In 100 years, Argentina sees decline with series of crises – 11/18/2023 – World

“The breadbasket of the world” and “the Paris of South America” ​​were phrases used to describe Argentina and its capital Buenos Aires in the past, but today they clash with the scenario of high inflation and increasing poverty that the neighboring country suffers. It is yet another crisis among a series of others experienced by the nation in the last hundred years.

Along with this, Argentines went through five military coups, recurring periods of institutional instability and sudden changes of direction in economic policy. Today, the country has fallen in the world rankings and has a worse quality of life than that of developed countries, but remains above the Latin American average in many aspects.

See below the timeline of the main political moments and economic indices in the last century in Argentina, which celebrates its first 40 uninterrupted years of democracy this year.

1920 Argentina began the 1920s among the ten richest countries in the world, but fell in the ranking over the years

1930 The country is experiencing an ‘infamous decade’, with a coup that ushered in an era of military interventions and an economic crisis worsened by the global Great Depression

1943-1944 New coup brings military junta to power for a few months, generates instability and paves the way for the rise of Juan Domingo Perón, then Minister of War

1946 Perón is elected president, nationalizes the Central Bank and gives rise to the Peronist movement, characterized by the defense of workers and strong state intervention

Post-WWII Public spending increases, European countries have difficulty paying for agricultural exports, and inflation begins to appear

1948-1952 US Marshall Plan helps European countries get back on the path to development

1952 Perón assumes his second term, and his wife Eva Perón dies of cancer, becoming a political symbol to this day

1955-1958 Perón is deposed by the military and goes into exile; Peronism is declared illegal and a new period of instability begins, with several provisional governments

1966-1973 Another coup dissolves Congress and installs a military regime, marked by liberalism, spending reductions and political repression

1973 Perón returns to Argentina and is elected for the third time, but dies the following year and his wife and vice president, Isabel Perón, becomes the first female president.

1976 Isabel is deposed, and the country experiences the bloodiest dictatorship in Latin America, with torture and disappearances

1982 Argentina loses the Falkland Islands war against the United Kingdom

1983 The country returned to democracy exactly 40 years ago, with the election of Raúl Alfonsín (from the anti-Peronist UCR party), in a decade of deep economic crisis

1989 Carlos Menem, liberal Peronist, takes office amid hyperinflation; management is marked by privatizations, economic opening and parity between the peso and the dollar

2001-2002 Heavily in debt, Argentina is experiencing one of its worst crises, with the devaluation of the peso, violent protests and three presidents in two months

2003 Néstor Kirchner is elected, beginning a series of Kirchnerist governments amid the commodity price boom

2007 Cristina Kirchner takes over and continues with the expansion of social programs and subsidies; three years later, her husband dies, and she is re-elected

2015 Mauricio Macri is elected by the center-right and changes course in economic policy, but inflation persists, and he takes fiscal adjustment measures and loans to the IMF

2019 Peronism returns to power with president Alberto Fernández and vice Cristina Kirchner

2020-2021 Argentina suffers effects of Covid and is the first major country in Latin America to legalize abortion

2022-2023 Fernández faces worsening crisis, and Argentina reaches highest inflation levels in 32 years