Argentina

ARGENTINA. - Federal Republic of South America.

I. GEOGRAPHY

Argentina, independent since 1816, has been since 1853 a federal Republic, comprising 14 autonomous Provincias (with a Governor, a Parliament and their own elected authorities), 10 Gobernaciones (or Territorios nacionales) administered by officials appointed every three years by the Central Government, and a Distrito federal, comprising the capital. The territory covers 2.8 million sq. km. (nine times Italy) with a population of 16.1 million inhabitants (5.9 per sq. km.). Argentina is therefore one of the largest states in the world, but its population still barely exceeds that of the small Czechoslovakia.

With an extent of 33° in latitude, Argentina reveals from zone to zone very different conditions of soil and climate. On the whole one may distinguish: to the N., the southern Chaco, partly steppe (pasture), partly scrubland (quebracho), with a semi-arid tropical climate, which passes over to the E. into progressively more humid strips (Misiones and the Argentine Mesopotamia between the Paraná and Uruguay); the terraced highlands (mesetas) of Patagonia to the S. of the Rio Colorado, steppe-like and desolate, with equally semi-arid climates, but cold or even subpolar (Tierra del Fuego); and - between the two regions - the Pampa, flat and grassy to the E., drier and interspersed with elevations to the O. (western Pampa), with a more temperate climate, less scanty rainfall, especially to the E., and therefore better suited to agriculture. Finally, the E. slope of the Chilean Andes falls within Argentina, comprising to the N. part of the desolate intermontane highlands (Puna), flanked, like wings, by longitudinal sierras enclosing more or less vast strips of pampa.

A little more than 1/4 of the territory (27%) is covered with forests; for the rest the steppe reigns supreme, transformed into cultivated land for barely 10%. In these, cereals predominate (wheat, maize, rice, oats), seed flax (eastern Pampa), the vine (Mendoza), sugar cane and cotton (Tucumán). After agriculture, livestock raising constitutes the country's principal wealth (in millions of head: 34 cattle, 56 sheep and goats, 7.5 horses; 8 pigs).

To both activities are linked the most efficient industries, which, besides eliminating Argentina's dependence on abroad for certain manufactured goods (woollens, cottons, footwear), activate an ever more conspicuous export flow (flour, meat, dairy products). The exploitation of mineral resources (lead, tin, manganese, tungsten) is in its beginnings; that of petroleum is promising, extracted above all from Chubut (3 million tons).

The population, almost entirely white, has more than tripled in the last fifty years, during which immigrants exceeded six million. Nearly half of these are Italians, a third Spaniards. The natives now number only a few thousand (53), confined to the peripheral zones. The inhabitants are concentrated to the extent of 1/4 in the capital, Buenos Aires (3.5 million, with suburbs), and to the extent of 1/3 in this and seven other cities (Rosario, Córdoba, La Plata, Tucumán, Santa Fe, Bahía Blanca, Río Cuarto; all with over 100 thousand souls). 99.6% of the population is Catholic; Protestants are chiefly English and German immigrants; the Jews (about 100 thousand) are almost all Russian. There are no religious conflicts in the country.

Communications rely on an extensive road network (250 thousand km.) and on 42.8 thousand km. of railways which radiate, in substance, from the mid-Atlantic region toward the pampa, but are rather sparse elsewhere, and hampered by differences in gauge. Two intercontinental lines link Argentina to Bolivia (Buenos Aires-Tucumán-La Paz) and to Chile (Transandine: Buenos Aires-Mendoza-Valparaiso).

Argentina's trade balance is largely active. In imports the following predominate (in value): textiles, fuels, lubricants, iron goods, machinery, etc.; in exports, cereals, meat, flax (seed), wool, hides, etc. Great Britain and the United States are the largest suppliers and buyers.
ARGENTINA - 1) State border. 2) Provincial border. 3) Ecclesiastical districts. 4) Railways.

Giuseppe Caraci

II. HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY

The history of A. comprises two periods: that from colonization in the 16th century until 1816, and the other from 1816 to our own days, characterized by emancipation and by the life of an autonomous nation. In the first period three epochs are to be distinguished, according to the government given it by Spain: 1) the epoch of the conquerors (adelantados) from 1536 to 1591, in which the missionaries arrive and undertake the work of converting the natives; 2) the epoch of the governors from 1590 until 1776, in which the fruits of the conquest are consolidated and the work of Christian culture is undertaken by the missionaries in the centers and in the native colonies; 3) the epoch of the viceroyalty (1776-1816) begun by Charles III, in which commerce and industry are intensified and urban centers multiply.

In the republican period as well (1816-43) two epochs are distinguished: that of emancipation and autonomous reorganization (1816-1900) and the other of immigration and commercial development (1900-43) which brings the progressive elimination of party prejudices, removing the disintegrating tendencies (federalism), while the people acquire the consciousness of Christian cultural unity.

First period (16th century - beginning of the 19th century). — In the time of colonization under the conquerors (1536-1591), the first missionaries arrive. The first expeditions of Giovanni Diaz de Solís (Oct. 8, 1515), Hernando de Magallanes (1519-21) and Sebastiano Caboto (1526-30) are the prelude to the conquest and to evangelization. With the first «adelantado» created by Charles V, don Pietro de Mendoza, the first contingent of priests and religious arrived in 1536, and on Feb. 2 the great South American metropolis of Porto de Nuestra Señora del Buen Aire was founded. Franciscans, Jesuits, Dominicans and Mercedarians, according to the orientations of the individual institutes, contributed effectively to the rapid evangelization. With the expedition of Alfonso Cabrera, five or six Franciscans arrived in 1538, three of whom were the first bishops of A. New groups of missionaries arrived in 1554, 1572, 1589, 1592. The true conqueror was the «adelantado» Martínez de Irala, appointed in 1555. Irala did not recognize the governor appointed by Spain, Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, and with his soldiers and his energy he knew how to win the esteem of the government of the Peninsula, which confirmed him in the office of governor. During his government the cities of Tucumán, Córdoba, Santa Fe were founded, and in 1580 the city of Buenos Aires was renewed. In his explorations Irala reached as far as the cordilleras of the Andes and introduced the first specimens of livestock. Meanwhile the missionaries served the pacification of the Indians.

Famous among them are the Franciscans father Diego de Rojas, St. Francesco Solano, father Luigi de Bolaños who made the first version of the catechism in the native language, the Dominican father Carvajal; the Jesuit fathers who founded (1610) the native colonies under the name of «Reducciones», transforming themselves into architects, printers, military instructors and grammarians.

In the time of the governors (1591-1776) the fruits of the first labors are gathered, and in the cities, developed with the population of creoles and mestizos, the Collegio Massimo, of Montserrat of Córdoba, the Collegio Grande and the Collegio de Belén in Buenos Aires, the Colleges of Corrientes, Santa Fe, Rioja, Salta, Tucumán, Santiago del Estero and Mendoza are opened. From Gregory XV (1621) the college of Córdoba obtained the degrees of theology. In 1610 the first native colonies (reducciones) were established, which had a regime inspired by Christian equality, liberty and fraternity, before the rights of man were proclaimed by the statute of Virginia (1776) and by the French Revolution (1789). The colonies found unjust enemies for economic reasons. In 1767 they comprised 88,884 souls. The Jesuits opened the first printing press in 1700. In 1776 Charles III established the viceroyalty de la Plata with Buenos Aires as its capital. This viceroyalty embraced, besides A., Uruguay, Paraguay, and Bolivia; in 1782 it was divided into eight intendancies.

Leaving aside the conflicts of ecclesiastical and civil jurisdiction and the expulsion of the Society of Jesus, A. is indebted for its harmonious cultural and economic development to the generous and Christian action of the Spanish government, to the wise colonial legislation that recognized the dignity of the human person and to the ethnic factor imported from the peninsula.

Second period (1816-1948). - In the first epoch (1816-1900) emancipation was carried out, in which the national clergy also took an active part; of the 29 members of the congress of Tucumán (1816) who signed the act of independence, 16 were ecclesiastics. In the organization of the autonomous nation there was a period of internal wars and political upheavals provoked by the two parties: that of the unitarians (aristocrats) and that of the federalists (landowners). After the presidency of Rodriguez (1821-24) general Las Heras succeeded. In 1825 a constituent Assembly approved the «fundamental law» which established that the provinces were to govern themselves with their own institutions, but soon the Congress abolished the provincial regime and president Rivadavia began a government of unitary tendency that irritated the «caudillos», rekindling civil war. The struggles between unitarians and federalists continued until the dictatorship of the federalist Rosas (1829), who exercised against the unitarians a government of exclusion until 1852. In 1853 the Constituent Assembly sanctioned the present statute, but full national unification was not obtained until 1861, when Buenos Aires became the capital of the Republic. In 1862 Mitre was elected president, favorable to the Italian immigrant element and to cultural intensification. Faustino Sarmiento (1868), Avellaneda (1874), Giulio Roca (1880), Juárez Celmán (1886) governed amid vicissitudes of peace and upheavals. In the last part of the 19th century and in the early years of the 20th a powerful impulse was given to cultural diffusion, with a tendency partly liberal and positivist. Many pedagogical and economic reforms were carried out, the method of historiography was renewed, universities, schools, academies were founded, libraries opened, and journalism had from then on, together with cultural journals, a preeminent place. After national consolidation (1853) the immigration phenomenon had extraordinary success; from 1857 to 1925, 2,659,568 Italians entered A., many of whom contributed to agricultural and commercial development, improving economic conditions with the exploration of mines, the export of wheat and the raising of livestock. Scientific development from 1854 had several foreign cultivators, many of them Italians. The Church today is excellently represented by the clergy and by the religious communities that promote education and works of charity. More than 70 male and 110 female educational institutes are found in Buenos Aires alone under Catholic direction. The Catholic press has more than 50 periodical publications.

There are 7 metropolitan sees (Buenos Aires, Córdoba, La Plata, Paraná, Salta, S. Giovanni di Cuyo, S. Fe) and 16 episcopal sees.

III. HISTORY OF RELATIONS BETWEEN CHURCH AND STATE

From the first dawn of Argentine independence (Assembly of 1813) the intention of the new government to open stable relations with the Holy See became manifest. The desire was expressed again at the Congress of Tucumán of 1817 and in the first Constituent Assembly of 1824. But no concrete negotiations were reached.

Of capital importance in the history of relations between the Church and the Argentine State is the year 1834, when Pedro J. Agrelo, procurator of the Republic, issued his "Memorial ajustado" (Buenos Aires, 1886): a draft concordat to be proposed to the Holy See, thoroughly permeated with regalism. In this climate (concordatarian tendency and regalism) the constitution of 1853, still in force, was sanctioned.

In it explicit mention was made of the concordat and it was recommended to parliament (art. 67, para. 19) and to the executive power (art. 86, para. 14). Consequently negotiations for it were begun at once. During the year

1854 an Argentine agent had several contacts with Card. Antonelli and even received a draft concordat proposed by him, but the matter had no sequel. Thus also failed the missions of Juan Bautista Alberdi (1857), and Juan del Campillo (1858). The last official attempt was that of 1884, after a long period of quasi-hostility (mission of Vicente Quesada), which failed like all the preceding ones because of the decided intention of the Argentine government to preserve the regalistic content of the constitution.

The Argentine constitution, in fact, although it admits the Catholic religion as the religion of the State and as such supports it (art. 2), nevertheless reserves to Parliament and to the president of the republic the right of patronage (art. 67, para. 19; art. 86, para. 8) and the exequatur on pontifical acts of a general and permanent nature (art. 86, para. 9). By virtue of the exequatur the supreme Court of justice in 1925 denied the juridical value of the code of canon law, declaring valid in the territory of the State only the laws of the Council of Trent. It is precisely this set of advantages and rights that has hitherto prevented the conclusion of a concordat between the A. and the Holy See.

Apart, however, from the concordat question, relations between Church and State are rather cordial and are maintained through normal diplomatic relations.

Francesco Gasa

IV. SCHOOL SYSTEM

The Council of Public Instruction of A. established in 1936 the unity, coordination and correlation of studies, inasmuch as free teaching and the free choice of subjects to be taught had brought chaos into the education of youth. The school is divided into: primary, secondary and university. Primary instruction is private, though partly subsidized by the central government and by the provincial governments; it is secular and compulsory from ages 5 to 13. In the first place is placed the teaching of reading, writing and mathematics, which are taught for two hours a day. History, geography, natural history, civic instruction, manners and morals must be divided among the other two hours. Religion is excluded from the school so as not to destroy its secular character, and is replaced by the teaching of morals, imparted by the teachers and not by religious. To children from 5 to 10 years of age morals are taught in narrative form, and to youths from 10 to 13 years of age the duties toward men, the family and God are explained. In rural centers primary instruction must lead the child to know how to exploit the land intensively, and for this purpose the days of honey, the feast of the tree and of the forest have been instituted. To facilitate the task of the primary school there exist 2286 cooperating associations composed of former pupils and of military men. These associations must look after the material and moral interests of the 1348 primary schools and of the child, to whom full assistance is given even during vacations by establishing summer colonies. The medical visit is regular and free. Secondary instruction is imparted in the 86 normal schools and in the 47 national colleges. The duration of the normal school is two years if it prepares tutors for rural centers, four years if it prepares teachers for ordinary primary schools, seven years if it prepares professors for normal schools. The national college has a duration of five years (six years in Buenos Aires) and prepares pupils for the universities, which are the following: Córdoba (1628), Buenos Aires (1821), La Plata (1897), Tucumán (1912), Santa Fe (1889), Litoral (1920). To increase fruit and vegetable production, schools of agriculture have been instituted at Casilda, Bell-Ville, Córdoba and Olavarría, and the school of fruit growing and ethnology of San Juan. Religious teaching is excluded from all these schools, in which the psychology of Verheyen is followed.

Miroslav Stump

V. ART

When the first group of colonists who were to give life to the Argentine nation landed in 1512 on the shores of the Rio de la Plata, they found themselves in contact with natives whose civilization can be defined as Neolithic and — with the exception of the Daguiti — without an artistic tradition. Argentine art thus developed as a projection of European art.

The work of the Jesuit fathers, moreover, brought about a fusion of the artist, whether Indian or European, with the environment in which he lived, and created the premise for the development of an original artistic expression. These premises may be considered documented by the sole work attributed to the legendary figure of José el Indio, "Jesus of humility and patience," placed in the church of N. S. de la Merced in Buenos Aires and dated to 1780, but they can be proved even more by the famous portals of the ruined church of S. Ignacio Miní, on the banks of the Paraná. These developments of a nascent artistic manifestation were, however, stifled with the removal of the Society of Jesus from the Rio de la Plata, ordered by Governor Bucarelli under Charles III.

To the Society of Jesus are also owed the first most important architectural achievements carried out in the style inspired by the church of the Gesù in Rome and especially due to the Italians Giambattista Primoli (1673-1747) and Andrea Gianchi (d. 1740), who also built civil buildings; the palace of the Municipality of Buenos Aires, for example, is built on plans by Primoli. The Baroque also had wide applications; this style is in use even today, especially outside the capital.

From the second half of the 19th century onward, the influence of Italian Neoclassical currents was superimposed on the established architectural forms, followed by French ones through the personal work of an architect, Alessandro Christopherseu, whose directives predominated until the advent of so-called functional architecture, widely implemented from 1892 (A. Virassoro) onward; one may, however, overlook the well-known vogue that in that period was enjoyed, particularly in the capital, by the Georgian and Tudor styles (especially from 1890, through the work of Stanislao Pirovano) and the achievements in the national styles of the various immigrant currents. Noteworthy too are the elaborations of the colonial style, still of Andalusian flavor, due to Martin S. Noël (1888). The leaders were educated abroad, since only in 1901 was the School of Architecture founded in Buenos Aires.

Sculpture and painting, which turned above all to portraiture and genre scenes, developed in periods of differing character: the first period has been defined as that of the Precursors and is characterized by the passage from external observation of facts to a more intimate enhancement of man and his environment. The principal painter is Prilidiano Pueyrredón (b. 24 Jan. 1823, d. 3 Nov. 1870); at the same time Italian artists worked successfully, among them Carlo Enrico Pellegrini, Lorenzo Fiorini, Ignazio Mausoni, Baldassarre Verassi. The second period, which saw the founding of the Association for the Progress of Fine Arts, of the National Museum, and of the Academy, and during which the organization of the annual Salon of exhibitions took shape, is the one called that of the Organizers.

Extremely rich in artists, ranging from Eduardo Sivori (b. 1847) to Ernesto de la Carcova (b. 1866, d. 1927), this is the period in which the character of Argentine art was being formed, assimilating and developing on a plane of independence the European currents. This period would culminate in the Nexus, which, especially in painting, sought to bring out the value of Argentine art by aligning it more directly than in previous periods with the feeling and manners of the age. This tendency, already begun by Pio Colliavino (b. 1869 in Buenos Aires to Italian forebears and trained in Italy under Sivori) with the participation of the painters Justo Lynch, Carlos P. Ripamonte, Alberto M. Rossi, Cesareo, Bernardo de Quiros, Fernando Fader, and of a sculptor, Arturo Dresco, closes the historical picture of Argentine art in order to begin the present period in which the avant-garde currents, common to the European nations and those of North America, are decisively followed.

Giorgio Luigi Bernucci

For the literature of Argentina see: ISPANO-AMERICANA, LETTERATURA.