Buenos Aires,[a] officially the Buenos Aires Province,[b] is the largest and most populous Argentine province. It takes its name from the city of Buenos Aires, the capital of the country, which used to be part of the province and the province's capital until it was federalized in 1880. Since then, in spite of bearing the same name, the province does not include Buenos Aires city, though it does include all other parts of the Greater Buenos Aires metropolitan area. The capital of the province is the city of La Plata, founded in 1882.
It is bordered by the provinces of Entre Ríos to the northeast, Santa Fe to the north, Córdoba to the northwest, La Pampa to the west, Río Negro to the south and west and the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires to the northeast. Uruguay is just across the Rio de la Plata to the northeast, and both are on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Almost the entire province is part of the Pampas geographical region, with the extreme south often considered part of the Patagonia region.
The province has a population of about 17.5 million people, which is 38% of Argentina's total population. The province covers an area of 307,571 km2 (118,754 sq mi), which is about 11% of Argentina's total area and makes it the country's largest province.
The inhabitants of the province before the 16th-century advent of Spanish colonization were aboriginal peoples such as the Charrúas and the Querandíes. Their culture was lolst over the next 350 years. They were subjected to Eurasian plagues from which few survived. The survivors joined other tribes or have been mostly absorbed by Argentina's European immigration.
Pedro de Mendoza founded Santa María del Buen Ayre in 1536. 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 the settlement in 1580 as Santísima Trinidad y Puerto Santa María de Los Buenos Aires.
Amidst ongoing conflict with the aboriginals, the cattle farms extended from Buenos Aires, whose port was always the center of the economy of the territory. Following the creation of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata at the end of the 18th century, the export of meat, leather and their derivatives through the port of Buenos Aires was the basis of the economic 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, despite frequent malones (aboriginal attacks on border settlements). The end to this situation came in 1879 with the Conquest of the Desert (Conquista del Desierto) in which the aboriginals were almost completely exterminated.
After the independence from Spain in 1816, the city and province of Buenos Aires became the focus of an intermittent Argentine Civil War with other provinces. A Federal Pact secured by Governor Juan Manuel de Rosas in 1831 led to the establishment of the Argentine Confederation and to his gaining the sum of public power, which provided a tenuous unity. Ongoing disputes regarding the influence of Buenos Aires, between Federalists and Unitarians, and over the Port of Buenos Aires (the prime source of public revenue at the time) fueled periodic hostilities. The province was declared independent on 11 September 1852, as the State of Buenos Aires. Concessions gained in 1859 Pact of San José de Flores and a victory at the Battle of Pavón led to its reincorporation into the Argentine Republic on 17 December 1861. Intermittent conflicts with the nation did not truly cease until 1880, when the city of Buenos Aires was formally federalized and, thus, administratively separated from the province.
La Plata was founded in 1882 by Governor Dardo Rocha for the purpose of becoming the provincial capital. The equivalent of a billion (1880s) dollars of British investment and pro-development, education and immigration policies pursued at the national level subsequently spurred dramatic economic growth. Driven by European immigration and improved health, the province's population, like Argentina's, nearly doubled to one million by 1895 and doubled again by 1914.[5] Rail lines connected nearly every town and hamlet in the province by 1914; many developed around the new railway stations.
This era of accelerated development was cut short by the Wall Street Crash of 1929, which caused a sharp drop in commodity prices (99% of Argentine exports were agricultural) and led to a halt in the flow of investment funds between nations. The new Concordance and Perón governments funded ambitious lending and public works programs, visible in Buenos Aires Province through the panoply of levees, power plants, water works, paved roads, municipal buildings, and (particularly during Perón's 1946-55 tenure) schools, clinics and massive regional hospitals.
The province's population, after 1930, began to grow disproportionately quickly in the suburban areas of Buenos Aires. These suburbs had grown to include 4 million out of the province's total 7 million people in 1960.[5] Much of the area these new suburbs were developed on (particularly the poorer ones) consisted of wetlands and were prone to flooding. To address this, Governor Oscar Alende initiated the province's most important flood-control project to date, the Roggero Reservoir. Completed a decade later, in 1971, the reservoir and associated electric and water-treatment facilities encouraged still more, and more orderly, development of the Greater Buenos Aires region, which today includes around 10 million people (2⁄3 of the provincial population). It did not address worsening pollution resulting from the area's industrial growth, which had made itself evident since around 1920. This problem has been at its worst along the Reconquista River west and north of the city of Buenos Aires; over 4 million people (one in 10 Argentines) today live on the Reconquista's basin.[6] Of these, about a million still live with seriously compromised water quality, despite the province's (sometimes counterproductive) efforts to remedy the issue.[7]
In April 2013, the northeastern section of Buenos Aires Province, particularly its capital, La Plata, experienced several flash floods that claimed the lives of at least 89 people.[8]
Alejandro Armendáriz, of the Radical Civic Union, was elected governor in 1983, when Raúl Alfonsín became president. Alfonsín lost the 1987 midterm elections, leading to the victory of Antonio Cafiero. From then to 2015, all governors have been Peronists. The high population of the province makes it highly influential in Argentine politics. With both ruling for two terms, the rivalry of the president Carlos Menem and governor Eduardo Duhalde dominated the Argentine politics during the nineties. A similar case took place with the president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and governor Daniel Scioli. María Eugenia Vidal, from Republican Proposal, won the 2015 elections, and became the first female governor of the province.[9]
In February 2021, researchers led by paleontologist Nicolás Chimento of the Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales announced the discovery of a well-preserved fossilized skull of the giant ground sloth Megatherium near San Eduardo del Mar, Province of Buenos Aires. According to paleontologists, the fossil belonged to a juvenile and dated back approximately 3.58 million years.[10][11][12]
The provincial government is divided into three branches: the executive, headed by a popularly elected governor, who appoints the cabinet; the legislative (represented by the Legislature, which is split into the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate); and the judiciary, headed by the Supreme Court.
The Constitution of Buenos Aires Province forms the formal law of the province.
In Argentina, the most important law enforcement organization is the Argentine Federal Police, but the province is policed by its own Buenos Aires Provincial Police.
Buenos Aires Province, at 307,571 square kilometres (118,754 sq mi), is slightly bigger than Italy. The landscape is mainly flat, with two low mountain ranges: Sierra de la Ventana (near Bahía Blanca) and Sierra de Tandil (Tandil). The highest point is Cerro Tres Picos (1,239 m (4,065 ft) amsl; 38°8′S 61°58′W / 38.133°S 61.967°W / -38.133; -61.967) and the longest river is Río Salado (700 km (435 mi) long).
As part of The Pampas, the weather of the province is strongly influenced by the ocean, with hot summers and temperate winters. Humidity is high and precipitation is abundant and distributed over the year. The Western and Southwestern regions are drier and are part of the Semi-arid Pampas ecoregion. The southernmost part of the province is often included in definitions of the Patagonia region.[13]