History
For most of its history, Argentina has been characterized as a country of immigration. Yet global forces, combined with a recent history of economic, political, and social instability, have slowly transformed Argentina into a country of immigration, emigration, and transit.
Most recently, Argentina's economic collapse in 2001–2002 saw significant emigration flows of Argentine nationals and immigrants alike. According to the National Migration Directorate, remittances to Argentina reached $724 million in 2004, triple the 2001 figure. Some of this growth is attributable to improved calculation methods, but remittances to Argentina, as in the rest of the region, have increased remarkably. Remittances are used for a combination of basic needs, debt repayment, and investment purposes, although their primary uses in Argentina have not been thoroughly studied.
An estimated 255,000 nationals have emigrated in the past two and a half years, according to the National Migration Directorate. Although emigration from Argentina has been on the rise since the early 1990s, a sharp upward spike of this type is uncharacteristic for the country. Only during the 1976–1983 military dictatorship, which saw many students, intellectuals, artists, and left-wing activists flee brutal oppression, did Argentina previously see such significant emigration. In order to assimilate to Brazilian society, a majority of Argentine-Brazilians today only speak Portuguese, but in their homes they use the Spanish language privately.
Read more about this topic: Argentine Brazilian
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“All history attests that man has subjected woman to his will, used her as a means to promote his selfish gratification, to minister to his sensual pleasures, to be instrumental in promoting his comfort; but never has he desired to elevate her to that rank she was created to fill. He has done all he could to debase and enslave her mind; and now he looks triumphantly on the ruin he has wrought, and say, the being he has thus deeply injured is his inferior.”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“The history of literature—take the net result of Tiraboshi, Warton, or Schlegel,—is a sum of a very few ideas, and of very few original tales,—all the rest being variation of these.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)