Argentina
, officially the
Argentine Republic
is a country in the southern half of
South America
. Argentina covers an area of 2,780,400 km
2
(1,073,500 sq mi), making it the
second-largest country in South America
after
Brazil
, the fourth-largest country in the
Americas
, and the
eighth-largest country
in the world. It shares the bulk of the
Southern Cone
with
Chile
to the west, and is also bordered by
Bolivia
and
Paraguay
to the north, Brazil to the northeast,
Uruguay
and the South
Atlantic Ocean
to the east, and the
Drake Passage
to the south. Argentina is a
federal state
subdivided into twenty-three
provinces
, and one
autonomous city
, which is the
federal capital
and
largest city
of the nation,
Buenos Aires
. The provinces and the capital have their own constitutions, but exist under a
federal system
. Its current President is
Javier Milei
. Argentina claims sovereignty over the
Falkland Islands
,
South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands
, and
a part of Antarctica
.
- There is yet one more version of the culture hypothesis: perhaps it is not English versus non-English that matters but, rather, European versus non-European. Could it be that Europeans are superior somehow because of their work ethic, outlook on life,
Judeo-Christian
values, or
Roman
heritage? It is true that
Western Europe
and
North America
, filled primarily by
people of European descent
, are the most prosperous parts of the world. Perhaps it is the superior European cultural legacy that is at the root of prosperity?and the last refuge of the culture hypothesis. Alas, this version of the culture hypothesis has as little explanatory potential as the others. A greater proportion of the population of Argentina and
Uruguay
, compared with the population of
Canada
and the
United States
, is of European descent, but Argentina’s and Uruguay’s economic performance leaves much to be desired.
Japan
and
Singapore
never had more than a sprinkling of inhabitants of European descent, yet they are as prosperous as many parts of Western Europe.
- Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson,
Why Nations Fail: The Roots of Power, Poverty, and Prosperity
(2012)
- We also visited one of our great partners in the
Southern Cone
: Argentina. With President
Mauricio Macri
and our partners from Uruguay and Paraguay, we pushed ideology away from Mercosur. We also have been able to achieve important victories in terms of international trade, by successfully finalizing negotiations that had been going on for decades without a conclusion.
- Some days past I have found a curious confirmation of the fact that what is truly native can and often does dispense with local color; I found this confirmation in
Gibbon
's
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
.
Gibbon observes that in the
Arabian
book
par excellence
, in the
Koran
, there are no
camels
; I believe if there were any doubt as to the authenticity of the Koran, this absence of camels would be sufficient to prove it is an Arabian work. It was written by
Mohammed
, and Mohammed, as an Arab, had no reason to know that camels were especially Arabian; for him they were part of reality, he had no reason to emphasize them; on the other hand, the first thing a falsifier, a
tourist
, an
Arab nationalist
would do is have a surfeit of camels, caravans of camels, on every page; but Mohammed, as an Arab, was unconcerned: he knew he could be an Arab without camels. I think we Argentines can emulate Mohammed, can believe in the possibility of being Argentine without abounding in local color.
- Jorge Luis Borges
, "The Argentine Writer and Tradition",
Fervor of Buenos Aires
(1923)
- As I think of the many myths, there is one that is very harmful, and that is the myth of countries. I mean, why should I think of myself as being an Argentine, and not a
Chilean
, and not an
Uruguayan
. I don't know really. All of those myths that we impose on ourselves ? and they make for
hatred
, for
war
, for enmity ? are very harmful. Well, I suppose in the long run, governments and countries will die out and we'll be just, well, cosmopolitans.
- Among the many symbols used to frighten and manipulate the populace of the democratic states, few have been more important than “terror” and “
terrorism
.” These terms have generally been confined to the use of violence by individuals and marginal groups. Official violence, which is far more extensive both in scale and destructiveness, is placed in a different category altogether. The usage has nothing to do with justice, causal sequence, or numbers abused. Whatever the actual sequence of cause and effect, official violence is described as responsive or provoked (“retaliation,” “protective reaction,” etc.), not the active and initiating source of abuse. Similarly, the massive long-term violence inherent in the oppressive social structures that U.S. power has supported is typically disregarded. The numbers tormented and killed by official violence ? wholesale as opposed to retail terror ? during recent decades have exceeded those of unofficial terrorists by a factor running into the thousands. But this is not “terror,” although one terminological exception may be noted: while Argentinian “security forces” only retaliate and engage in “police action,” violence carried out by unfriendly states (
Cuba
,
Cambodia
) may be designated “terroristic.” The status of proper usage is settled not merely by the official or unofficial status of the perpetrators but also by their political affiliations.
- In the post-Vietnam War era the need for
Communist
abuses has been no less pressing than before. More facts have come to light on the scope of
U.S. violence in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos
, the extent of which U.S. officials lied to the public with regard to their programs and methods, and the brazenness with which these officials defied treaty obligations and
international law
. Much as the
government
and the
media
tried to isolate the scoundrelism of
Watergate
from the much more profound immorality of the “secret” devastation of
Cambodia
, the linkage between the two could not be entirely concealed and therefore tended to discredit still further the campaign to bring “freedom” to
South Vietnam
. Counterrevolution, torture and official murder in Argentina,
Guatemala
,
Chile
, and other U.S. satellites was also reaching new peaks. Thus, if Cambodian terror did not exist, the Western
propaganda
systems would have had to invent it, and in certain respects it did […].
- Long live
Germany
. Long live Argentina. Long live
Austria
. These are the three countries with which I have been most connected and which I will not forget. I greet my wife, my family and my friends. I am ready. We'll meet again soon, as is the fate of all men. I die believing in
God
.
- Within one century after
Columbus
' arrival, the entire native American population of the Caribbean islands was exterminated, probably 8 million people. In continental Latin America, only 12 million people survived after a century of
colonization
- while the population in 1492 is estimated at up to 90 million. True, many died because of new
diseases
which the colonizers had involuntarily brought with them, and many died not by massacre but under the hardships of
slavery
(which also happened to many prisoners in the
Nazi work camps
), but the number of literally massacred people still amounted to millions. In North America too, the 2 million native inhabitants of Patagonia (southern Chile and Argentina) were gradually but systematically killed to the last, as were all the inhabitants of
Tasmania
in a single campaign, and most of the
aboriginals of Australia
: in these cases, the
genocide
was entirely intentional.
- In the immediate period, millions in the
hospitality industry
, in
leisure
and
tourism
, in
retail
and services, and in
aviation
are being laid off without pay or fired outright. But the entire edifice of
global finance
is crumbling and we could easily see a generalised
economic collapse
across the entire system. Talk of the irrationality of
capitalism
is
being posted
everywhere. Extensive industrial collapse could create millions of
unemployed
. A banking collapse would impoverish millions more at a stroke. This is what the government's
authoritarian
new bill is preparing for ? a repetition in Britain and on a global scale of the kind of economic and
social collapse
that happened in
Argentina in 2001?2
, when most
working-class
and middle-class people lost
all their savings
and millions lost their jobs. Mass social and political anger could shake the system to its foundations, and those in power are preparing for emergency measures against radical "
subversives
" ?
left-wing
activists,
trade unionists
, social activists ? liable to lead mass
resistance
. This, it seems, could take the form of mass detention without trial.
- The rights and the circumstances of the people in the Falkland Islands must be uppermost in our minds. There is no question in the Falkland Islands of any
colonial dependence
or anything of the sort. It is a question of people who wish to be associated with this country and who have built their whole lives on the basis of association with this country. We have a moral duty, a political duty and every other kind of duty to ensure that that is sustained. The people of the Falkland Islands have the absolute right to look to us at this moment of their desperate plight, just as they have looked to us over the past 150 years. They are faced with an act of naked, unqualified
aggression
, carried out in the most shameful and disreputable circumstances. Any guarantee from this invading force is utterly worthless?as worthless as any of the guarantees that are given by this same Argentine junta to its own people.
- Michael Foot
,
Speech
in the House of Commons after Argentina's invasion of the Falkland Islands (3 April 1982)
- The one on the right concerned the shift from an older understanding of
economic liberalism
to what is now called "
neoliberalism
." Neoliberalism is
not
... a synonym for
capitalism
. I don't see how you can have any kind of modern economy without a
market based economy
. Neoliberalism took that basic insight and stretched it to an extreme seeking to
deregulate
,
privatize
and basically pull back the role of the
state
, which many neoliberals regarded as simply obstacles to individuals, to entrepreneurship, to economic growth, and as a result markets did their usual work. They produced a great deal of
inequality
,
as...
global corporations
searched for very small cost advantages by moving jobs to low cost areas... [T]hey destabilized the global economy
in
certain important ways by deregulating the financial sector. As a result of the deregulation that occurred in the 1980s and 90s we had an escalating series of financial crises. In the
sterling crisis
, the
Asian financial crisis
,
Argentina
,
Russia
, and finally culminating in the big
American subprime crisis in 2008
. The... cumulative effects of this instability were political and they were very serious because many ordinary people were hurt... a lot of people lost their homes, lost their jobs, and the
elites
that ran these big banks and financial institutions suffered only a momentary disruption in their incomes, and went on to continue to dominate their respective economies... [T]his had a direct impact on the rise of
populism
in subsequent years, both on the right and on the left.
- We must all believe in ourselves and together raise our national banner high as a symbol of freedom so that it can fly
sovereignly
and definitively over our great fatherland. This will not prevent us from persisting in our tradition as a peace-loving nation and from respecting all world nations, nor will it prevent us from resuming with dignity, through friendly gestures stemming from our natural generosity,
diplomatic negotiations
which may give an institutional basis to the situation which we have achieved, clearly safeguard- ing those legitimate interests we have always respected. Our arms will always be extended to conclude noble commitments and to forget past offences for the sake of building a peaceful future for the civilized world. Glory to the great Argentine people
- The nobility... of the Argentine people, in this square and all the country’s squares, causes us to offer our hand to the adversary, but this must not be taken as weak- ness. If it is necessary, the people, whose feelings I try to interpret as
President
of the nation, will be ready... to offer a hand, a gesture of peace with nobility and in a gesture of peace with honour, but they will also be ready to teach a lesson to anyone who dares to touch a square metre of Argentine territory.
- Greta Thunberg
and a group of other
children
have pushed forward their legal complaint at the
UN
against countries they accuse of endangering children’s wellbeing through the
climate crisis
, despite attempts to have it thrown out. The 16 children, including the
Swedish
environmental activist
, lodged a legal case with the UN committee on the rights of the child against Argentina, Brazil,
France
,
Germany
and
Turkey
last September. They alleged that the countries ? which are legally obliged to protect children under the UN convention on the rights of the child ? breached those obligations by failing to protect them from the “direct, imminent and foreseeable risk to their health and wellbeing” posed by the climate crisis.
- …the anti-cult campaigns by [Pablo Gaston] Salum and the PROTEX may indeed put the Argentinian
democracy
at risk.
- While
Lula
’s rise to power occurred without major institutional fractures,
Kirchner
reached the presidency unexpectedly after a turbulent sequence of temporary governments. What in
Brazil
was a calm transfer of power, in
Argentina
was a delicate operation to restore the
credibility
of the state in the face of mass rejection of the political system (expressed in the slogan ‘
que se vayan todos
’ ? get rid of the lot of them). Lula marks the final phase of the transformation of the PT
^
into a classic
bourgeois
party, breaking with its
left wing
past and becoming integrated into a bipartisan system. Its patronage finances an army of bureaucrats who upheld the expulsion of those members of parliament opposed to the pension reforms. This transformation of a popular movement into an appendage of
capitalist
domination was what happened with Peronism
^
a long time ago. Kirchner was able to renew yet again the party that has guaranteed
governability
for the
ruling class
. But he has shown an uncharacteristic duplicity, veiling clientilism with gestures in defence of
human rights
, the independence of the
judiciary
and an attack on
corruption
.
- Claudio Katz,
Latin America’s new ‘left’ governments
(
International Socialism
2 : 107, Summer 2005.)
- The
coups
,
wars
and
slaughters
to instill and maintain pro-corporate regimes have never been treated as
capitalist
crimes but have instead been written off as the excess of overzealous
dictators
, as hot fronts in the
Cold War
, and now of the
War on Terror
. If the most committed opponents of the corporatist economic model are systematically eliminated, whether in Argentina in the
seventies
or in
Iraq
today, that suppression is explained... almost never as the fight for the advancement of pure capitalism.
- Naomi Klein
,
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
(2007)
- Brazil, Argentina, and
Colombia
have refused to send weapons to
Ukraine
, despite pressure by the US and EU.
Latin American
left-wing
leaders have urged peace with
Russia
and called for
neutrality
in
the West’s new cold war
. Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia have rejected requests by the
United States
and
European Union
that they send weapons to Ukraine. The commander of the
US military
’s Southern Command (Southcom), which operates in Latin America and the Caribbean, revealed on January 19 that Washington has been pressuring countries in the region to arm Ukraine. Southcom wants Latin American nations to “replace [their] Russian equipment with United States equipment ? if those countries want to donate it to Ukraine”, said Army General Laura J. Richardson. But Latin America’s left-wing leaders have refused, instead maintaining neutrality and urging peace. The
socialist
governments in
Cuba
,
Venezuela
, and
Nicaragua
blamed
NATO
expansion and US meddling for causing the
war in Ukraine
.
Mexico
’s
progressive
President
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador
(AMLO) offered to hold peace talks to end the conflict. And the leftist governments in
Bolivia
and
Honduras
have joined Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia in refusing to be part of the [USA's] proxy war.
- Don't cry for me, Argentina! The truth is, I never left you! All through my wild days, my mad existence, I kept my promise, Don't keep your distance.
- As a Rioplatense person of
European decent
, I feel strongly about the urgency of retelling the stories of our nation’s histories, the Argentinian and Uruguayan national stories and cultural stories, in ways that fully recognize the presence of
black people
. Which is a huge part of the greater story of the
Americas
as well. You cannot tell the story of the Americas without the story of black people and the
transatlantic slave trade
? that mass atrocity. Alongside, of course, the
genocide of indigenous people
. And also the cultural richness and artistic production and stories of resilience and power that, too, come out of those harsh realities that are at the origin of the Americas.
- Despite powerful mobilizations that brought them to power, the
progressive
administrations in
Argentina
,
Bolivia
,
Ecuador
, and
Venezuela
discovered that structural constraints closed off the possibilities for systemic change. Two decades of neoliberalism had so transformed the class structure of these countries that the social base of
Pink Tide
governments, while militant, had little economic leverage against capital. Backed primarily by workers in the informal economy and marginalized communities,
left-wing
governments simply lacked the leverage to challenge ruling classes.
- We meet to-day, representing the people of this continent, from the
Dominion of Canada
in the north, to
Chile
and the Argentine in the south; representing
people who have traveled far and fast
in
the last century
, because in them has been practically shown that is the spirit of adventure which is maker of commonwealths; people who are learning and striving to put into practice the vital truth that
freedom
is the necessary first step, but only the first step, in successful free government... We of the two Americas must be left to work out our own salvation along our own lines; and if we are wise we will make it understood as a cardinal feature of our joint foreign policy that, on the one hand, we will not submit to territorial aggrandizement on this continent by any Old Power, and on the other hand, among ourselves each nation must scrupulously regard the rights and interests of others, so that, instead of any one of us committing the criminal folly of trying to rise at the expense of our neighbors, we shall strive upward in honest and manly brotherhood, shoulder to shoulder.
- These days, the
American dream
is more apt to be realized in South America, in places such as
Ecuador
,
Venezuela
and Argentina, where incomes are actually more equal today than they are in the land of
Horatio Alger
. Who's the banana republic now?
- Economics
is a difficult subject, because we cannot conduct controlled experiments. There are not two or three Argentina's, one following the experiment that I described above, and another adopting the policies that I prefer. But we do have a wealth of experience from which to draw inferences. This wealth of experience all points in one direction:
Keynes
's teachings are still very much alive, and Argentina today would be in far better shape if his lessons had been taken to heart.
- I must tell the House that the
Falkland Islands
and their dependencies remain
British
territory. No aggression and no invasion can alter that simple fact. It is the
Government
's objective to see that the islands are freed from occupation and are returned to British administration at the earliest possible moment...We cannot allow the democratic rights of the islanders to be denied by the territorial ambitions of Argentina.
- As many people as necessary must die in Argentina so that the country will again be secure.
- Jorge Rafael Videla
, 1975, as quoted in Adam Bernstein (May 17 2013). "Jorge Rafael Videla, ruthless Argentine junta leader, dies at 87".
The Washington Post
.
At Wikiversity, you can learn about:
- Encyclopedic article on
Argentina
on Wikipedia
- Media related to
Argentina
on Wikimedia Commons
- The dictionary definition of
Argentina
on Wiktionary
- Argentina
travel guide from Wikivoyage