Page 61 - Across the Andes: Chile’s Atacama Desert & Argentina’s Northwest

• Time Zone: Argentina time (ART) is 3 hours behind Coordinated Universal Time.
Generally Argentina is 1 hour ahead of Eastern Time in the U.S. So usually, when it is
6am in Washington D.C. it is 7am in Buenos Aries. But Argentina doesn’t use daylight
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6am in D.C. is 8am in Buenos Aires.

National Holidays: Argentina

In addition to the holidays listed below, 04/03 Good Friday
Argentina celebrates a number of national
05/01 Labor Day / May Day
holidays that follow a lunar calendar, such
L^ .L]YTaLW LYO 0L^_P] ?Z ʭYO Z`_ TQ dZ` 05/25 National Day/May 1810
will be traveling during these holidays, Revolution
please visit www.timeanddate.com/
holidays. 06/20 Flag Day

01/01 New Year’s Day 07/09 Independence Day

03/24 Memorial Day 12/08 Feast of the Immaculate
Conception
04/02 Day of the Veterans
12/25 Christmas Day

Historical Overview of Argentina
Little is known about societies that occupied prehistoric Argentina, though fossil records
indicate a presence here as early as 11,000 B.C., in today’s Patagonia. Millennia later, as
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conquering the northwestern region and incorporating it into their empire. Central and
southern Argentina remained nomadic.

European explorers arrived in the early 1500s, and Spain established Buenos Aires as a colony
in 1580. Spanish immigrants and their descendants, indigenous people, and descendants of
slaves developed the area over the next 200 years. Many colonists settled in Buenos Aires while
others took to the surrounding pampas to live as gauchos. The Viceroyalty of the Rio de la
Plata, consisting of today’s Argentina and several surrounding countries, was created in 1776.

After two failed attempts by the British to overtake Buenos Aires in the early 1800s,
word arrived that Napoleon had overthrown the Spanish king. This prompted a push
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independence was signed in 1816. Four years later, the viceroy and his armies were defeated.
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in 1811).

Investment and immigration after 1870 bolstered Argentina’s economic strength, industry, and
agriculture. Through 1929, both its population and its economy grew at an alarming rate, but
often to the detriment of the working class. Juan Perón, who was elected president in 1946,
recognized this and sought to empower workers, increase union membership, and expand

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