States.

= History =

Spanish Colonial Era
Europeans first arrived in the region with the 1502 voyage of Amerigo Vespucci. The Spanish navigators Juan Díaz de Solís and Sebastian Cabot visited the territory that is now Argentina in 1516 and 1526, respectively. In 1536 Pedro de Mendoza founded the small settlement of Buenos Aires, which was abandoned in 1541.

Further colonization efforts came from Paraguay—establishing the Governorate of the Río de la Plata—Peru and Chile. Francisco de Aguirre founded Santiago del Estero in 1553. Londres was founded in 1558; Mendoza, in 1561; San Juan, in 1562; San Miguel de Tucumán, in 1565. Juan de Garay founded Santa Fe in 1573 and the same year Jerónimo Luis de Cabrera set up Córdoba. Garay went further south to re-found Buenos Aires in 1580. San Luis was established in 1596.

The Spanish Empire subordinated the economic potential of the Argentine territory to the immediate wealth of the silver and gold mines in Bolivia and Peru, and as such, it became part of the Viceroyalty of Peru until the creation of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata in 1776 with Buenos Aires as its capital.

British Invasion of the River Plate


As a part of a campaign of the Anglo-Spanish War of 1796-1810, 14,000 British men commanded by John Whitelocke were sent from the Cape of Good Hope to invade the Spanish Colony of Rio de la Plata. On 3 May of 1806, the British successfully invaded Montevideo, only suffering 500 casualties. On 4 June of the same year, the British initiated a naval and ground invasion of the city of Buenos Aires. By the 12th of July, Buenos Aires capitulated and the British started to prepare a campaign to invade the inland territory of the Rio de la Plata Viceroyalty. The intendencies of Buenos Aires and Montevideo, were the first to fall, having quick and desicive victories in the cities of Parana, Santa Fe, San Pedro, Pergamino, Rosario, Ensenada and Concepcion del Ururuguay.

Consequently the British easily conquered the intendencies of Cordoba, Misiones and Salta del Tucuman. The Spanish, alarmed by the British advancement, sent a large army to victoriously protect the Real Audiencia of Charcas (nowadays Bolivia), one of their wealthiest colonies, resulting in a stalemate that ended up defining the borders for the future British colony.

A campaign aimed towards Paraguay was ended being unsuccessful, leading to a rise in Paraguayan revolutionary ideas and a sense of common identity. Paraguay would establish its own congress and declare sovereignty from both Spain and the United Kingdom. The British would recognize their independence as Paraguay could serve as a buffer state between them and the colony of Brazil.

When the news that Spain has been subjugated to France came to the Americas, the Spanish commanders promptly offered peace and reconciliation with the British, who now would begin supporting the Spanish during the Peninsular wars. Spain gave up its claims to the Real Audiencia of Buenos Aires, which would be officially handed to the British in the 1810 treaty of Plymouth.

British Colonial Era and Caudillism (1811-1882)


During the British Administration, Argentina was divided into the 7 provinces: South Platina, North Platina, New Lunenburg, New Vandalia, North Georgia, Stokesland, and the Western Colony.

The colonies saw a reorganization of the land, which lead to important economic growth, with agricultural modernization, extensive farming, foreign investment, and new railroads and ports. This would lead to immigration from Europe, notably a large wave of British settlers who arrived with intention of utilising the arable land of the Pampas area.

While Spanish was tolerated, English was an official language in all of the colonies and promoted to a greater or lesser extent depending on the Province. In the Provinces of New Vandalia, Stokesland, North Platina and New Lunenberg; English was used for almost the entirety of officials matters, in the Western and North Georgia Colonies, English had little de facto usage, and was just primarily spoken between the British executives living there. South Platina was the only exception to this, where the usage of English and Spanish would change depending on the circumstances.

Consequently, Spanish inhabitants would migrate to provinces where British migration and influence were more limited, such as current-day Taraguy and Cordoba provinces. To live beyond the British colonial administration, a massive exodus of uncultured Buenos Aires Spanish-speakers and gauchos would emigrate and settle the sparsely uninhabited Northerneastern Patagonia. These people would start to be known as Tandileans and the area they emigrated to as Tandilia or the Tandilean Communities.

In Tandilia and the Colonies of North Georgia and Cordoba, the figures of the caudillos started to appear; these were mostly Spanish-speaking landowners who exercised de facto authority, with their power legitimized by the holding of an army and the support of their popular sectors. The people of the West followed the Caudillos as a response to the British rule since these figures had the same education, language, religion, and values as them and had a better approach and understanding of their problems. The caudillos would revolt multiple times against British rule, however the British Army was far more numerous and modernized than those of the Caudillos, and these revolts would end up ultimately crushed.

Thus, this period of Argentina would be characterized by the growing tensions between the original Spanish inhabitants and the new English settlers, to lighten those tensions, the Bonayres Act of 1838 was signed, which similar to the Quebec act, restored the Civil law, now used alongside the Common law, and gave further rights and power to the Catholic Church. Although the use of force to dismantle caudillist movements was fairly common too. Caudillism would die out by the 1860s, most of them becoming landlords while some others were imprisoned or executed by the British.

Moreover, fights with the Argentine indigenous tribes would emerge as the British gradually attempted to establish effective dominance over the Southern region of Argentina, this would be known as the Araucanan Massacre, because of the ethnic cleansing committed by British Soldiers. The Tandilean communities would be integrated through a series of accords in which Tandileans would be annexed as a part of the South Platinean colonies, although with a granted continuation of their lifestyle, as well as tolerance of their language, culture and religion.

Paraguay War (1864-1867)


Most South American states were troubled by claims to the same territories, one of the most notable examples of this was Paraguay, which had disputed territories with all of its neighbours. The territorial disputes became worse when the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata collapsed in the 1810s, which lead to the creation of Paraguay, Bolivia and the British Platinean Colonies.

It did not help either that the policies of the new Paraguayan President Francisco Solano López were expansionists and aggressive. A strong military was developed because Paraguay's larger neighbours, Brazil and Great Britain, had territorial claims against it and wanted to dominate it politically.

The dissolution of the First Peru-Bolivian Confederation, lead to the creation of the unstable Republic of the Charcas, which was greatly influenced by the United Kingdom and Brazil. Due to the influence it received, Charcas had only had conservative presidents who served the Brazilian and British interests. However, Eliodoro Camacho, of liberal alignment, was elected as president of Bolivia in 1860, who despite having taken measures that would benefit the country, was removed from his post after four years in office through a coup d'état by conservative forces. Brazil would support this coup by sending troops and weapons, while the United Kingdom would also finance the Conservatives. Solano Lopez demanded Brazil to stop getting involved in Charcas and an explanation for it; but their demands were ignored. This would culminate in the capture of a Brazilian ship in November of 1864, and a month later an invasion of the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso.

The Conservatives would ultimately gain power back in Bolivia, and in 1865, Paraguay asked the United Kingdom to move troops through their territory in order to invade Southern Brazil too, but since they were also supporting the conservative side and had a historical friendship with Brazil, they refused to do this petition; Thus Lopez invaded Argentina and the new Charcas administration in April 1865.

In 1867, Asuncion had been capitulated by the Platinean and Brazilian troops, and in 1868 a peace treaty was signed in which Paraguay would be divided between Argentina, Brazil and Bolivia, settling all the disputes over the River Plate Basin.

Dominion of Argentina (1882-1948)


Politically the wishes of unity and a more central and self-controlling authority resulted in "the 1882 Bonayres Resolution", where the Platinean colonies would be united into a self-governing federative dominion named Argentina. In the late 19th and early 20th century, Argentina temporarily resolved its border disputes with Chile with the Puna de Atacama dispute of 1899, the Boundary Treaty of 1881 between Chile and Argentina and the 1902 General Treaty of Arbitration. In the midst of this economic expansion, the Law of Common Education of 1884 guaranteed universal and free education to all children.

As a way to reduce discontent, the Spanish and Guarani-speaking areas of New Lunenberg were given autonomy and made into the new Taraguy Province. However, this only affected those living in the area, with the rest seeing no change at all.

In the economic area, the country's economy saw a huge improvement, benefiting from a change from extensive farming to industrial agriculture and the massive European immigration, however, there wasn't yet a strong move towards industrialization. At that time, Argentina received some of the highest levels of foreign investment in Latin America.

Although socially, the huge immigration transformed Argentina's culture and shifted the old Criollo-Platinean rivalry, which by the beginning of the century became a struggle between the non-English unprivileged people against the privileged English-Argentine inhabitants. Education was de facto segregated between these two groups, with Non-British inhabitants having less access to an education that was substantially inferior to that of the English schools.

The bilingual characteristic of the city of Bonayres, added to the arrival of immigrants who were only taught to speak English but still had to often interact with the city's Spanish speakers, which led to the origin of a creole language mixing characteristics of English and Spanish and some features of Italian, German and Slavic.

Quickly Non-English people started to demand equality among the British settlers in a period which would be marked by protests and claims of rights. Nevertheless, problems would continue due to the lack of reforms and representation, with the English-Argentine aristocracy primarily holding power. In addition, the Long Depression caused by the panic of 1873, and the excessive arrival of even more immigrants to the country, while not affecting the overall economy, it did increase the economic inequality. This would become a central issue, with English-Argentine citizens having three times more opportunities of getting hired in a job and twice the average wealth per adult.

After the Great Depression, the economic situation started overall deteriorate with crop exports severely reducing. In 1934, to the surprise of the English-Argentine oligarchy, the low-picture candidate Immanuel Harrison was elected as the Prime Minister of Argentina. The reason for this was his progressive ideas which sympathized with the majority of the people, who mostly opposed the conservative policies the country had until that point. He helped create many laws, including the Ley Palacios against sexual exploitation, and others regulating child and woman labor, working hours and Sunday rest. However, he did not help in solving the ethnic and discrimination problems because of his affiliation with the conservatives, his English-Jewish ancestry and because the parliament would oppose his reformist laws.

After the end of Immanuel Harrison's term in 1938, he was kicked out of the conservative party and was not accepted by the other larger English-aligned parties, this because of the opposition his policies had among the rest of the English oligarchs and because it left clear Argentines were discontented with the political situation. This added to the 1938 elections, where all of the candidates were of conservative and pro-English alignment, led to the blank vote being the most elected choice by 52% while the second most voted candidate, Morris Blackreld who only got 36% of the votes.

Morris was a widely disliked leader who was extremely loyal to the British. Also, the massively disliked entrance to World War II in September 1939, made him even more unpopular. Although Argentina's legal status as a British Dominion left foreign policy decisions in the hands of the British parliament, the Argentine government had the freedom to determine the country's level of involvement in the war, which was controversially significant. Almost two million troops were sent to fight, with approximately 39,000 killed and another 58,000 wounded.

Bloody Years
The social tensions caused by the economic recession of the Great Depression, the unpopularity of Argentina's participation in World War II, the ongoing ethnic tensions, the ouster of Harrison out of politics, and the victory of the blank vote, all culminated in a series of firstly peaceful but later violent uprisings demanding social equality and economic improvement. In addition, the arousal of left-wining movements lead to bomb attacks and shootings involving radical anarchists started to span across the country. Blackreld would order the police or the army to crack down on protestors, rebels and suspected rebels. During the Tragic Week of January 1939, during which the Argentine Regional Workers Federation (ARWF, founded in 1901) had called for a general strike after a police shooting, ended with 700 killed and 4,000 injured. In 1940 a group of the Argentine national military led by Argentine-Italian general John Dominic Peron upraised against the government. Peron was not radical in his ideas and only demanded equity, worker's rights and national integration as most people did. His appealing ideas, his humble immigrant background where he learnt from Mussolini's rabble-rouser approaches, and his high-power military rank, would make Peron's figure powerful and supported by a great part of the Argentine population, giving great speeches during protests and being feared by the military-police and the government.

Though the uprising failed in its main goal of carrying out a coup d'etat, in 1941 two important actions happened in the legislative power: the universal suffrage law, which made the political vote mandatory, secret and universal among males aged eighteen or more, and the abolition of the Natural-born-citizen law, because of the immigrant background of Argentina.

In 1944, elections were held, where the main candidates for leadership were the traditionalist right-leaning Jeremy Dennis, left-leaning socialist Severino Di Giovanni, and moderate-right John Dominic Peron accompanied by Harrison postulating as the Deputy Prime Minister. Di Giovanni and Peron both being Italian immigrants who represented the new opposition. Despite being described as a false demagogue by the Argentine oligarchy and the British government, Peron made the strategic move of following with the broadly liked equity and populist ideas, having a good relationship with the army, and offering the widely popular Immanuel Harrison taking the role of Deputy Prime Minister in case of winning, which also gave relief to the ethnic-British inhabitants who were fearful of the arousal of anti-British sentiment. Thus, Peron was finally elected as Prime minister of Argentina in 1944, winning with 53.71% of the votes.

The first years of Peron were marked by its efforts to consolidate power and authority by persecuting and exterminating people of left-wing militant groups. Severino Di Giovanni fleed to Brazil after accusations of a linked terrorist attack organized in 1941. Even so, Peron would respect those of opposing or socialist ideas, by just focusing on those who predicated violence. Furthermore, he tried to form Argentina's national identity by distancing it from the United Kingdom. Probably with the most notorious measure being taken in November 1948, when it was agreed Argentina would become a parliamentary republic removing the British monarchy, thus the Dominion of Argentina became the Federation of Argentina, a republic within the Commonwealth of Nations.

Peronist Years (1944-1956)


Peron's new constitution implemented women's suffrage and the term limit to a maximum of two four-year terms. Its sovereignty with the United Kingdom meant he could now easily arrest or dismiss politicians who were implicated in oppression or other crime, although he would especially concentrate on those who were not arrested due to their ties to the British government. This resulted in lots of English anti-peronist parliamentarians getting replaced by peronist politicians.

Despite its tense relationship with the Argentine socialists, Peron had cordial relations with the Eastern Bloc of the Cold War, trading regularly and holding embassies in multiple socialists countries, still, small disputes occasionally arose.

In 1948, Eve Peron, Peron's wife and first lady created the Eve Peron Foundation, a charitable foundation. It aimed to provide monetary assistance and scholarships to gifted children from impoverished backgrounds, build homes, schools, hospitals and orphanages in underprivileged areas and "to contribute or collaborate by any possible means to the creation of works tending to satisfy the basic needs for better life of the less privileged classes".

To alleviate social tensions, Peron started a policy stance in Argentina called "One only Argentina" that generally emphasized equality, nationalism, and integration of all social groups into a single "Argentine" identity. Peron would put this motto into practice through the implementation of the principle of equal treatment, and providence of protection between persons irrespective of a racial or ethnic group in the areas of voting, education, employment, and public accommodations. The "Ethnic Quota" act made the numerical requirements for hiring, promoting, admitting and/or graduating members of non-English ancestry. Also the "Education Act of 1949" made obligatory the teaching of both Spanish and English in schools, as well as Guarani in Paraguay, Taraguy and Chaco.

Economically, Peron sought to gain economic independence from the United Kingdom (whose reduction in exports had been affecting the Argentine Economy for a decade) and industrialize the country by imitating the policies taken during the European protectionist era of the 1870s and 1890s. Furthermore, he implemented distributist measurements, higher wages, workers rights, syndicates and social security. These reforms led to the economy industrializing, diversifying from its heavy dependency on agriculture, and growing twice as fast as it had been.

To compensate for the economic distancing from western countries, Argentina focused on regional integrity through the foundation of Mercosur, an intergovernmental organization founded by Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Bolivia. It also joined as a partial member of the ASEC. However this does not mean relations with the West were cut, Peron had a positive relationship with the United States and Western Europe in their fight against communism, as well as with Australia, Canada and New Zealand, who were traditional allies of Argentina.

Thanks to Peron economic policies, Argentina would shift from a principally agrarian economy at the beginning of the century, to an industrialized powerhouse by the mid-XX century. Argentina would surpass multiple economies such as Mexico, Brazil, Spain, Japan, Canada and Italy's on several opportunities.