The official name is the Argentine Republic (Republica Arqentina). Located in the southeastern part of South America. The area is 2766 thousand km2, the population is 37.9 million people. (2002). The official language is Spanish. The capital is Buenos Aires (13 million people, 2001). National holiday – Revolution Day May 25 (1810). The monetary unit is the peso (equal to 100 centavos).
Member of 67 international organizations, incl. UN and its specialized organizations, OAS, LAES, ECLAC, LAAI, MERCOSUR, etc.
Population of Argentina
According to Countryaah, population growth in 1980-90 was 1.5%, in 1990-2000 – 1.3%. The main growth factor is natural growth; the proportion of immigration is small. Birth rate 18.2%, mortality 7.5%, infant mortality 17.2 people. per 1000 newborns (2002). Gender and age composition: 0-14 years old – 26.3% (5.0 million men, 4.8 million women); 15-64 years old – 63.2% (11.9 and 11.9 million); 65 years and older – 10.5% (1.6 and 2.3 million). Average life expectancy is 75 years, incl. 72 men, 79 women. Retirement age: men – 65; women – 60. Urban population – 88%. At the age of 15 and over, 96% of the population can read and write.
Ethnic composition of the population: 97% – Europeans (Spaniards, Italians); 3% – mestizos, etc. Language – Spanish.
Among the believing population: Catholics 92%, Protestants – 2%, others – 6%.
History of Argentina
Modern Argentina was born as a result of the May Revolution of 1810, which brought the country liberation from Spanish colonial rule. The formation of Argentine statehood during the 19th century. took place in the struggle between supporters of the modernization of the country according to the Western model and adherents of the idea of restoring the socio-political order of the colonial period (16th – early 19th centuries). The adoption of the Constitution in 1853 was of key importance. In the last third of 19 – early. 20th century In Argentina, there is a rapid development of industry and rapid growth of agriculture. During this period, the main institutions of bourgeois society are formed. However, the development of capitalism in the country took place under specific conditions that deformed this process: while maintaining latifundism and dependence on foreign capital. At the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. an agro-export model of Argentina’s development has developed, based on a certain specialization in the world economy: Argentina has become the world’s largest exporter of grains and livestock products. Throughout the 19 – early. 20th century the traditional latifundist oligarchy, closely connected with the world market, occupied the dominant positions in the economy and in socio-political life.
Despite the presence of deforming factors, the development of capitalism in the last third of the 19th — early. 20th century led to the emergence of new social strata (national bourgeoisie, middle strata, working class). Their political expression was the first modern parties, the largest of which was the Civic Radical Union (GRS), which turned into a spokesman for the interests of the main part of the local bourgeoisie and the middle strata. In 1916 the GRS came to power.
During the reign of the Radicals (1916–30), the political model of representative democracy outlined in the Constitution of 1853 was put into practice for the first time in full measure: representative institutions functioned normally, and civil liberties were mostly respected. Despite the fact that the radical governments carried out a number of reforms in the interests of the local bourgeoisie (encouragement of national industry, a series of measures that contributed to the development of capitalism in agriculture), key positions in the economy continued to be in the hands of the oligarchy.
In con. 1920s – early. 1930s in connection with the collapse (as a result of the Great Depression of 1929-33) and the subsequent restructuring that took shape at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. system of connections in the world economy, the former relative stability of the structures of the bourgeois society of Argentina, which occupied a dependent position in this system, was violated. From this historical moment, the determining factors in the evolution of the country are the structural crisis of this society and, accordingly, attempts to implement various alternatives to get out of it.
In the 1930s – the 1st floor. 1950s Two different alternatives have been put forward for overcoming the structural crisis. After the September coup of 1930, which resulted in the overthrow of the constitutional government of I. Yrigoyen, the traditional latifundist oligarchy, which regained political power, in alliance with circles of large local capital integrated into the system of the world capitalist market, as well as foreign monopolies, tried to establish the socio-political model of “limited democracy”. ”: while formally maintaining the basic democratic institutions and procedures, the people were actually excluded from the political decision-making process, and their civil rights were severely limited.
The failure of attempts to find a way out of the structural crisis within the framework of “limited democracy” stimulated the formation of a different alternative, populist in nature. Its main basis was the union of social strata that had grown up in the pre-war decade and during World War II as a result of the growth of national industry in connection with the policy of “import substitution”: a new stratum of national entrepreneurs and a new working class – yesterday’s peasants. The political tool for the implementation of this alternative was the mass nationalist movement, which in history received the name “Peronism” – after the name of its founder H.D. Peron, who was one of the leaders of the reformist-nationalist trend in the Argentine army, which sharply intensified towards the middle. 1940s This flow whose representatives came to power as a result of the June 1943 coup, which overthrew the “limited democracy” regime, became one of the decisive factors in the formation of a new type of regime – populist. The latter was born as a result of the victory of Perón and the movement he led in the February 1946 elections.
Implemented by the ruling in 1946-55 H.D. Peron, the strategic course was based on two main foundations: a sharp increase in the role of the state in all spheres of life and the creation of a comprehensive mechanism for the socio-political integration of the working masses.
The collapse of the system of class alliances on which the populist regime was based (the departure from it of a significant part of the “new bourgeoisie” of the 1930s and 40s, frightened by the growth of the labor movement and establishing strong ties with the oligarchy and foreign capital), led to its overthrow as a result military coup in September 1955.
Having buried the Peronist regime, representatives of the bourgeois-oligarchic bloc initially tried to find a way out of the structural crisis by creating another version of “limited democracy”. The collapse of these attempts was associated with the emergence in 1958–62 of a new, most important regularity in the development of the country: during this period, a strategic balance of power developed between the right-wing authoritarian oligarchic and reformist-democratic trends, which became one of the dominants of the political process in the 1960s–70s. Neither one nor the other possessed sufficient power to establish themselves as the undisputed hegemon of social development. This is one of the main reasons why none of the socio-political projects of the oligarchic or reformist type put forward during this period was carried out to the end.
The last military regime of 1976-83 was notable for its particularly wide scope of terror. However, the military was unable to ensure the normal functioning of the social organism. An attempt to solve domestic political problems with the help of a foreign policy adventure – the seizure of the Falkland (Malvinas) Islands – led to the Anglo-Argentine war of 1982. The complete discrediting of the army as a result of defeat in the war sharply accelerated the collapse of the military-authoritarian regime and the process of democratization, the development of which led after the general elections in October 1983 and the coming to power of the radical government of R. Alfonsin to establish a new version of the representative democracy regime. This option was distinguished by a number of features, due to a much deeper than before, the integration of the Argentine economy into the world economy and, in connection with this, the achievement of a qualitatively new, significantly higher degree of association of the Argentine bourgeoisie as a whole with transnational capital. In such a historical situation, any Western-style modernization project could not be carried out without the support, or at least the benevolent neutrality of transnational corporations and transnational banks. For this reason, in the 1980s and 1990s a neo-liberal metamorphosis of the main political parties of the country is taking place: the former reformism (both in the radical and Peronist versions), which was characterized by a contradictory combination of conciliatory and confrontational tendencies towards Western capital, has been replaced by a new type of reformism, involving direct cooperation with transnational capital. During the rule of the radicals in 1983-89, a symbiosis of the structures of representative democracy with TNCs and local monopolies was achieved. During the period when the Peronists were in power (during the two presidential terms of C. S. Menem in 1989-99), this symbiosis was supplemented by the establishment of an extremely contradictory unity of the populist tradition and the neoliberal course, which included the implementation of a program for the privatization of public sector enterprises and the acceleration of the process of a comprehensive transnationalization of the Argentine economy and society.
Despite some success in stabilizing the Argentine economy, achieved during the era of the third Peronist rule of 1989-99, in the end, the implementation of the neoliberal course led to a significant deterioration in the situation of the majority of the Argentine population.
