Argentina History

Argentina – national flag

According to a2zgov, the flag was created in 1812 by General Manuel Belgrano and officially adopted in 1816. The state flag shows the “corn sun” in the white stripe; it symbolizes the month of May 1810, when the first national government was established. According to tradition, the white and the bright blue color are associated with the robe of the Virgin Mary or with the sky. However, it is probably inspiration from the tape to the Spanish Charles III’s Order. Its blue and white colors were seen in the cockades erected by the Argentine patriots on May 25, 1810, recognizing the legitimate Spanish king Ferdinand VII and not the regent of the motherland, who at the time was Napoleon’s brother Joseph Bonaparte.

• Countryaah: What does the flag of Argentina look like? Follow this link, then you will see the image in PNG format and flag meaning description about this country.

Argentina – history

Archaeological finds have shown the presence of hunting communities more than 10,000 years BC. In southern Argentina (in Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego) there were nomadic hunters and fishermen from approximately 4000 BC and up to European colonization. In northwestern Argentina, in the period between approximately 500 BC and 600 AD. communities with agriculture, with potatoes, livestock with llamas and crafts with ceramics and metal processing.

• AbbreviationFinder: Check three-letter abbreviation for each country in the world, such as ARG which represents the official name of Argentina.

After approximately In 1000, significant bronze works were created, and with the influence of the Native American high cultures, a certain development of smaller urban cultures took place – but with a much simpler character than what is known from the Aztec, Mayan and Inca cultures. approximately In 1480, northwestern Argentina was incorporated into the Inca Empire.

European colonization

In 1516, the Spaniards invaded the areas around the Río de la Plata, but continued to concentrate their efforts on the areas of precious metals and a large indigenous workforce such as Mexico and Peru. At the arrival of the Spaniards, the native population of Argentina was composed of more than 20 different groups of Indians – mostly hunters and gatherers; only the tribes in the northwest that were influenced by the Inca culture and the tribes in the northeast that had come under the influence of the Jesuit mission were subdued. From the 1700’s. the Pampas territories were occupied by Araucan tribes from Chile, who had long experience in battle against the Spaniards, and they continued a long-standing resistance to the conquest.

During colonial times, the Spaniards in Argentina – which administratively belonged to the Viceroyalty of Peru – concentrated on the areas around the silver mines of Potosí; The Atlantic coast was not a concern. The most important city at that time was Córdoba, which received the country’s first university in 1613. At the threat of a Portuguese advance from the Atlantic, the Spanish crown established in 1776 a viceroyalty with headquarters in Buenos Aires (grdl. 1580), which in addition to the area around Río de la Plata also included the territories of Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia. From then on, the economy was turned from the interior towards the Atlantic Ocean.

Independence

The local trade interests, which were influenced by European liberalism and supported by England, came into conflict with the Spanish trade monopoly. The weakening of the Spanish crown during Napoleon I’s invasion of Spain in 1810 paved the way for a replacement of the Viceroyalty with a local government headquartered in Buenos Aires. In 1816, independence was declared and the revolt spread: a liberation army under the command of General José de San Martín helped consolidate the local independence movements in Chile and Peru, which declared their independence from Spain respectively. 1818 and 1821. Due to local and international interests, Paraguay, Bolivia, and Uruguay were soon established as independent states, reducing Argentina’s territory to its present size.

Civil wars

Independence was followed by a violent half-century, in which strife with Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay was exacerbated by endless civil wars. In these, the Unitarios clashed with the Federalists. Unitarios – the unit supporters – defended the interests of Buenos Aires, the only export port for agricultural products to Europe. The federalists represented the rest of the country, which had no access to customs revenue and whose local crafts could not compete with European import products. Paradoxically, it became a federalist, Juan Manuel de Rosas, who ruled Argentina 1835-52, consolidating the power of Buenos Aires and creating the path of national unity. Juan Manuel de Rosas used brutal force to hold together the unity and sovereignty of the country.

The modern nation state

In 1853 a constitution was adopted which, with a few amendments, is still in force. But the disputes between coast and inland persisted, and it was not until 1880 that Argentina took the form of a modern state: a federal republic with Buenos Aires as its capital and placed in the world economy as an exporter of agricultural products and an importer of industrial goods, mainly British. The need in the latter part of the 1800’s. to include more agricultural land served as an excuse for the extinction of the Native American tribes that inhabited inner Argentina; The desert campaignin 1879 put an end to more than three centuries of native resistance. Labor for agriculture came with European immigration. From 1869 to approximately By 1914, Argentina had quadrupled its population and at the same time had been transformed into the most urbanized country in all of Latin America: More than four million. immigrants from various countries, mainly Italians and Spaniards, had settled down; most in the cities, as far from everyone was allowed to own land. The massive immigration changed the composition of the population and society. A broad middle class emerged, which with the introduction of universal suffrage for men in 1912 gained influence in national politics. The victory of the Radical Party (Unión Cívica Radical) in 1916 in the presidential election thus displaced the traditional conservative upper class from power. The working class fought for its rights and was strengthened by exiled anarchists and socialists from Spain, Italy and Germany. In 1919, it gave the start to the state, violent repression,Semana trágica, ‘the unhappy week’.

A dizzying economic development made Argentina one of the countries in the world with the largest income per capita. per capita, but due to dependence on international markets, the country was hit hard by the economic crisis of 1929. In 1930 – the year of the first military coup in the country’s history – a long period of economic and political unrest began.

During World War II, Argentina was neutral until the last months of the war and thus had good outlets. The increase in agricultural exports and the decrease in imports gave impetus to the formation of a national industry and thus to the flight from country to city. In 1945, the newly arrived sections of the working class supported Juan Perón, one of the military figures who had led a coup in 1943.

The Peronist government (1946-55) pursued a populist and nationalist policy which, by virtue of World War II earnings, could raise the standard of living of the working class, introduce the first social legislation (especially through the efforts of Eva “Evita” Perón) and nationalize a large part of the country’s natural resources and the transport sector. Peronism also has the credit for a labor market reform and for the introduction of the right to vote for women in 1947. But economic problems as well as conflicts with the church and with parts of the army led in 1955 to a bloody military coup that ended with Perón being overthrown and exiled in Spain.

The following period was characterized by weak civilian governments, military coups, the growing dissatisfaction of the working class and the rise of guerrilla activity in the cities and in the countryside. The radical governments under Arturo Frondizi(1958-62) and Arturo U. Illia (1963-66) had come to power by election, which excluded the Peronists from line-up, but they were overthrown by the army. This, under alternating leadership, retained power until 1973, when internal tensions had reached a level that forced it to print free elections. The victorious presidential candidate, Peronist Héctor José Cámpora, called new elections, which led to the appointment of Juan Perón with his wife, Isabel de Martinez (“Isabelita”) as Vice President. After Perón’s death (1974), power passed to the Vice President, who allowed the army to suppress the left-wing and Peronist guerrillas. The ensuing violence was accompanied by a catastrophic economic development, which led to another military coup in 1976, the bloodiest in the country’s history. During the so-called ‘dirty war’,, the army was responsible for torture, murder and for thousands of “missing” persons, and it forced a much larger number – predominantly intellectuals – into exile.

Generals Jorge R. Videla (1976-81), Roberto Viola (1981) and Leopoldo Galtieri (1981-82) and their violent policies of repression were united with liberal economic enterprise, which brought the country to the brink of bankruptcy and created a foreign debt that threatened the country’s economic independence.. In a desperate attempt to save its prestige, in 1982 the army tried to conquer the Falkland Islands from Britain. A short war followed, the Falklands War, which ended in defeat to Argentina and the fall of the discredited military dictatorship. After a short transitional government, the Peronists were defeated for the first time in 1983 in a free election, which gave the government power to the radical Raúl Alfonsín. Under his rule, the democratic conditions were restored, and the military leaders responsible for torture and lost persons were prosecuted, but later protected by an amnesty law. However, the economic crisis was not overcome.

In 1989, the Peronist Carlos Menem took overgovernment power, and he succeeded in limiting the power of the military considerably and in stabilizing the economic situation by wage restraint and the privatization of the territories which Peronism had previously nationalized. Carlos Menem managed to maintain his popularity despite the tight economic policy, and together with Raúl Alfonsín, the leader of the opposition’s largest party, he signed a “historic agreement” on 16 November 1993, which was to pave the way for a constitutional reform that, among other things,. should shorten the presidency to four years and limit the possibility of re-election to only one more term. Carlos Menem implemented both an economic horse cure and a fixed exchange rate policy against the dollar from 1991. It created calm and large investments from outside and got him re-elected in 1995. But in his second term, public indebtedness increased,

In 1999, a center-left alliance won, and Fernando de la Rúa (b. 1937) of the Radical Party became president. However, he failed to balance public finances and left the country with a debt of 155 billion. dollars. The economic crisis culminated in December 2001 with violent unrest that forced two presidents to resign within 14 days before Eduardo Duhalde (b. 1941) of the Peronist Party took power as interim president in January 2002. He dropped the peso by half in value. The budget for 2002 was shaved by 14%, unemployment rose to 25%, and the country had to go through lengthy negotiations with the IMF on new loans.

Eduardo Duhalde was replaced in 2003 as president by Néstor Kirchner. This appeared to be more left-wing and critical of the IMF and economic liberalism. Increased focus was placed on the country’s social problems and on unemployment; even though the acute crisis has been remedied, a large part of the population is still living below the poverty line. In January 2006, Argentina repaid its outstanding debt to the IMF, shortly after Brazil did the same. The showdown with the military dictatorship continues; in 2005, the amnesty intended to protect senior officers from prosecution for human rights violations was repealed. With the arrest of former President Isabel Perón in Spain in early 2007, the confrontation with past human rights violations as something new began to focus on the period before the introduction of the military dictatorship in 1976.

The popular Néstor Kirchner did not run again in the presidential election in autumn 2007. Instead, his wife and main adviser, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, ran for president, and she won a convincing election victory already in the first round of elections. In 2015, the conservative Mauricio Macri became president after a close run in two rounds against left-wing candidate Daniel Scioli.