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Unlike most of its neighboring countries, Argentina's population descends mostly from Europeans. Most of the population is made up of descendants of Spanish, Italian and other European settlers. After the initial Spanish colonists, waves of immigrants from European countries arrived in Argentina throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Contributors include France (mostly to Buenos Aires), Scandinavia (especially Sweden), the United Kingdom and Ireland (Buenos Aires and Patagonia), and Eastern European nations such as Poland, Russia, Ukraine, as well as Balkan nations (especially Croatia, Romania and Serbia). The Patagonian Chubut Valley has a significant Welsh-descended population. The majority of Argentina's Jewish community (the largest in Latin America and the fifth-largest in the world) also derives from immigrants of Northern and Eastern European origin—Ashkenazi Jews. The largest ethnic minority is the mestizo population in the northern provinces. Since population censuses in Argentina do not take into account mixed-race people as non-white, it is difficult to determine their real size. Estimates range from 3% to 15%, the latter figure being the most credited. Small numbers of people from Far East Asia have also settled Argentina, mainly in Buenos Aires. The first Asian-Argentines were of Japanese descent, but Koreans, Vietnamese, and Chinese soon followed. There are also smaller numbers of people from the Indian subcontinent. In recent decades, especially during the 1990s, there has been a substantial influx of immigrants from neighboring South American countries, mainly from Peru, Paraguay, Chile, and Bolivia. The officially recognized indigenous population in the country, according to the 2005 Complementary Survey of Indigenous Peoples, stands at 318,683 persons (0.8 percent of the total population), who are either members or first-generation descendants of a recognized indigenous community. These parameters may imply an undercount of the indigenous population, as most indigenous Argentines are no longer tribally affiliated; in some circumstances they have not been for several generations. |
Argentina Information:
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