Argentina is a large country in the southern part of South America, the second largest on the continent after Brazil. It stretches from the subtropical north down to the windswept tip of Patagonia near Antarctica, taking in the towering Andes mountains along its western border and the immense fertile plains known as the Pampas at its heart. It is a land famous for tango, football, beef, and a strong European-influenced culture.
Before European arrival, the region was home to diverse Indigenous peoples. Spanish colonisation from the sixteenth century established settlements and the port city of Buenos Aires. Argentina declared independence from Spain in 1816 after years of revolution, a cause carried across the continent by the general Jose de San Martin, one of the great liberators of South America. The country then spent decades resolving conflicts between Buenos Aires and the interior provinces over how the nation should be organised.
Argentina runs almost the full length of southern South America, giving it an enormous span of climates and scenery. The Andes form its western wall, rising to Aconcagua, the highest peak in the Americas. At the country's heart spread the Pampas, vast and fertile grasslands that are the engine of its farming. To the south lies Patagonia, a dry and windswept land of plateaus and glaciers reaching toward the southern ocean, while the far north holds subtropical forests and the thundering Iguazu Falls.
The Argentine flag has three horizontal bands, light blue on the top and bottom and white in the middle, with a golden Sun of May at its centre. The flag was created during the independence struggle, and the pale blue and white are often associated with the sky. The sun, with its alternating straight and wavy rays and a human face, recalls an Inca sun symbol and commemorates the May Revolution of 1810 that set independence in motion.
Roman Catholicism is the historic and majority faith of Argentina, brought by the Spanish and reinforced by the largely European origins of its people. The country drew global attention in 2013 when one of its own, the archbishop of Buenos Aires, was elected Pope Francis, the first pope from the Americas. As elsewhere, regular church attendance has declined and evangelical Protestant churches have grown, but Catholic culture remains deeply woven into national life.
Argentine cuisine is defined above all by beef, reflecting the country's vast cattle ranches. The asado, a slow barbecue of various cuts of meat over wood or charcoal, is the centrepiece of social life, a weekend ritual shared with family and friends. Empanadas, savoury filled pastries, are eaten everywhere, and strong Italian influence shows in the popularity of pasta and pizza. The national drink is mate, a bitter herbal infusion sipped through a metal straw from a shared gourd, a custom woven deeply into daily life.
Agriculture has long been the engine of Argentina's economy, thanks to the extraordinarily fertile soils of the Pampas. The country is one of the world's leading exporters of soybeans and soy products, along with corn, wheat, and sunflower oil. Cattle ranching on the open plains has made Argentine beef internationally renowned, and the western foothills of the Andes, especially around Mendoza, support a major wine industry famous for Malbec. These farm exports are central to the nation's earnings.
The twentieth century in Argentina was dominated by the figure of Juan Peron, a populist leader whose movement, carried in part by his charismatic wife Eva, reshaped politics and remains influential to this day. The country also lived through a brutal military dictatorship in the 1970s and 1980s, during which thousands of people were forcibly disappeared, and fought a short war with Britain over the Falkland Islands in 1982 before returning to democracy.
Argentina has a population of around 46 million people, the majority descended from European immigrants, above all Italians and Spaniards, giving the country a distinctly European character compared with much of Latin America. The population is highly urban, concentrated overwhelmingly in and around Buenos Aires, whose metropolitan area holds roughly a third of all Argentines. Despite recurring economic difficulties, Argentina maintains high levels of education and a rich cultural life in literature, cinema, music, and sport.
