Argentina could be said to be a land of extremities. Its location and elevation takes it from hot to cold, and its settlers and background take it from rich to poor. Second only to the importance placed on zest for living is the importance of the daily siesta. And while there have been many famous political developments in this century, the interaction of Argentina with European governments began in the sixteenth century, so it has interested the western world for these reasons and others for many hundreds of years.

National obsessions have included gauchos, tango, football, Evita and other political figures, and they have made an interesting mix with these more obvious extremes. There are many intersections of this nation with popular culture in the United States, including a popular musical, and so the basics of the nation are useful to know to go along with the facts and legends that have sprung up around this interesting land and its leaders.

LOCATION AND POPULATION

Argentina is located along Southeast South America extending until almost the other shore if it weren't for long thin Chile. North to south, borders extend from the border of Bolivia to the tip of the continent, where it shares an island with Chile. It has an extremely diverse geography, known with parks teeming with wildlife, glaciers, falls, beaches, and other unique formations.

The area was first explored by the Europeans beginning in 1500, and in 1776, Spain created a vice royalty that included present-day Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay. Argentina obtained independence from Spain in 1816, an even celebrated with gusto among other civil and international victories. The capital city, Buenos Aires, not to mention its largest has a population of 38,700,000.

BUENOS AIRES: HUGE EUROPEAN CAPITOL CITY

Buenos Aires is obviously with those numbers one of the world's largest metropolitan areas, and has remnants of an elegant past that is bruised and dirtied by war and poverty as it was taken advantage of and experimented with varying types of governments, But it is a shopper's paradise, with the tastes of a more expensive area with the prices of a poorer one, it has foods that rival Europe's finest, since the cuisine there has always been more like Paris than Peru, and it has the world's most famous opera house, at its hey day attracting the world's best acts and seating 2500 people.

CULTURE AND POLITICS

One of Argentina's nicknames is a "grimy Paris" because with the poverty of South America has come an embracing of all things of the European and sophisticated culture it was now interacting with. That cultural development has had setbacks, due to a political landscape as diverse and firy as its people and landscape. It has had conservatives and progressives, royalists and democrats, fascists and just about everything else. And after WWII, a landscape dominated by Peronists made his opponents fearful of his similarities and even his friendship with Mussolini, and thus fasism, a fear that made the nation rife with internal conflicts. Finally, 1983 granted Argentina democracy, and so it is hoped that the political landscape will settle down, if the geographic one stays exciting, and that the economy, the culture, and the attraction for tourists from other countries wakes up to discover the land.

With the civil and international conflict, Argentines have not always been able to realize the passions for higher culture that they longed for. And conversley, tourists don't at this moment, with only 25 years of stable government under its belt, think of Buenos Aires as somewhere to visit for high culture, though it teems with it, along with shopping and nightlife as it has since Evita herself sung in the nightclubs there.

Learn more about this author, Carol H. Morgan.
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