The City of Buenos Aires was founded two times. The first time, by Spanish colonizer Don Pedro de Mendoza who established the first emplacement in 1536 calling it “Ciudad del Espíritu Santo y Puerto de Santa María del Buen Ayre”. After this first failed attempt, it was Don Juan de Garay that re-founded the city in 1580, giving it the name of “Santísima Trinidad” and keeping the name for the port.
The leather industry exportation and the growing incoming of European manufacture through the port to the rest of the country changed the importance of the city, and helped it become the political center of the “Virreinato del Rio de la Plata” in 1776. This also turned to city in 1810 to be the initiator of the revolution against the Spanish colonization in America.
Further confrontations between Buenos Aires and the rest of the country marked its evolution until its federalization in 1880, when it became the Country’s federal district.
In the 19th century, the port of Buenos Aires was the point of entrance of a great immigration movement promoted by the Argentinean government to populate the country. Spanish, Italians, Sirius-Lebanese, Polish and Russian immigrants gave to Buenos Aires the cultural eclecticism that makes it unique.
During the 20th century, successive immigration movements – internals, and from other Latin-American and Asian countries – finished to turn Buenos Aires into a Cosmopolitan city where people from different cultures and religions live.
*Acknowledgments: Portal de Turismo, Subsecretaría de Turismo del Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires www.bue.gov.ar. KMxKM: www.kmxkm.com.ar.
