Dec 18:

Last year at this time I was recovering from a heart attack and quadruple bypass surgery.  The thought of traveling to the Andes and Patagonia to hike, horseback ride and kayak was less on my mind than learning to breathe easily, avoid palpitations, and walk around the block successfully.  Shows the resiliency of the body and mind!  So here we are on Avianca (the airline of Colombia) going to Bogota and on to Buenos Aires (the locals call it BsAs.  From there we head to Patagonia which is supposed to be like Switzerland with its mountains (Andes) and lakes as well as glaciers but with whales and penguins.

A Little about the history of Argentina:

My prior knowledge of Argentina was based on movies and the newspapers: Movies: Evita and the Disappeared; and newspapers: the Falkland War and the massive inflation.  So here is what I have learned in reading to fill in the void.

Argentina and Chile share the southern half of South America.  In terms of human occupation of the region, it came relatively late and from the North.  While homo sapiens have roamed the earth for about 200,000 years, they have been in Argentina for less than 13,000 years.  The first centralized power came from the Inca Empire in what is now Peru in the 15^th century, and a century later the Spanish Conquistadors (conquerors) arrived. 

The name Argentina comes from the Latin term, argentem, translated as “silver”.  The origins of the name come from the first Spaniards to arrive, who surviving a shipwreck, found indigenous people in the area who gave them gifts of silver.  Like Jamestown the first colony failed and the colonists died having practiced cannibalism to attempt survival. It is interesting how the early history of Argentina reflects the social disorder in the American West.  There were fights between the ranchers in the North and the hunter-gatherers in the South of Argentina.  And as the Spanish took over, they massacred the indigenous people and took their land.  Over time the colonists felt constrained by Spain where they were considered second class citizens (sound familiar to the American colonies before the Revolutionary War).  In fact, the Argentineans were emboldened by the success of the American Colonies and succeeded in overthrowing the Spanish viceroy in 1816.  Unlike the U.S. which waited almost a century to enter into a civil war, the Argentinians staged a 40 year civil war of warlords until a federal government was finally established in 1863.

From the development of the modern state between 1870 to 1930’s there was a the mass migration of millions of Europeans bringing multiculturalism and a cosmopolitan culture, especially to Buenos Aires.  The tumult did not end here, however.  There was an enormous income inequity between the rich and poor giving rise to the populist movement of Juan Peron in 1946 assisted by the actress who would become his wife, Evita Duarte.  Their focus was social justice, political sovereignty, economic independence and Latin American unity.  You know the story so I won’t repeat it, but he was eventually overthrown by a coup in 1955 and went into exile.  The Peronist party was outlawed for 18 years but he returned to power in 1973 only to die in office an ineffectual year later followed by the chaotic presidency of his second wife who was ousted rapidly. 

This was followed by a decade of dictatorship by a junta which savagely suppressed the opposition of students and social activists.  More than 30,000 people “disappeared” and many of their children were given to the elite.  To divert attention and push nationalism they ultimately engaged in the disastrous Falkland (or Maldives) War to wrench control of these islands off the coast in 1983 from England.  They were soundly defeated in 2 months which effectively ended their reign.  The time since has been one of democracy but of enormous inflation (up to 3000% a year in the 1990s) leading to the devaluation of the peso.  Things have righted themselves in the past few years under the leadership of Nestor Kirchner who was succeeded by his wife, the current president.