Argentina

Argentina is a country that has been marked by extreme situations. Like the United States, Canada, and Australia at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries, it received wave after wave of European immigrants. At the end of the twentieth century, it had one of the highest per capita foreign debts in the world. Of the Latin American countries subjected to a military dictatorship during the 1970s. Argentina had the most “disappeared” people, around ten times more than Chile and one hundred times more than Brazil. During the 1980s it was one of the few countries to suffer chronic hyperinflation. On the positive side of the ledger, Argentina has one of the highest levels of education in Latin America and a large middle class.

In 1816, the United Provinces of the Rio Plata declared their independence from Spain. After Bolivia, Paraguay, and Uruguay went their separate ways, the area that remained became Argentina. The country's population and culture were heavily shaped by immigrants from throughout Europe, but most particularly Italy and Spain, which provided the largest percentage of newcomers from 1860 to 1930. Up until about the mid-20th century, much of Argentina's history was dominated by periods of internal political conflict between Federalists and Unitarians and between civilian and military factions. After World War II, an era of Peronist populism and direct and indirect military interference in subsequent governments was followed by a military junta that took power in 1976. Democracy returned in 1983 after a failed bid to seize the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas) by force, and has persisted despite numerous challenges, the most formidable of which was a severe economic crisis in 2001-02 that led to violent public protests and the successive resignations of several presidents.