Pampa / Porteño

The Pampa and Buenos Aires — the porteño core. The capital was a backwater until the fertile Pampa's beef and grain, the railways and refrigerated shipping made Argentina one of the world's richest economies by 1910, drawing millions of Italians and Spaniards. That European immigrant mass — and the customs wealth of the port — set the Europe-facing porteño core against the older, poorer interior, the 'unitarian' pole of the country's defining divide. Tango, the gaucho legend, beef, football and Peronism (born of the city's working class) define Argentina abroad, and its cafés, bookshops and psychoanalysts lend it a singular cosmopolitan air.

• Existed: 1580 CE – present
• Type: Entity