Italian Argentines
Italian Argentines are Argentine-born citizens who are fully or partially of Italian descent, whose ancestors were Italians who emigrated to Argentina during the Italian diaspora, or Italian-born people in Argentina.
Between the 1850s and the 1950s, 3.5 million Italians immigrated to Argentina. It was estimated that at least 25-30 million Argentines have some degree of Italian ancestry. Argentina has the second-largest community of Italians outside of Italy, after Brazil. Contingents of Italian immigrants arrived in Argentina from all regions of Italy, in general mainly from Southern Italy in the 20th century.
Italian community in Argentina, along with Spanish immigrants, became a major part of modern Argentine society. Argentine culture has significant connections to Italian culture in terms of language, customs, and traditions. Argentina is also a strongly Italophilic country as cuisine, fashion and lifestyle has been sharply influenced by Italian immigration. Italian foods such as panettone, pasta, fainá, olive oil, pizza, vermouth and fernet have become part of the Argentine cuisine, and Italian immigrants were one of the influences in the development of the Argentine wine industry.
History
During the Spanish conquest of what would be present-day Argentine territory, an Italian Leonardo Gribeo, from the region of Sardinia, accompanied Pedro de Mendoza to the place where Buenos Aires would be founded. From Cagliari to Spain, to Río de la Plata, then to Buenos Aires, he brought an image of Saint Mary of Good Air, to which the "miracle" of having reached a good place was attributed, giving the founded city its name in Spanish: Buenos Aires.The presence of Italians in the Río de la Plata Basin predates the birth of Argentina. Small groups of Italians began to emigrate to the present-day Argentine territory already in the second half of the 17th century.
There were already Italians in Buenos Aires during the May Revolution, which started the Argentine War of Independence. In particular, Manuel Belgrano, Manuel Alberti and Juan José Castelli, all three of Italian descent, were part of the May Revolution and the Primera Junta. The Italian community had already grown to such an extent that in 1836 the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia sent an ambassador, Baron Picolet d'Hermilion.
However, the stream of Italian immigration to Argentina became a mass phenomenon only from 1880 to 1920, during the Great European immigration wave to Argentina. Over that time period, about two million Italians settled in Argentina, with one million coming from 1900 to 1914. A small number of Italo-Albanians also emigrated to Argentina from Southern Italy. The various waves of Italian immigration influenced the social position of Italians in Argentina. In 1913, the Italian consul in Rosario, Adolfo Rossi, journeyed through the provinces of Santa Fe, Corrientes, and the Chaco. His report painted the image that the first Italian settlers and their sons "were in a paradise, the renters of land in a purgatory, and the lot of the newest immigrants, struggling against debt and privation, was an inferno."
In 1887, Italians accounted for 60.4% of all immigration to Argentina, then there was a decrease as the percentage of Spanish immigration increased. The effect of Italian immigration to Argentina was important for the constitution of Argentine society. In Argentina there are influences of Italian culture that are still evident in modern times. Outside of Italy, Argentina is the country with the highest percentage of Italians, and the one with the greatest examples of Italian culture.
File:Italianhouse.JPG|thumb|House of the Italian Argentines of Oberá, Misiones
In 1914, Buenos Aires alone had more than 300,000 Italian-born inhabitants, representing 25% of the total population.
The Italian immigrants were primarily male, aged between 14 and 50 and more than 50% literate; in terms of occupations, 78.7% in the active population were agricultural workers or unskilled laborers, 10.7% artisans, and only 3.7% worked in commerce or as professionals.
The outbreak of World War I and the rise of fascism in Italy caused a rapid fall in immigration to Argentina, with a slight revival in 1923 to 1927 but eventually stopped during the Great Depression and World War II.
After the end of the war, from 1946 to 1957, another massive wave of Italians moved to Argentina, this time numbering about 380,000. A small number of Istrian Italians and Dalmatian Italians emigrated to Argentina during the Istrian-Dalmatian exodus, leaving their homelands, which were lost to Italy and annexed to Yugoslavia after the Treaty of Peace with Italy, 1947.
In the late 1960s, the Italian economy experienced a period of growth and recovery, removing one of the primary incentives for emigration. As of 2016, 527,570 Italian citizens still lived in Argentina.
In 2024, it was estimated that at least 30 million Argentines have some degree of Italian ancestry. Argentina has the second-largest community of Italians outside of Italy, after Brazil. Jorge Luis Borges stated that "the Argentine is an Italian who speaks Spanish", while the Spanish philosopher Julián Marías stated that Argentina could be "the only Italian-Spanish republic on the planet". The Italian economist Marcello De Cecco said: "Italians, as we know, are a people of emigrants. For many centuries they have spread to the four corners of the world. However, they constitute the majority of the population in only two countries: Italy and Argentina."
There are second and third generation Italian Argentines who hold dual citizenship, recognized by both countries. This is because Argentina uses the ius soli principle, which grants nationality to those born in the country, while Italy uses the ius sanguinis principle, which grants citizenship to the children of Italians.
Italians abroad have elected deputies and senators in the Italian Parliament since 2006, when, after a constitutional reform, 12 seats in Chamber of Deputies and six seats in the Senate were assigned to the Italian diaspora. Argentina belongs to the constituency of South America, which corresponds to three deputies and two senators.
Reasons for Italian immigration to Argentina
Between the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, emigration from Italy was largely due to conditions of widespread poverty, high demographic pressure and heavy taxation, while Argentina was a country with a strong need for immigrants. The welcoming commitment, enshrined in the constitution of 1853, found its reasons in a de facto underpopulated country. The Argentine population, a country whose land area is nine times larger than that of Italy, was only 1.1 million in 1850) and was eager to populate the large regions conquered in the recent War of the Triple Alliance and with the so-called Conquest of the Desert.Furthermore, a law passed by the Argentine government in 1876 offered the possibility of free land assignments or those payable in installments at very low prices, while in 1882 the government decided to grant 25 hectares of land free of charge to all families. In particular, article 25 of the current Argentine constitution states that:
Characteristics of Italian immigration to Argentina
Overview
| Period | Total | Italian | Proportion |
| 1861–1870 | 159,570 | 113,554 | 71% |
| 1871–1880 | 260,885 | 152,061 | 58% |
| 1881–1890 | 841,122 | 493,885 | 59% |
| 1891–1900 | 648,326 | 425,693 | 57% |
| 1901–1910 | 1,764,103 | 796,190 | 45% |
| 1911–1920 | 1,204,919 | 347,388 | 29% |
| 1861–1920 | 3,798,925 | 2,270,525 | 59% |
Areas of origin
Italian immigrants arrived in Argentina from all regions of Italy, mainly from Northern Italy in the 19th century, and mostly from Southern Italy in the 20th century. Most of the Italians who initially moved to Argentina were farmers from the north, originating from regions such as Piedmont, Liguria, Veneto, Friuli-Venezia Giulia and Lombardy. Due to the nascent industrialization of Northern Italy in the 20th century, immigration patterns shifted to rural Southern Italy, especially Campania, Calabria and Sicily. Immigrants from northern Italy settled mainly in rural areas, while those from the south preferred large cities.Of the 2,386,181 Italians who arrived in Argentina between 1876 and 1930, 47% came from Southern Italy, 41% from Northern Italy and 12% from Central Italy. The Italian regions from which most of the immigrants came were Piedmont and Calabria. Calabrian immigrants have always arrived in large numbers and their migration has not changed much over time. Immigrants from Sicily began to arrive in large numbers from 1895 to the early 1900s, and by 1914, one in six immigrants were Sicilian.
In the 1950s, more than 65% of Italian immigrants came from the south, with 30% from Calabria, 15% from Campania and 12% from Sicily. Of the remaining 35%, 21% came from central-southern regions, in particular Abruzzo and Molise, while 13% came from the north, mainly from Veneto and Friuli-Venezia Giulia.
Of the immigrants who arrived between 1876 and 1915, 16.9% were from Piedmont, 13.2% from Calabria, 11.1% from Sicily, 10.4% from Lombardy, 8.2% from Marche, 7.5% from Campania, 7.2% from Veneto and 3.2% from Abruzzo and Molise, which then constituted a single region. Tuscany, Umbria, Lazio and Emilia-Romagna, in central Italy, were the regions that contributed the least to immigration to Argentina.
In Argentine slang, tano is still used for all people of Italian descent although it originally meant inhabitants of the former independent state the Kingdom of Naples. The assumption that emigration from cities was negligible has an important exception. Naples went from being the capital of its own kingdom in 1860 to being just another large city in Italy. The loss of bureaucratic jobs and the subsequently declining financial situation led to high unemployment. This caused a massive departure from Naples and southern Italy to Argentina.
According to a 1990 study, the high proportion of returnees can show a positive or negative correlation between regions of origin and of destination. Southern Italians indicate a more permanent settlement. Argentine society's Italian component is the result of
Southern rather than Northern influences.
| Period | Northwest Italy | Northeastern and central Italy | Southern and insular Italy | Total |
| 1880–1884 | 59.8% | 16.8% | 23.4% | 106,953 |
| 1885–1889 | 45.3% | 24.4% | 30.3% | 259,858 |
| 1890–1894 | 44.2% | 20.7% | 35.1% | 151,249 |
| 1895–1899 | 32.3% | 23.1% | 44.6% | 211,878 |
| 1900–1904 | 29.2% | 19.6% | 51.2% | 232,746 |
| 1905–1909 | 26.9% | 20.1% | 53.0% | 437,526 |
| 1910–1914 | 27.4% | 18.2% | 54.4% | 355,913 |
| 1915–1919 | 32.3% | 23.1% | 44.6% | 26,880 |
| 1920–1924 | 19.7% | 27.4% | 52.9% | 306,928 |
| 1925–1929 | 14.4% | 33.1% | 52.5% | 235,065 |