Weather and Survey

The aboriginals that inhabited the land before the arrival of the Spanish colonisation were the Pampas Indians and other subgroups such as the Querandíes, but their culture has been lost for they have been almost exterminated, and the few survivors joined other tribes.

Pedro de Mendoza founded Santa María del Buen Ayre, and even though the first contact with the aboriginals was peaceful, it soon became hostile. The city was evacuated in 1541. Juan de Garay re-founded it in 1580 as Santísima Trinidad y Puerto Santa María de los Buenos Aires.
Always among fights with the aboriginals, the cattle farms extended from Buenos Aires, whose port was always the centre of the economy of the territory. At the end of the 18th century, with the creation of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, the exportation of meat, leather and derivatives thought the port of Buenos Aires was the base of the economical development of the region.
Jesuits unsuccessfully tried to peacefully assimilate the aboriginals into the European culture brought by the Spanish conquistadores. A certain balance was found at the end of the 18th century, when the Salado River became the limit between both civilizations, even though the frequent malones aboriginal attacks to border settlements. The end to such situation came as late as 1879 with the Conquest of the Desert (Conquista del Desierto), a blody expedition in which the aboriginals where almost completely exterminated.
After the independence from Spain in 1816, Buenos Aires Province and the Buenos Aires city were in constant confrontation with the other provinces because of the federal system that was managed at Buenos Aires. This period of internal instability lasted for decades.
Following the internal conflicts of the 19th century, Buenos Aires was federalised and removed from Buenos Aires Province in 1880; its city limits were enlarged to include the former towns of Belgrano and Flores; both are now neighborhoods in the city.

The people of Buenos Aires are known as porteños ("people of the port"), due to the significance of the port in the development of the city and the nation. The people of Buenos Aires province (sometimes including the city's suburbs) are called "bonaerenses".
The city has a population of 2,965,403, while the Greater Buenos Aires metropolitan area has more than 12.4 million inhabitants (2001 census). The population of the city has been stagnant since the late 1960´s, due to low birth rates and a slow emigration towards suburbia.
Most porteños have European roots, with Spanish and Italian descent being the most common, mainly from the Galician, Asturian, and Basque regions of Spain; and the Calabrian, Ligurian, Piedmont, Lombardy and Napolitan regions of I taly.
Other European origins include German, Portuguese, Polish, Irish, French, Croatian, English and Welsh. In the 1990’s, there was a small wave of immigration from Romania and Ukraine.
There is a minority of old criollo stock, dating back to the Spanish colonial days. Criollo and Spanish-aboriginal (mestizo) population in the city has increased mostly as a result of migration, both from the provinces and from nearby countries such as Bolivia, Peru and Paraguay, since the second half of the 20th century.
Important Arab (mostly Syrian-Lebanese) and Armenian communities have been significant in commerce and civic life since the beginning of the 20th century.
The Jewish community in Greater Buenos Aires numbers around 250,000, and is the largest in Latin America. Most are of Northern and Eastern European (Ashkenazi) origin, mostly German and Russian Jews; with a significant minority of Sephardic, mostly Syrian Jews.
The first major East Asian community in Buenos Aires was the Japanese, mainly from Okinawa. Traditionally, Japanese-Argentines were noted as flower growers; in the city proper, there was a Japanese near-monopoly in dry cleaning. Later generations have branched into all fields of activity. Ever since the 1970’s, there has been an important influx of immigrants from China and Korea.

Buenos Aires is the financial, industrial, commercial, and cultural hub of Argentina. Its port is one of the busiest in the world. Tax collection related to it has caused many political problems in the past. Navigable rivers by way of the Rio de la Plata connect the port to north-east Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay. As a result, it serves as the distribution hub for a vast area of the south-eastern region of the South American continent.
To the west of Buenos Aires is the Pampa Húmeda, the most productive agricultural region of Argentina (as opposed to the dry southern Pampa, mostly used for cattle farming). Meat, dairy, grain, tobacco, wool and hide products are processed or manufactured in the Buenos Aires area. Other leading industries are automobile manufacturing, oil refining, metalworking, machine building, and the production of textiles, chemicals, clothing, and beverages.

Strongly influenced by European culture, Buenos Aires is sometimes referred to as the "Paris of South America". Self-consciously modeled after its European heritage, Buenos Aires is the site of the Colón Theater, one of the world's greatest opera houses. There are several symphonic orchestras and choral societies. The city has numerous museums related to history, fine arts, modern arts, decorative arts, popular arts, sacred art, arts and crafts, theatre and popular music, as well as the preserved homes of writers, composers and artists. It harbours many public libraries and cultural associations as well as the largest concentration of active theatres in Latin America, in its Theaterland located on Corrientes Av. It has a world-famous zoo and Botanical Garden, a large number of landscaped parks and squares, as well as churches and places of worship of many denominations, many of which are architecturally noteworthy.

Buenos Aires' Spanish is characterised by an aspiration or loss of syllable-finals. Heavily influenced by the dialects of Spanish spoken in Andalusia and Murcia, it is sometimes known as Rioplatense Spanish.
In the early 20th century, Argentina absorbed millions of immigrants, many of them Italians, who spoke mostly in their local dialects (mainly Napolitan, Sicilian and Genoan). Their adoption of Spanish was gradual, creating a pidgin of Italian dialects and Spanish called ‘’cocoliche’’, widely heard in the beginning of the 20th century. Its usage declined around the 1950’s, and today survives mostly as comic relief.
A phonetic study conducted by the Laboratory for Sensory Investigations of CONICET and the University of Toronto showed that the Porteño accent is closer to the Napolitan dialect of Italian than any other spoken language.
As many Spanish immigrants were from Galicia, to the extent that Spaniards are still generically called gallegos (Galicians), Galician language, cuisine and culture had a major presence in the city for most of the 20th century. In recent years, descendants of Galician immigrants have led a mini-boom in Celtic music (which also highlighted the Welsh traditions of Patagonia).
Yiddish was commonly heard in Buenos Aires, especially in the Balvanera garment district and in Villa Crespo, until the 1960’s.
Korean and Chinese have become significant since the 1970’s. Most of the newer immigrants learn Spanish quickly and assimilate into city life.
The lunfardo argot originated within the prison population, and in time it spread to all porteños. Lunfardo uses words from Italian dialects, from Brazilian Portuguese, from African and Caribbean origin and even from English; and employs humorous tricks such as inverting the syllables within a word (vesre). Today, lunfardo is mostly heard on tango lyrics; the slang of the younger generations has been evolving away from it.

Several parks, gardens, zoos, and other recreational spaces make up key parts of the urban landscape of Buenos Aires. The most famous and extensively used outdoor area is the complex of Palermo Parks, also known as the “Parque Tres de Febrero”. It consists of open spaces, artificial lakes, and a range of other outdoor attractions adjacent to the upscale urban neighborhoods of Recoleta and Retiro just northwest of the city center. The park complex contains the city’s botanical gardens (Jardín Botánico) Carlos Thays; the city’s zoo (Jardín Zoológico); a formal rose garden (the Rosedal); a planetarium (Plantetario Galileo Galilei); and adjacent to the park, a racetrack, the Hipódromo Argentino.
Other notable parks include the Parque Lezama, in the southeastern section of the city adjacent to the barrio of San Telmo; and the Reserva Ecológica Costanera Sur, on the Río de la Plata just east of the city center. The Parque Almirante Guillermo Brown, one of the city’s largest single expanses of open space, is on the southern edge of Buenos Aires. Small neighborhood plazas abound throughout the city and metropolitan area. Despite their small size of usually no more than a single city block, these plazas provide accessible open space and a venue for social interaction at the neighborhood level.
Spectator sports – especially soccer – are popular in Buenos Aires. Soccer stadiums often serve as key landmarks and focal points of the neighborhoods in which teams are based. Horseracing is also a popular pastime, and a number of tracks are found in the city including the Hipódromo Argentino near Palermo Parks and the Hipódromo de San Isidro adjacent to the northern section of the Río de la Plata.

Tango music was born in the suburbs, notably in the brothels of the Junín and Lavalle district and in the arrabales (poorer suburbs).
Its sensual dance moves were not seen as respectable until adopted by the Parisian high society in the 1920’s, and then all over the world. In Buenos Aires, tango dancing schools (known as academias) were usually men-only establishments.
Starting in the 1920’s, the Buenos Aires style of tango music evolved into an elaborated genre. In its heyday, tango had many famous orchestras such as those led by Aníbal Troilo and Juan D'Arienzo, and singers such as Carlos Gardel and Edmundo Rivero. Tango enjoyed a resurgence in global popularity later in the 20th century due almost exclusively to Astor Piazzolla and his development of the tango nuevo style.
Buenos Aires holds an annual "Tango Day" each December 11.
In San Telmo neighborhood, Sundays are devoted to tango shows on the streets and antiques trade in the bazaars around Dorrego Square. Tango shows can be found in many establishments.