Argentina

, officially the Argentine Republic is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of 2780400 km2, making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, the fourth-largest country in the Americas, and the eighth-largest country in the world. It shares the bulk of the Southern Cone with Chile to the west, and is also bordered by Bolivia and to the north, Brazil to the northeast,  and the South Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the  to the south. Argentina is a federal state subdivided into twenty-three provinces, and one autonomous city, which is the federal capital and largest city of the nation, Buenos Aires. The provinces and the capital have their own constitutions, but exist under a federal system. Its current President is Javier Milei. Argentina claims sovereignty over the Falkland Islands, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, and a part of Antarctica.

A

 * There is yet one more version of the culture hypothesis: perhaps it is not English versus non-English that matters but, rather, European versus non-European. Could it be that Europeans are superior somehow because of their work ethic, outlook on life, Judeo-Christian values, or Roman heritage? It is true that Western Europe and North America, filled primarily by people of European descent, are the most prosperous parts of the world. Perhaps it is the superior European cultural legacy that is at the root of prosperity—and the last refuge of the culture hypothesis. Alas, this version of the culture hypothesis has as little explanatory potential as the others. A greater proportion of the population of Argentina and Uruguay, compared with the population of Canada and the United States, is of European descent, but Argentina’s and Uruguay’s economic performance leaves much to be desired. Japan and Singapore never had more than a sprinkling of inhabitants of European descent, yet they are as prosperous as many parts of Western Europe.
 * Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, Why Nations Fail: The Roots of Power, Poverty, and Prosperity (2012)

B

 * We also visited one of our great partners in the Southern Cone: Argentina. With President Mauricio Macri and our partners from Uruguay and Paraguay, we pushed ideology away from Mercosur. We also have been able to achieve important victories in terms of international trade, by successfully finalizing negotiations that had been going on for decades without a conclusion.
 * Jair Bolsonaro, Speech at the 74th UN General Assembly. Statement by Mr. Jair Messias Bolsonaro, President of the Federative Republic of Brazil. United Nations PaperSmart (24 September 2019).


 * Some days past I have found a curious confirmation of the fact that what is truly native can and often does dispense with local color; I found this confirmation in Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Gibbon observes that in the Arabian book par excellence, in the Koran, there are no camels; I believe if there were any doubt as to the authenticity of the Koran, this absence of camels would be sufficient to prove it is an Arabian work. It was written by Mohammed, and Mohammed, as an Arab, had no reason to know that camels were especially Arabian; for him they were part of reality, he had no reason to emphasize them; on the other hand, the first thing a falsifier, a tourist, an Arab nationalist would do is have a surfeit of camels, caravans of camels, on every page; but Mohammed, as an Arab, was unconcerned: he knew he could be an Arab without camels. I think we Argentines can emulate Mohammed, can believe in the possibility of being Argentine without abounding in local color.
 * Jorge Luis Borges, "The Argentine Writer and Tradition", Fervor of Buenos Aires (1923)


 * As I think of the many myths, there is one that is very harmful, and that is the myth of countries. I mean, why should I think of myself as being an Argentine, and not a Chilean, and not an Uruguayan. I don't know really. All of those myths that we impose on ourselves — and they make for hatred, for war, for enmity —  are very harmful. Well, I suppose in the long run, governments and countries will die out and we'll be just, well, cosmopolitans.
 * Jorge Luis Borges, "A Conversation With Jorge Luis Borges", Artful Dodge (April 1980)

C

 * Among the many symbols used to frighten and manipulate the populace of the democratic states, few have been more important than “terror” and “terrorism.” These terms have generally been confined to the use of violence by individuals and marginal groups.  Official violence, which is far more extensive both in scale and destructiveness, is placed in a different category altogether.  The usage has nothing to do with justice, causal sequence, or numbers abused.  Whatever the actual sequence of cause and effect, official violence is described as responsive or provoked (“retaliation,” “protective reaction,” etc.), not the active and initiating source of abuse.  Similarly, the massive long-term violence inherent in the oppressive social structures that U.S. power has supported is typically disregarded. The numbers tormented and killed by official violence – wholesale as opposed to retail terror – during recent decades have exceeded those of unofficial terrorists by a factor running into the thousands.  But this is not “terror,” although one terminological exception may be noted: while Argentinian “security forces” only retaliate and engage in “police action,” violence carried out by unfriendly states (Cuba, Cambodia) may be designated “terroristic.”  The status of proper usage is settled not merely by the official or unofficial status of the perpetrators but also by their political affiliations.
 * Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, 'The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism, p. 6.


 * In the post-Vietnam War era the need for Communist abuses has been no less pressing than before. More facts have come to light on the scope of U.S. violence in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, the extent of which U.S. officials lied to the public with regard to their programs and methods, and the brazenness with which these officials defied treaty obligations and international law.  Much as the government and the media tried to isolate the scoundrelism of Watergate from the much more profound immorality of the “secret” devastation of Cambodia, the linkage between the two could not be entirely concealed and therefore tended to discredit still further the campaign to bring “freedom” to South Vietnam.  Counterrevolution, torture and official murder in Argentina, Guatemala, Chile, and other U.S. satellites was also reaching new peaks.  Thus, if Cambodian terror did not exist, the Western propaganda systems would have had to invent it, and in certain respects it did […].
 * Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, 'The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism, p. 19.

E

 * Long live Germany. Long live Argentina. Long live Austria. These are the three countries with which I have been most connected and which I will not forget. I greet my wife, my family and my friends. I am ready. We'll meet again soon, as is the fate of all men. I die believing in God.
 * Adolf Eichmann, Before his execution in Jerusalem (1 June 1962), as quoted in Becoming Eichmann: Rethinking the Life, Crimes, and Trial of a "Desk Murderer" by David Cesarani (2006), p. 321. ISBN 978-0-306-81539-3.


 * We want a cooperative peace in which the peoples of every nation have the right of free choice--the right to establish their own institutions, to live by their own cardinal concepts, and to be free of external pressure or threat. These are deep-seated desires held passionately in common by the peoples of the United States and Argentina. We hope to see machines capable of destruction turned exclusively to constructive purposes. These shared aspirations spring from a common heritage: Both our countries won their independence from European powers. The drafters of our Declaration of Independence proclaimed that "all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." In Argentina, Esteban Echeverria said: "Equality and liberty are . . . the two poles of . . . Democracy . . ." In the United States, Abraham Lincoln described democratic government as "of the people, by the people, and for the people." In Argentina, Juan Alberdi declared: "Public freedom is no more than the sum . . . of the freedoms of all." The Constitution of the United States carefully separated the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of our government. In Argentina, the great liberator, José de San Martín, stated: "Displaying the most excellent principles matters not at all, when he who makes the law, he who carries it out, is also he who judges it." Your founding fathers and ours acted upon the same great hopes and expressed--almost identically--the same wisdom. This is of course not surprising: the vision of true freedom cannot be dimmed by a barrier of language or distance.
 * Dwight D. Eisenhower, Address to the National Congress of Argentina, The American Presidency Project; 26 February 1960


 * Within one century after Columbus' arrival, the entire native American population of the Caribbean islands was exterminated, probably 8 million people. In continental Latin America, only 12 million people survived after a century of colonization - while the population in 1492 is estimated at up to 90 million. True, many died because of new diseases which the colonizers had involuntarily brought with them, and many died not by massacre but under the hardships of slavery (which also happened to many prisoners in the Nazi work camps), but the number of literally massacred people still amounted to millions. In North America too, the 2 million native inhabitants of Patagonia (southern Chile and Argentina) were gradually but systematically killed to the last, as were all the inhabitants of Tasmania in a single campaign, and most of the aboriginals of Australia: in these cases, the genocide was entirely intentional.
 * Koenraad Elst, Negationism in India (1992)

F

 * In the immediate period, millions in the, in leisure and tourism, in retail and services, and in aviation are being laid off without pay or fired outright. But the entire edifice of global finance is crumbling and we could easily see a generalised across the entire system. Talk of the irrationality of capitalism is being posted everywhere. Extensive industrial collapse could create millions of unemployed. A banking collapse would impoverish millions more at a stroke. This is what the government's authoritarian new bill is preparing for — a repetition in Britain and on a global scale of the kind of economic and  that happened in Argentina in 2001–2, when most working-class and middle-class people lost all their savings and millions lost their jobs. Mass social and political anger could shake the system to its foundations, and those in power are preparing for emergency measures against radical "" — left-wing activists, trade unionists, social activists — liable to lead mass resistance. This, it seems, could take the form of mass detention without trial.
 * Neil Faulkner, Mass Deaths, Mass Poverty, Mass Repression, co-written with Phil Hearse, 20 March 2020, Mutiny


 * Human rights are not only violated by terrorism, repression or assassination, but also by unfair economic structures that creates huge inequalities.
 * Pope Francis, Said in criticism of the government of Néstor Kirchner, former President of Argentina, in 2009, as quoted in "Pope Francis: the humble pontiff with practical approach to poverty" by Mark Rice-Oxley, in The Guardian (13 March 2013)


 * The rights and the circumstances of the people in the Falkland Islands must be uppermost in our minds. There is no question in the Falkland Islands of any colonial dependence or anything of the sort. It is a question of people who wish to be associated with this country and who have built their whole lives on the basis of association with this country. We have a moral duty, a political duty and every other kind of duty to ensure that that is sustained. The people of the Falkland Islands have the absolute right to look to us at this moment of their desperate plight, just as they have looked to us over the past 150 years. They are faced with an act of naked, unqualified aggression, carried out in the most shameful and disreputable circumstances. Any guarantee from this invading force is utterly worthless—as worthless as any of the guarantees that are given by this same Argentine junta to its own people.
 * Michael Foot, Speech in the House of Commons after Argentina's invasion of the Falkland Islands (3 April 1982)


 * The one on the right concerned the shift from an older understanding of economic liberalism to what is now called "neoliberalism." Neoliberalism is not... a synonym for capitalism. I don't see how you can have any kind of modern economy without a market based economy. Neoliberalism took that basic insight and stretched it to an extreme seeking to deregulate, privatize and basically pull back the role of the state, which many neoliberals regarded as simply obstacles to individuals, to entrepreneurship, to economic growth, and as a result markets did their usual work. They produced a great deal of inequality, as... global corporations searched for very small cost advantages by moving jobs to low cost areas... [T]hey destabilized the global economy in certain important ways by deregulating the financial sector. As a result of the deregulation that occurred in the 1980s and 90s we had an escalating series of financial crises. In the sterling crisis, the Asian financial crisis, Argentina, Russia, and finally culminating in the big American subprime crisis in 2008. The... cumulative effects of this instability were political and they were very serious because many ordinary people were hurt... a lot of people lost their homes, lost their jobs, and the elites that ran these big banks and financial institutions suffered only a momentary disruption in their incomes, and went on to continue to dominate their respective economies... [T]his had a direct impact on the rise of populism in subsequent years, both on the right and on the left.
 * Francis Fukuyama, A YouTube Creative Commons video, Francis Fukuyama - Liberalism for the Twenty-First Century (May 31, 2022) from the YouTube channel IIEA, representing The Institute of International and European Affairs, Ireland’s leading independent, not-for-profit international affairs think tank providing a debate and discussion forum to evaluate and share policy options for EU and International affairs, 12:54

G

 * We must all believe in ourselves and together raise our national banner high as a symbol of freedom so that it can fly sovereignly and definitively over our great fatherland. This will not prevent us from persisting in our tradition as a peace-loving nation and from respecting all world nations, nor will it prevent us from resuming with dignity, through friendly gestures stemming from our natural generosity, diplomatic negotiations which may give an institutional basis to the situation which we have achieved, clearly safeguard- ing those legitimate interests we have always respected. Our arms will always be extended to conclude noble commitments and to forget past offences for the sake of building a peaceful future for the civilized world. Glory to the great Argentine people
 * Leopoldo Galtieri, President Galtieri’s address to the nation, 2 April 1982


 * The nobility... of the Argentine people, in this square and all the country’s squares, causes us to offer our hand to the adversary, but this must not be taken as weak- ness. If it is necessary, the people, whose feelings I try to interpret as President of the nation, will be ready... to offer a hand, a gesture of peace with nobility and in a gesture of peace with honour, but they will also be ready to teach a lesson to anyone who dares to touch a square metre of Argentine territory.
 * Leopoldo Galtieri, Speech, 10 April 1982

H

 * Greta Thunberg and a group of other children have pushed forward their legal complaint at the UN against countries they accuse of endangering children’s wellbeing through the climate crisis, despite attempts to have it thrown out. The 16 children, including the Swedish environmental activist, lodged a legal case with the UN committee on the rights of the child against Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany and Turkey last September. They alleged that the countries – which are legally obliged to protect children under the UN convention on the rights of the child – breached those obligations by failing to protect them from the “direct, imminent and foreseeable risk to their health and wellbeing” posed by the climate crisis.
 * Greta Thunberg and children's group hit back at attempt to throw out climate case, Fiona Harvey, The Guardian (5 May 2020)

I

 * …the anti-cult campaigns by [Pablo Gastón] Salum and the PROTEX may indeed put the Argentinian democracy at risk.
 * Massimo Introvigne, "Argentina: How the Jesus Christians Defeated Pablo Salum and PROTEX", Bitter Winter (May 2, 2023).
 * PROTEX is described by Bitter Winter as "an Argentinian special prosecutorial office ... (Procuraduría para el Combate de la Trata y Explotación de Personas, Office of the Procurator for Combating the Trafficking and Exploitation of Persons)".

J

 * Until the end of World War II, Argentina and Australia were running in parallel. Today, they separately demonstrate what a luxury it is to be a stable, prosperous, democratic nation with a dependable constitution. Australia is all that and more, and Argentina, after yet another implosion of the civil order, is once again none of it and less.
 * Clive James, Cultural Amnesia (2007)

K

 * While Lula’s rise to power occurred without major institutional fractures, Kirchner reached the presidency unexpectedly after a turbulent sequence of temporary governments. What in Brazil was a calm transfer of power, in Argentina was a delicate operation to restore the credibility of the state in the face of mass rejection of the political system (expressed in the slogan ‘que se vayan todos’ – get rid of the lot of them). Lula marks the final phase of the transformation of the PT into a classic bourgeois party, breaking with its left wing past and becoming integrated into a bipartisan system. Its patronage finances an army of bureaucrats who upheld the expulsion of those members of parliament opposed to the pension reforms. This transformation of a popular movement into an appendage of capitalist domination was what happened with Peronism a long time ago. Kirchner was able to renew yet again the party that has guaranteed governability for the ruling class. But he has shown an uncharacteristic duplicity, veiling clientilism with gestures in defence of human rights, the independence of the judiciary and an attack on corruption.
 * Claudio Katz, Latin America’s new ‘left’ governments (International Socialism 2 : 107, Summer 2005.)


 * The coups, wars and slaughters to instill and maintain pro-corporate regimes have never been treated as capitalist crimes but have instead been written off as the excess of overzealous dictators, as hot fronts in the Cold War, and now of the War on Terror. If the most committed opponents of the corporatist economic model are systematically eliminated, whether in Argentina in the seventies or in Iraq today, that suppression is explained... almost never as the fight for the advancement of pure capitalism.
 * Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2007)

N

 * Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia have refused to send weapons to Ukraine, despite pressure by the US and EU. Latin American left-wing leaders have urged peace with Russia and called for neutrality in the West’s new cold war. Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia have rejected requests by the United States and European Union that they send weapons to Ukraine. The commander of the US military’s Southern Command (Southcom), which operates in Latin America and the Caribbean, revealed on January 19 that Washington has been pressuring countries in the region to arm Ukraine. Southcom wants Latin American nations to “replace [their] Russian equipment with United States equipment – if those countries want to donate it to Ukraine”, said Army General Laura J. Richardson.  But Latin America’s left-wing leaders have refused, instead maintaining neutrality and urging peace.  The socialist governments in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua blamed NATO expansion and US meddling for causing the war in Ukraine.  Mexico’s progressive President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) offered to hold peace talks to end the conflict.  And the leftist governments in Bolivia and Honduras have joined Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia in refusing to be part of the [USA's] proxy war.
 * Ben Norton, Latin America refuses to send Ukraine weapons, despite Western pressure, Geo Political Economy Report, (29 January 2023)

O

 * It's the dreamers -- no matter how humble or poor or seemingly powerless -- that are able to change the course of human events. We saw it in South Africa, where citizens stood up to the scourge of apartheid. We saw it in Europe, where Poles marched in Solidarity to help bring down the Iron Curtain. In Argentina, where mothers of the disappeared spoke out against the Dirty War. It’s the story of my country, where citizens worked to abolish slavery, and establish women’s rights and workers’ rights, and rights for gays and lesbians.
 * Barack Obama, Remarks by President Obama at the Panama Civil Society Forum at Hotel El Panama, Panama City, Panama (April 10, 2015)

R

 * Don't cry for me, Argentina! The truth is, I never left you! All through my wild days, my mad existence, I kept my promise, Don't keep your distance.
 * Tim Rice, "Don't Cry For Me, Argentina", Evita (1978).


 * As a Rioplatense person of European decent, I feel strongly about the urgency of retelling the stories of our nation’s histories, the Argentinian and Uruguayan national stories and cultural stories, in ways that fully recognize the presence of black people. Which is a huge part of the greater story of the Americas as well. You cannot tell the story of the Americas without the story of black people and the transatlantic slave trade — that mass atrocity. Alongside, of course, the genocide of indigenous people. And also the cultural richness and artistic production and stories of resilience and power that, too, come out of those harsh realities that are at the origin of the Americas.
 * Carolina de Robertis, On telling the histories of Uruguay and Argentina in "A Conversation with Carolina De Robertis on Immigration, Sexuality, and the True Origins of the Tango" in Los Angeles Review of Books (2016 Apr 20)


 * Despite powerful mobilizations that brought them to power, the progressive administrations in Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela discovered that structural constraints closed off the possibilities for systemic change. Two decades of neoliberalism had so transformed the class structure of these countries that the social base of governments, while militant, had little economic leverage against capital. Backed primarily by workers in the informal economy and marginalized communities, left-wing governments simply lacked the leverage to challenge ruling classes.
 * René Rojas, "The End of Progressive Neoliberalism". Catalyst, 2020.


 * We meet to-day, representing the people of this continent, from the Dominion of Canada in the north, to Chile and the Argentine in the south; representing people who have traveled far and fast in the last century, because in them has been practically shown that is the spirit of adventure which is maker of commonwealths; people who are learning and striving to put into practice the vital truth that freedom is the necessary first step, but only the first step, in successful free government... We of the two Americas must be left to work out our own salvation along our own lines; and if we are wise we will make it understood as a cardinal feature of our joint foreign policy that, on the one hand, we will not submit to territorial aggrandizement on this continent by any Old Power, and on the other hand, among ourselves each nation must scrupulously regard the rights and interests of others, so that, instead of any one of us committing the criminal folly of trying to rise at the expense of our neighbors, we shall strive upward in honest and manly brotherhood, shoulder to shoulder.
 * Theodore Roosevelt, "The Two Americas", speech delivered at the formal opening of the Pan-American Exposition, Buffalo, 20 May 1901; published in The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses (1910).

S

 * These days, the American dream is more apt to be realized in South America, in places such as Ecuador, Venezuela and Argentina, where incomes are actually more equal today than they are in the land of Horatio Alger. Who's the banana republic now?
 * Bernie Sanders, Close The Gaps: Disparities That Threaten America, Valley News, 5 August 2011


 * Economics is a difficult subject, because we cannot conduct controlled experiments. There are not two or three Argentina's, one following the experiment that I described above, and another adopting the policies that I prefer. But we do have a wealth of experience from which to draw inferences. This wealth of experience all points in one direction: Keynes's teachings are still very much alive, and Argentina today would be in far better shape if his lessons had been taken to heart.
 * Joseph E. Stiglitz, "Is Keynesian Economics Dead?", Project Syndicate (2002).

T

 * I must tell the House that the Falkland Islands and their dependencies remain British territory. No aggression and no invasion can alter that simple fact. It is the Government's objective to see that the islands are freed from occupation and are returned to British administration at the earliest possible moment...We cannot allow the democratic rights of the islanders to be denied by the territorial ambitions of Argentina.
 * Margaret Thatcher, Speech in the House of Commons (3 April 1982)

V

 * As many people as necessary must die in Argentina so that the country will again be secure.
 * Jorge Rafael Videla, 1975, as quoted in Adam Bernstein (May 17 2013). "Jorge Rafael Videla, ruthless Argentine junta leader, dies at 87". The Washington Post.