The Spanish were the first Europeans to arrive in present-day Argentina in the early 16th century. After becoming a viceroyalty of Spain in the 1770s, the territory achieved independence in 1816. Between the mid-19th century and 1946, Argentina swung from civilian to military rule, and from radical to conservative policies. A coup resulted in the rise of Lieutenant General Juan Domingo Perón as president in 1943.
After winning the election of 1946, Perón instigated a policy of extreme nationalism and social improvement. At his side throughout his rise to power was his second wife, former actress Eva Perón, until her death from cancer in 1952; she remains Argentina’s most iconic female figure.
President Perón was overthrown in 1955, but he was re-elected in 1973. On his death, a year later, Perón’s third wife Isabel took office, but she was deposed by a military coup in 1976.
The end of the Peronista period heralded perhaps the darkest period in Argentina’s history. Driven by an obsessive fear of communism, the new military regime instituted a reign of terror in which disappearances, torture and extra-judicial murder were commonplace. This brutal era still feels very recent in today’s Buenos Aires, and the mothers of those who disappeared during the Dirty War, can be seen silently marching around Plaza de Mayo every Thursday afternoon.
Argentina’s invasion of the Malvinas (Falkland Islands) in 1982, led to defeat at the hands of the British. While the topic is still a diplomatic sore point, relations between the two countries have somewhat improved.
Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner succeeded her husband, Néstor Carlos Kirchner, in 2007, becoming Argentina's first elected female president. She came to power promising more of the same centre-left populist policies that had served her husband so well.
Kirchner’s initial popularity waned within a few years, however, with accusations of financial corruption, followed by violent suppression of protesters against her imposed export tax hikes, bringing back horrific memories of former strong-arm governments. In the 2015 elections she lost the presidency to Mauricio Macri.
Did you know?
• Meat-loving Argentines consumed a reported 59.4kg of beef per person in 2014.
• In 2010 Argentina became the first country in South America to legalise same-sex marriage.
• Nobel-Prize winning author Jorge Luis Borges famously compared the Falklands War to “two bald men fighting over a comb”.
• Lionel Messi and Ernesto Che Guevara were both born in the same city, Rosario.
Argentina’s population is more than 90% Roman Catholic, 2% Protestant with small Muslim and Jewish communities.
Social conventions:The most common form of greeting between friends is kissing cheeks. It is customary for everyone to kiss cheeks on meeting and departing. Dinner is usually eaten well into the evening - from around 2100 onwards. While Argentina is famous for its wonderful wine, Argentinians as a whole do not have the same propensity for drinking large amounts of alcohol as Europeans, and in bars and even nightclubs many will be drinking soft drinks and few will appear noticeably drunk.
Formal wear is worn for official functions and dinners, particularly in exclusive restaurants. A smoking ban was introduced in Buenos Aires in 2006, prohibiting smoking in public areas including bars and restaurants - with larger bars allowed to have a designated smoking area. Queuing and waiting for things in public places can seem a little less ordered than in Europe; an example is the Subte in Buenos Aires – people will continue to board the carriage until the platform is empty, where there seems to be space in the carriage or not. It can make for a rather crowded and sweaty journey.
Spanish is the official language. English is widely spoken with some French and German.
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