Wikipedia

White Argentines

White Argentines (Spanish: Argentinos Blancos), also known as Caucasian Argentines (Spanish: Argentinos Caucásicos), are Argentines who have predominantly or total European or West Asian ancestry. The vast majority of White Argentines have ancestry from immigrants who arrived in the early 20th century and later years, although there are some with ancestry from the first colonizers, it is currently the largest group in the Argentine Republic.

White Argentines
Argentinos Blancos (Spanish)
Total population
Caucasian ancestry predominates
Unknown (estimated)
% of the Argentina's population
no official census data
Regions with significant populations
All areas of Argentina
Languages
Predominantly Spanish
Religion
Majority: Catholicism
Minority: Protestantism · Eastern Orthodoxy · Judaism · Sunnism · Irreligion
Related ethnic groups
White Brazilians · White Paraguayans · White Americans · White Mexicans · White Colombians · White Dominicans · White Bolivians · White South Africans · Others

History

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The city of Buenos Aires was first founded in 1536 by the Spanish conquistador Pedro de Mendoza. This foundation was unsuccessful due to problems with the local indigenous peoples (mainly Querandies) and a lack of supplies, leading to the settlement being abandoned in 1541, and was later founded again in 1580 by Juan de Garay. The first permanent European settlement founded in what is now Argentina was Santiago del Estero in 1553. The foundation was carried out by the Spanish explorer Francisco de Aguirre. Santiago del Estero is known as the "Mother of Cities" because several expeditions that founded other cities in Argentine territory departed from there. The current Argentine territory was one of the most irrelevant and forgotten regions of the Spanish Empire, this was because the vast majority of the economic benefits were in Upper Peru and in the viceroyalties of Peru, New Spain and New Granada, due to this Argentina did not receive a large number of slaves and settlers, in addition to having a fairly low number of native population, that made it the most unpopulated territory of the Spanish Empire along with Alta California.

The Spanish settled in the New World during the viceregal era and their children born in America were known as criollos, although they could not hold the position of viceroy, which, being the representation of the king, could only be occupied by someone born in Spain. Other castes known for having white skin were the castizos and the Octavons, although these had a small percentage of native and black blood respectively. In 1778, during the mandate of Viceroy Vertiz, a census was carried out in which it was found that 37.54% of the people in the current Argentine territory were white, then in the years following independence, provincial censuses were carried out, in 1827 in Buenos Aires 73.8% and in 1833 in Corrientes 87.2% of the population was white. It is worth noting that after independence, President Bernardino Rivadavia established the Migration Commission, although during the following years it did not have great relevance due to the instability in the United Provinces of the Rio de la Plata.[1]

 
The Great European immigration wave to Argentina.

In 1880, after the end of the Argentine Civil Wars and the beginning of the period of the Conservative Republic, in Argentina the immigration policy formally began with Juan Bautista Alberdi, who in his work "Bases and starting points for the political organization of the Argentine Republic" of 1852, proposed promoting European immigration as a way to populate the country and promote its economic and social development, with this began a massive arrival of millions of immigrants from Europe and West Asia, the vast majority of them Spaniards and Italians, although thousands of French, Germans, Croats, Poles, Arab Christians, Irish, Romani, Russians, Jews, Ukrainians, Armenians, among others. Although some events such as the Crash of 1929 and the September Revolution slowed immigration worldwide, events such as the Spanish Civil War, the Unification of Italy, the First World War and the Russian Civil War strengthened the wave of immigration to Argentina. The great majority of immigrants who arrived in Argentina professed Catholicism due to the cultural affinity for which almost all came from Southern Europe, although due to the Second World War the number of immigrants (mainly from Poland) who professed Judaism in Argentina increased.

 
Immigrants by provinces and territories in Argentina according to the 1914 census.

Number of immigrants between 1857–1940

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Nationality Largest group Amount Percentage of total
  Italian Italians 2,970,000 44.9%
  Spaniard Galicians 2,080,000 31.5%
  French Basques 239,000 3.6%
  Polish Poles 180,000 2.7%
  Russian Volga Germans 177,000 2.7%
  Ottoman Arab Christians 174,000 2.6%
  German Germans 152,000 2.3%
  Austro-Hungarian Croats 111,000 1.7%
  British Irish 75,000 1.1%
  Portuguese Portuguese 65,000 1.0%
  Yugoslav Croats 48,000 0.7%
  Swiss Swiss 44,000 0.7%
  Belgian Walloons 26,000 0.4%
  Danish Danes 18,000 0.3%
  American White Americans 12,000 0.2%
  Dutch Dutch 10,000 0.2%
  Swedish Swedes 7,000 0.1%
Other nationalities 223,000 3.4%
Total 6,611,000 100%

Recent immigration

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In the 1990s, immigration from europe was already declining, although after the fall of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, many lithuanians and romanians emigrated to argentina due to the poor quality of life in Eastern Europe, in addition to a wave coming from the balkans due to the outbreak of the Yugoslav Wars. In more recent years, after the Russo-Ukrainian War of 2022, thousands of russians and ukrainians emigrated to Argentina due to the ease and strength of the argentine passport.[2]

Demographics

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There is no official census data on the number of people in the Argentine Republic who have a predominantly or totally European or West Asian ancestry.

In 1778, a census was conducted to determine the number of people living in the current Argentine area of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata. According to this census, Argentina had only 185,920 inhabitants, of which 37.54% (about 69,804 people) were white.[3]

It is estimated that the percentage of White Argentines increases in the provinces that received a significant percentage of immigrants at the beginning of the 20th century and those that already had a white majority in the viceregal era. Although there are white people in almost all of Argentina, the provinces of Argentine Northwest have a percentage somewhat lower than the national average.

Immigration according to the census

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According to the National Institute of Statistics and Census of Argentina, in 2022 a total of 1,933,463 of the Argentine resident population were born outside Argentina, representing 4.24% of the total Argentine resident population.[4][5] From the 1990s onwards, there was a sharp decline in immigration from Europe and an increase in immigration from other Latin American countries, something similar to what occurred in the United States.

Born in 2022 2010 2001 1991
  Italy   68,169   147,499   216,718   356,923
  Spain   48,492   94,030   134,417   244,212
  Germany   4,087   8,416   10,362   15,451
  France   3,960   6,995   6,578   6,309
  Ukraine   3,486   4,830   8,290   3,498
  Portugal   3,281   6,785   9,340   13,229
  Russia   2,169   2,696   4,083   6,529
  United Kingdom   1,840   3,029   2,418   2,334
  Poland   1,408   6,428   13,703   28,811
  Israel   1,394   1,716   1,253   1,431
  Syria   1,324   1,337   2,350   4,814

Genetics studies

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Arab Argentines during Immigrants Day in Buenos Aires.

There are no censuses to determine the main ancestry or the origin of the surnames. It is estimated that 62.5% have Italian ancestors, followed by the Spanish with 29.6% (not counting mixed people), the French with 17%, the Germans with 8% and the Arabs with 7.6%. This data is very inaccurate and that most people, for example, may have Italian, Arab and German ancestry at the same time.[6][7]

Small sample size studies give the following composition, it is estimated that because in the mix between European and Levantine immigrants who were the majority and Argentines from that time who became a minority, it caused modern Argentines to have a predominantly Mediterranean ancestry (mainly Spanish, Italian, Arab Christian and South French) in the criollo or castizo range.

A team led by Daniel Corach conducted a 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 Caucasian contribution, 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 Caucasian contribution, and a 2% African contribution. The study of 24 autosomal markers also proved a large Caucasian contribution of 78.5%, against 17.3% of Amerindian and 4.2% Black African contributions.[8]

Several studies found out that the Caucasian ancestry in Argentina comes mainly from the Iberian Peninsula and Italian Peninsula with a much lower contribution from Central Europe, Northern Europe and West Asia.[9][10] The Italian component appears strongest in the East and Center-West, while the Spanish influence dominates in the North East and North West.[11]

Notable White Argentines

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See also

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Immigrant communities in Argentina

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References

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  1. ^ Giraudo, Laura (14 June 2018). "Casta(s), 'sociedad de castas' e indigenismo: la interpretación del pasado colonial en el siglo XX". Nuevo Mundo Mundos Nuevos. doi:10.4000/nuevomundo.72080. hdl:10261/167130.
  2. ^ Michael Soltys. A different kind of multinational: Immigrants to Argentina from Eastern Europe Originally published in the Buenos Aires Herald, 1998.
  3. ^ "Censo 1778" (PDF). Retrieved 18 April 2024.
  4. ^ Censo Nacional de Población, Hogares y Viviendas 2022 : resultados definitivos : migraciones internacionales e internas (PDF) (in Spanish) (2nd ed.). Buenos Aires: Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos (INDEC). April 2024. ISBN 978-950-896-671-1. Retrieved 29 April 2024.
  5. ^ "Tendencias recientes de la inmigración internacional" [Recent trends in international migration] (PDF). Revista informativa del censo 2001 (in Spanish) (12). INDEC. February 2004. ISSN 0329-7586. Archived from the original (PDF) on 14 November 2011.
  6. ^ Departamento de Derecho y Ciencias Políticas de la Universidad Nacional de La Matanza (14 November 2011). "Historias de inmigrantes italianos en Argentina" (in Spanish). infouniversidades.siu.edu.ar. Archived from the original on 15 July 2015. Se estima que en la actualidad, el 90% de la población argentina tiene alguna ascendencia europea y que al menos 25 millones están relacionados con algún inmigrante de Italia.
  7. ^ Les merveilleux francophiles argentins 1
  8. ^ Corach, Daniel; Lao, Oscar; Bobillo, Cecilia; Gaag, Kristiaan Van Der; Zuniga, Sofia; Vermeulen, Mark; Duijn, Kate Van; Goedbloed, Miriam; Vallone, Peter M.; Parson, Walther; Knijff, Peter De (2010). "Inferring Continental Ancestry of Argentineans from Autosomal, Y-Chromosomal and Mitochondrial DNA". Annals of Human Genetics. 74 (1): 65–76. doi:10.1111/j.1469-1809.2009.00556.x. hdl:11336/14301. ISSN 1469-1809. PMID 20059473. S2CID 5908692. Archived from the original on 25 October 2021. Retrieved 24 October 2021.
  9. ^ Luisi, Pierre; García, Angelina; Berros, Juan Manuel; Motti, Josefina M. B.; Demarchi, Darío A.; Alfaro, Emma; Aquilano, Eliana; Argüelles, Carina; Avena, Sergio; Bailliet, Graciela; Beltramo, Julieta; Bravi, Claudio M.; Cuello, Mariela; Dejean, Cristina; Dipierri, José Edgardo (2020-07-16). "Fine-scale genomic analyses of admixed individuals reveal unrecognized genetic ancestry components in Argentina". PLOS ONE. 15 (7): e0233808. Bibcode:2020PLoSO..1533808L. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0233808. ISSN 1932-6203. PMC 7365470. PMID 32673320.
  10. ^ Homburger, Julian R.; Moreno-Estrada, Andrés; Gignoux, Christopher R.; Nelson, Dominic; Sanchez, Elena; Ortiz-Tello, Patricia; Pons-Estel, Bernardo A.; Acevedo-Vasquez, Eduardo; Miranda, Pedro; Langefeld, Carl D.; Gravel, Simon; Alarcón-Riquelme, Marta E.; Bustamante, Carlos D. (2015-12-04). "Genomic Insights into the Ancestry and Demographic History of South America". PLOS Genetics. 11 (12): e1005602. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1005602. ISSN 1553-7404. PMC 4670080. PMID 26636962.
  11. ^ Muzzio, Marina; Motti, Josefina M. B.; Sepulveda, Paula B. Paz; Yee, Muh-ching; Cooke, Thomas; Santos, María R.; Ramallo, Virginia; Alfaro, Emma L.; Dipierri, Jose E.; Bailliet, Graciela; Bravi, Claudio M.; Bustamante, Carlos D.; Kenny, Eimear E. (2018-05-01). "Population structure in Argentina". PLOS ONE. 13 (5): e0196325. Bibcode:2018PLoSO..1396325M. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0196325. ISSN 1932-6203. PMC 5929549. PMID 29715266.
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