Jesuit ruins of San
Ignacio in the Province of Misiones
Before the arrival of Europeans at the
beginning of the 16th century, the area that is now known as Argentina had a
population of about 100 000, with established settlements in the north west that
were part of the Inca empire, and nomadic Indians scattered throughout the rest
of the territory.
In 1516 Juan Díaz de Solís became the first European to set foot on
Argentine soil, coming from the sea. The first
settlement of Buenos Aires in 1536 by Pedro de Mendoza, who came from Paraguay,
was destroyed by the Indians. Then in 1580,
Buenos Aires was founded for a second and definitive time by Juan de Garay. The colonizers
brought with them the Spanish language, Catholicism and European
traditions.
On May 25th 1810, the first independent government was established,
however, independence was not formally declared until 9 July, 1816. During this
period and the first years of the following decade, Argentina fought to
consolidate its independence and contributed through significant military
campaigns to achieve the independence of neighbouring countries, Chile and Perú
in particular.
From the 1820s a period of intense domestic struggle took place among
political groups, which lasted until the middle of the century. At the centre of
the political dispute were the ideas of Unitarism and Federation, as well as the
supremacy of Buenos Aires.
In 1833, British Forces invaded and occupied the
Malvinas (Falkland) Islands, a territory 500 kilometres east of the southern
coast of Argentina, expelling the local government and Argentine citizens living
there.
In 1853 the first National Constitution was
agreed upon, and Justo José de Urquiza was appointed as the first President of
the Argentine Republic. Although the
province of Buenos Aires was not part of the first constitutional state, it
joined nine years later in 1862. The city of
Buenos Aires was named capital of Argentina by Federal Law in
1880.
San Jose Palace, Province
of Entre Rios
In 1889, the Civic Union, a political movement,
which later became a party known as the Radical Civic Union, was formed. It demanded
electoral reform and the introduction of the secret ballot for the adult male
population.
Years after, in 1912, President Roque Saenz Peña enacted the Law of
Universal Ballot requiring secret compulsory votes for all men over 18 years of
age. Due to
this reform, the Radical Civic Union candidate, Hipolito Yrigoyen was elected
President from 1916 to 1922 and again in 1928. A military coup
lead by the Army deposed Yrigoyen in 1930 interrupting 77 years of civilian and
democratic rule.
A succession of military and civilian governments mingled for the next
fifty years. During this time, political and economic instability and autocratic
governing were mixed with periods of civilian government, economic growth and
political tolerance.
After the Second World War, the military officer
Juan Domingo Perón, who headed a political movement known as Justicialismo or
Peronismo, won the Presidency with a significant majority. His government,
during the second term, was ousted by the Armed Forces in September of
1955. In
1973 after 18 years of exile, while several democratic and military governments
alternated in power, Perón returned to the country and was again elected
President.
He died one year later in 1974, and was succeeded by his third wife,
María Estela Martinez de Perón, who was deposed by a military coup in 1976. The subsequent
government engaged in political persecutions, committing grave violations of
human rights under the justification that it fought terrorist
groups.
Democracy was definitively re-established in
1983. In
December of that year, Raúl Alfonsín from the Radical Union Civic Party was
elected President of the Argentine Republic. He was succeeded
by Carlos Saúl Menem in 1989 from the Justicialist or Peronist Party, who
finished his second period in December 1999.
Dr. Fernando de la Rúa was
elected President on 24 October 1999 taking office on 10 December of the same
year. At the end of December 2001, following general protests against the
persistence of the four-year economic recession, President de la Rúa resigned
from his position. The National Assembly, formed jointly by the Senate and the
Chamber of Deputies, after a brief interregnum, designated as President of the
Nation, from 1 January 2002, Senator Eduardo Duhalde, former Governor of the
Province of Buenos Aires and former Vice President of the Nation. His term of
office ended on 25 May 2003, when he was succeeded by Nestor Kirchner, who won
the federal elections for the term 2003 - 2007. It is worth mentioning that in
the 20-year period since 1983, during which four elected governments have
alternated in power, and profound institutional reforms have been accomplished,
the consolidation of democracy in Argentina has been firmly established.
