History of Buenos Aires

Although Spanish explorers initially founded the city of Buenos Aires in 1536, they abandoned it shortly thereafter because of conflicts with the indigenous peoples who lived in the area.

Spanish settlers reestablished a permanent settlement in 1580.

Almost 100 years later in 1667, the city’s population stood at about 4,000 inhabitants. The town consisted principally of single-story adobe buildings and served as the principal trading and commercial center for the vast, largely unsettled Pampas region that surrounded it.

Small herds of cattle and horses brought from Spain multiplied and spread over the Pampas, creating the conditions for a stable agricultural economy. The city supplied beef and draft animals to Spanish towns and mining settlements deep in the interior.

Although the Spanish had officially closed the Buenos Aires port to trade, smuggling and trade with the interior prospered.

By 1776 the Spanish crown had recognized the geographical advantages of the city’s location and its economic potential. It made Buenos Aires the capital of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, the seat of government and the administrative center for present-day Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Uruguay. The city continued to grow as it consolidated its position as the key urban center of Spain’s southern Latin American colonies.

The region declared itself independent from Spain in 1810, and Spain officially recognized its independence in 1816.

Modest population growth followed, with the number of inhabitants in the city reaching 60,000 in 1826 and 90,000 in 1854. These increases occurred against the backdrop of a long-standing, divisive, and sometimes violent conflict between the city of Buenos Aires and the interior provinces of Argentina.

The city’s elite sought to open Buenos Aires and the country at large to free trade, which would allow the importation of low-cost manufactured goods from Europe, particularly Britain.
The interior provinces favored trade barriers that would protect local industries and commerce.

By 1830 Buenos Aires had prevailed on the trade issue, and over the next several decades the city established itself as the undisputed economic and social hub of Argentina.

The city officially became the nation’s capital in 1862, and the government created the City of Buenos Aires federal district in 1880.

Nevertheless, Buenos Aires remained essentially provincial. Most of its political, commercial, and social life focused on the central plaza, the Plaza de Mayo, clearly reflecting its Spanish colonial heritage.

In the last decades of the 19th century the city dramatically transformed. The rich Pampas region was completely opened to settlement and agriculture by the early 1880s when the Argentine army defeated the remaining indigenous peoples who had occupied it.

Simultaneously, innovations in refrigeration and shipping permitted Argentina to export more of its meat to Europe.

Argentina became fully integrated into the world economy as beef, mutton, wheat, wool, and other agricultural exports flourished, fueling an economic boom.

Buenos Aires grew rapidly as hundreds of thousands of southern European immigrants, largely from Italy and Spain, migrated to the city from the 1880s to the 1930s.

The new wealth generated by the booming export economy transformed the infrastructure of the city.

The elite sought to change the city’s landscape into the image of a European city, notably Paris, France. They opened broad avenues, built ornate public buildings such as the Colón Theater, and constructed numerous commercial buildings, apartments, and mansions.

The city’s area expanded dramatically as a system of local train lines and trolleys radiated outward from the city center, allowing land development on the urban fringe.

By the beginning of the 1930s, about 3 million people lived in the city, nearly one-third of Argentina’s population.

The Great Depression of the 1930s effectively ended foreign immigration to Buenos Aires, and World War II (1939-1945) disrupted traditional trading between Argentina and its principal European trading partners.

During those years, Argentina exported few agricultural products and imported fewer manufactured goods. This situation stimulated Argentine industry as entrepreneurs established factories to manufacture those goods that they could no longer readily import.

Buenos Aires benefited disproportionately from this process, and manufacturing enterprises and industrial employment boomed in the metropolitan area.

The metropolitan area continued to grow after the war, and in 1947 its population stood at 4.7 million.

By the beginning of the 21st century the metropolitan area had swelled to almost 13 million people. This rapid growth during the last half of the 20th century placed tremendous strains on the city.

Housing and public services did not keep pace with population growth, and by the 1990s as many as 1.5 million of the city’s residents lived in substandard housing or shantytowns with limited or inadequate public services.

The city’s transportation system was also unable to keep pace with growth, and traffic congestion increased dramatically.

Buenos Aires was also affected by Argentina’s declining economy.

By the beginning of the 21st century, the city had a shrinking middle class, while the upper and lower classes grew. Its unemployment rate rose, and a substantial proportion of the population, close to 20 percent, lived in poverty.

People in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area held strikes to protest the economic conditions as the city and the country grappled with how to end the financial crisis.