Argentines Of European Descent

European Argentines belong to several communities which trace their origins to various migrations from Europe and which have contributed to the country's cultural and demographic variety.Sociología Argentina.
by José Ingenieros. Editorial Losada, 1946. Pages 453, 469, 470. They are the descendants of colonists from Spain during the colonial period prior to 1810,''Historical Dictionary of Argentina''. London: Scarecrow Press, 1978. pp. 239–40. or in the majority of cases, of Spanish, Italians, French, Russians and other Europeans who arrived in the great immigration wave from the mid 19th to the mid 20th centuries, and who largely intermarried among their many nationalities during and after this wave. No recent Argentine census has included comprehensive questions on ethnicity, although numerous studies have determined that European Argentinians have been a majority in the country since 1914.

Distribution

European Argentinians may live in any part of the country, though their proportion varies according to region. Due to the fact that the main entry point for European immigrants was the Port of Buenos Aires, they settled mainly in the central-eastern region known as the Pampas (the provinces of Buenos Aires, Santa Fe, Córdoba, Entre Ríos and La Pampa), Their presence in the northern region is less evident due to several reasons: it was the most densely populated region of the country (mainly by Amerindian and Mestizo people) until the immigratory wave of 1857 to 1940, and it was the area where the European newcomers settled the least. During the last decades, due to internal migration from these northern provinces and due to immigration especially from Bolivia, Perú and Paraguay (which have Amerindian and Mestizo majorities), the percentage of European Argentines in certain areas of the Greater Buenos Aires, and the provinces of Salta and Jujuy has significantly decreased as well.

Estimates

Neither official census data nor statistically significant studies exist on the precise amount or percentage of Argentines of European descent today. The Argentine government recognizes the different communities, but Argentina's National Institute of Statistics and Censuses ( INDEC) does not conduct ethnic/racial censuses, nor includes questions about ethnicity.INDEC, 2010 National Census. (Spanish)
See ''temas nuevos''. The Census conducted on 27 October 2010, did include questions on Indigenous peoples (complementing the survey performed in 2005) and on Afro-descendants.

Genetic research

It is estimated that more than 25 million Argentines (about 63%) have at least one Italian forefather.
Another study of the Amerindian ancestry of Argentines was headed by Argentine geneticist Daniel Corach of the University of Buenos Aires. The results of this study in which DNA from 320 individuals in 9 Argentine provinces was examined showed that 56% of these individuals had at least one Amerindian ancestor. Another study on African ancestry was also conducted by the University of Buenos Aires in the city of La Plata. In this study 4.3% of the 500 study participants were shown to have some degree of African ancestry. Nevertheless, it must be said here that this type of genetic studies -meant only to search for specific lineages in the mtDNA or in the Y-Chromosome, which do not recombine- may be misleading. For example, a person with seven European great-grandparents and only one Amerindian/Mestizo great-grandparent will be included in that 56%, although his/her phenotype will most probably be Caucasian.

A separate genetic study on genic admixture was conducted by Argentine and French scientists from multiple academic and scientific institutions (CONICET, UBA, Centre d'anthropologie de Toulouse). This study showed that the average contribution to Argentine ancestry was 79.9% European, 15.8% Amerindian and 4.3% African. Another similar study was conducted in 2006, and its results were also similar. A team led by Michael F. Seldin from the University of California, with members of scientific institutes from Argentina, the United States, Sweden and Guatemala, analyzed samples from 94 individuals and concluded that the average genetic structure of the Argentine population contains a 78.1% European contribution, 19.4% Amerindian contribution and 2.5% African contribution (using the Bayesian algorithm).

A team led by Daniel Corach conducted a new study in 2009, analyzing 246 samples from eight provinces and three different regions of the country. The results were as follows: the analysis of Y-Chromosome DNA revealed a 94.1% of European contribution (a little higher than the 90% of the 2005 study), and only 4.9% and 0.9% of Native American and Black African contribution, respectively. Mitochondrial DNA analysis again showed a great Amerindian contribution by maternal lineage, at 53.7%, with 44.3% of European contribution, and a 2% African contribution. The study of 24 autosomal markers also proved a large European contribution of 78.5%, against 17.3% of Amerindian and 4.2% Black African contributions. The samples were compared with three assumed parental populations, and the MDS analysis plot resulting showed that "most of the Argentinean samples clustered with or closest to Europeans, some appeared between Europeans and Native Americans indicating some degree of genetic admixture between these two groups, three samples clustered close to Native Americans, and no Argentinean sampled appeared close to Africans".

*According to M. Caputo et al, 2021, X-DIPs studies show that the European genetic contribution is 52%, indigenous 39.6% and African 7.5%.
* Homburguer et al., 2015, PLOS One Genetics: 67% European, 28% Amerindian, 4% African and 1,4% Asian.
* Avena et al., 2012, PLOS One Genetics: 65% European, 31% Amerindian, and 4% African.
** Buenos Aires Province: 76% European and 24% others.
** South Zone (Chubut Province): 54% European and 46% others.
** Northeast Zone (Misiones, Corrientes, Chaco & Formosa provinces): 54% European and 46% others.
** Northwest Zone (Salta Province): 33% European and 67% others.
*According to the study by María Laura Catelli et al, 2011. The Native American component observed in the urban populations was 66%, 41%, and 70% in South, Central, and North Argentina, respectively
*In the work of Corach et al the authors say that "Argentineans carried a large fraction of European genetic heritage in their Y-chromosomal (94.1%) and autosomal (78.5%) DNA, but their mitochondrial gene pool is mostly of Native American ancestry (53.7%); instead, African heritage was small in all three genetic systems (<4%)".
* Oliveira, 2008, on Universidade de Brasília: 60% European, 31% Amerindian and 9% African.
* National Geographic: 52% European, 27% Amerindian ancestry, 9% African and 9% others.
*According to Norma Pérez Martín, 2007, at least 56% of Argentines would have indigenous ancestry.

History

Colonial and post-independence period

The presence of European people in the Argentine territory began in 1516, when Spanish Conquistador Juan Díaz de Solís explored the Río de la Plata. In 1527, Sebastian Cabot founded the fort of ''Sancti Spiritus'', near Coronda, Santa Fe; this was the first Spanish settlement on Argentine soil. The process of Spanish occupation continued with expeditions coming from Upper Peru (present-day Bolivia), that founded Santiago del Estero in 1553, San Miguel de Tucumán in 1565 and Córdoba in 1573, and from Chile, which founded Mendoza in 1561 and San Juan in 1562. Other Spanish expeditions founded the cities of Santa Fe (1573), Buenos Aires (1580), and Corrientes (1588).

It was not until the creation of the Viceroyalty of Río de la Plata in 1776, that the first censuses with classification into ''castas'' were conducted. The 1778 Census ordered by viceroy Juan José de Vértiz in Buenos Aires revealed that, of a total population of 37,130 inhabitants, the Spaniards and Criollos numbered 25,451, or 68.55% of the total. Another census carried out in the Corregimiento de Cuyo in 1777 showed that the Spaniards and Criollos numbered 4,491 (or 51.24%) out of a population of 8,765 inhabitants. In Córdoba (city and countryside) the Spanish/Criollo people comprised 39.36% (about 14,170) of 36,000 inhabitants.Revisionistas. La Otra Historia de los Argentinos
Source: ''Argentina: de la Conquista a la Independencia.'' by C. S. Assadourian – C. Beato – J. C. Chiaramonte. Ed. Hyspamérica, Buenos Aires. (1986)

According to data from the Argentine government in 1810, about 6,000 Spanish lived in the territory of the United Provinces of Río de la Plata Spanish, of a total population of around 700,000 inhabitants. This small number indicates that the presence of people with European ancestors was very small, and a large number of Criollos were mixed with indigenous and African mothers, although the fact was often hidden; in this regard, for example, according to researcher José Ignacio García Hamilton the Liberator, José de San Martín, would be mestizo.

Nevertheless, these censuses were generally restricted to the cities and the surrounding rural areas, so little is known about the racial composition of large areas of the Viceroyalty, though it is supposed that Spaniards and Criollos were always a minority, with the other ''castas'' comprising the majority. It is worth noting that, since a person who was classified as ''Peninsular'' or ''Criollo'' had access to more privileges in the colonial society, many Castizos (resulting from the union of a Spanish and a ''mestizo'') purchased their '' limpieza de sangre'' ("purity of blood").

Although being a minority in demographics terms, the Criollo people played a leading role in the May Revolution of 1810, as well as in the independence of Argentina from the Spanish Empire in 1816. Argentine national heroes such as Manuel Belgrano and Juan Martín de Pueyrredón, military men as Cornelio Saavedra and Carlos María de Alvear, and politicians as Juan José Paso and Mariano Moreno were mostly Criollos of Spanish, Italian or French descent. The Second Triumvirate and the 1813 assembly enacted laws encouraging immigration, and instituted advertising campaigns and contract work programs among prospective immigrants in Europe.

The Minister of Government of Buenos Aires Province, Bernardino Rivadavia, established the Immigration Commission in 1824. He appointed Ventura Arzac to conduct a new Census in the city, and it showed these results: the city had 55,416 inhabitants, of which 40,000 were of European descent (about 72.2%); of this total of Whites, a 90% were Criollos, a 5% were Spaniards, and the other 5% were from other European nations.

After the wars for independence, a long period of internal struggle followed. During the period between 1826 and 1852, some Europeans settled in the country as well -sometimes hired by the local governments. Notable among them, Savoyan lithographer Charles Pellegrini (President Carlos Pellegrini's father) and his wife Maria Bevans, Neapolitan journalist Pedro de Angelis, and German physician/zoologist Hermann Burmeister. Because of this long conflict, there were neither economic resources nor political stability to carry out any census until the 1850s, when some provincial censuses were organized. These censuses did not continue the classification into ''castas'' typical of the pre-independence period.

The administration of Governor Juan Manuel de Rosas, who had been given the sum of public power by other governors in the Argentine Confederation, maintained Rivadavia' Immigration Commission, which continued to advertise Agricultural colonies in Argentina among prospective European immigrants. Following Rosas' overthrow by Entre Ríos Province Governor Justo José de Urquiza, jurist and legal scholar Juan Bautista Alberdi was commissioned to prepare a draft for a new Constitution. His outline, ''Bases and Starting Points for the Political Organization of the Argentine Republic'', called the Federal Government to "promote European immigration," and this policy would be included as Article 25 of the Argentine Constitution of 1853.

The first post-independence census conducted in Buenos Aires took place in 1855; it showed that there were 26,149 European inhabitants in the city. Among the nationals there is no distinction of race, but it does distinguish literates from illiterates; at that time formal education was a privilege almost exclusive for the upper sectors of society, who were predominantly of European descent. Including European residents and the 21,253 Argentine literates, around 47,402 people of mainly European descent resided in Buenos Aires in 1855; they would have comprised about 51.6% of a total population of 91,895 inhabitants.

Great wave of immigration from Europe (1857–1940)

In February 1856, the municipal government of Baradero granted lands for the settlement of ten Swiss families in an agricultural colony near that town. Later that year, another colony was founded by Swiss immigrants in Esperanza, Santa Fe. These provincial initiatives remained isolated cases until differences between the Argentine Confederation and the State of Buenos Aires were resolved with the Battle of Pavón in 1861, and a strong central government could be established. Presidents Bartolomé Mitre (the victor at Pavón), Domingo Sarmiento and Nicolás Avellaneda implemented policies that encouraged massive European immigration. These were formalized with the 1876 Congressional approval of Law 817 of Immigration and Colonization, signed by President Avellaneda. During the following decades, and until the mid-20th century, waves of European settlers came to Argentina. Major contributors included Italy (initially from Piedmont, Veneto and Lombardy, later from Campania, Calabria, and Sicily), and Spain (most were Galicians and Basques), but there were Asturians.

Smaller but significant numbers of immigrants include those from France, Poland, Russia, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Croatia, England, Scotland, Ireland, Switzerland, Belgium, Denmark, and others. Europeans from the former Ottoman Empire were mainly Greek. The majority of Argentina's Jewish community descend from immigrants of Ashkenazi Jewish origin.

;This migratory influx had mainly two effects on Argentina's demography:

1) The exponential growth of the country's population. In the first National Census of 1869 the Argentine population was just 1,877,490 inhabitants, in 1895 it had doubled to 4,044,911, in 1914 it had reached 7,903,662, and by 1947 it had doubled again to 15,893,811. It is estimated that by 1920, more than 50% of the residents in Buenos Aires had been born abroad. According to Zulma Recchini de Lattes' estimate, if this great immigratory wave from Europe and the Middle East had not happened, Argentina's population by 1960 would have been less than 8 million, while the national census carried out that year revealed a population of 20,013,793 inhabitants. Argentina received a total of 6,611,000 European and Middle-Eastern immigrants during the period 1857–1940; 2,970,000 were Italians (44.9%), 2,080,000 were Spaniards (31.5%), and the remaining 23.6% was composed of French, Poles, Russians, Germans, Austro-Hungarians, British, Portuguese, Swiss, Belgians, Danes, Dutch, Swedes, etc.

2) A radical change in its ethnic composition; the 1914 National Census revealed that around 80% of the national population were either European immigrants, their children or grandchildren.''Argentina: 1516–1982. From Spanish Colonisation to the Falklands War'' by David Rock. University of California Press, 1987. p.166. Among the remaining 20% (those descended from the population residing locally before this immigrant wave took shape), around a fifth were of mainly European descent. Put down to numbers, this means that about 84%, or 6,300,000 people (out of a total population of 7,903,662), residing in Argentina were of European descent. European immigration continued to account for over half the nation's population growth during the 1920s, and was again significant (albeit in a smaller wave) following World War II.

The distribution of these European/Middle Eastern immigrants was not uniform across the country. Most newcomers settled in the coastal cities and the farmlands of Buenos Aires, Santa Fe, Córdoba and Entre Ríos. For example, the 1914 National Census showed that, of almost three million people −2,965,805 to be exact- living in the provinces of Buenos Aires and Santa Fe, 1,019,872 were European immigrants, and one and a half million more were children of European mothers; in all, this community comprised at least 84.9% of this region's population. The same dynamic was less evident in the rural areas of the northwestern provinces, however: immigrants (mostly of Syrian-Lebanese origin) represented a mere 2.6% (about 15,600) of a total rural population of 600,000 in Jujuy, Salta, Tucumán, Santiago del Estero and Catamarca.

Origin of the immigrants between 1857 and 1920

Notes:

:(1) This figure includes Russians, Ukrainians, Volga Germans, Belarusians, Poles, Lithuanians, etc. that entered Argentina with passport of the Russian Empire.
:(2) This figure includes all the peoples that lived within the boundaries of the Austro-Hungarian Empire between 1867 and 1918: Austrians, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenians, Croatians, Bosniaks, Ruthenians and people from the regions of Vojvodina in Serbia, Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol and Trieste in Italy, Transylvania in Romania, and Galicia in Poland.
:(3) The United Kingdom included Ireland until 1922; that is why most of the British immigrants -nicknamed "''ingleses''"- were in fact Irish, Welsh and Scottish.
:(4) Around 0.5% of Luxembourg's total population emigrated to Argentina during the 1880s.

Source: ''Dirección Nacional de Migraciones: Infografías.'', that information was modified – figures there are by nationality, not by country.

Origin of the immigrants between 1857 and 1940

Source: National Migration, 1970.

Second wave of immigration

During and after the Second World War, many Europeans fled to Argentina, escaping the hunger and poverty of the post-war period. According to the National Bureau of Migrations, during the period 1941–1950 at least 392,603 Europeans entered the country: 252,045 Italians, 110,899 Spaniards, 16,784 Poles, 7,373 Russians and 5,538 French.Migration and Nationality Patterns in Argentina.
Source: ''Dirección Nacional de Migraciones, 1976''. Among the notable Italian immigrants in that period were protest singer Piero De Benedictis (emigrated with his parents in 1948), actors Rodolfo Ranni