Specials DIVERSITY EMPLOYERS MAGAZINE Spring 2011 - Anniversary Commemorative Issue

Argentina

Before the coming of Europeans, Argentina was home to indigenous peoples -- hunter-gathers in the coastal region, and farming communities of the Diaguita in the northwest and the Guarani in the northeast.

Spanish explorers searching for a southwest passage to the East Indies came upon the mouth of the Rio de la Plata and claimed the area for Spain. The Rio de la Plata was named by Sebastian Cabot who arrived the estuary in 1526 and spent four years in the river basin.

Spain sent colonists to the region and they spread throughout South America. In 1536 the city of Buenos Aires was founded, and in 1776 it was made the capital of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata. In 1806 the British attacked and captured Buenos Aires, but a militia of local citizens quickly drove them out. The British tried again a year later and were similarly defeated. When French Emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte, overthrew King Ferdinand VII of Spain and replaced him with his own brother, Joseph Bonaparte, in 1808, the Spanish colonists in Argentina refused to recognize the change and on May 25, 1810 they sacked the colonial government and set up their own provisional government in the name of the ousted King Ferdinand VII. But when Ferdinand returned to the Spanish throne in 1814, some colonists (the patriots) refused to surrender self-government. They were opposed by royalists, who wanted the king's rule over the colonies restored. So began the Argentine war of independence.

Delegates from Buenos Aires and those from other provinces met in the city of Tucumán on July 9, 1816 and declared the independence of the United Provinces of South America. But they could not agree on the system of government. The Buenos Aires People, the Unitarians, wanted a centralized government with their city as capital. The people of the provinces, the Federalists, wanted a loose confederation with provincial self-government. Civil war broke out in 1819 between these two factions. Peace was restored in 1820 but the government situation remained unstable. The Unitarians held power for most of the 1820s, but in 1829, a federalist dictator took power. Federalists would remain in power until 1861 when another civil war erupted. Unitarian Buenos Aires, under the military leadership of General Bartolomé Mitre, defeated the Confederates and Mitre declared the Republic of Argentina. Bartolomé Mitre was elected president of the new republic in 1862 and he made Buenos Aires the nation’s capital.