Argentina

Argentina officially the Argentine Republi, is the second largest country in both South America and the Latin America region. The country is a federation of 23 provinces and the autonomous city of Buenos Aires, its capital and largest city. It is the eighth-largest country in the world by land area and the largest among Spanish-speaking nations by geographical area of 2,780,400 km2 and is the fourth by population, with over 41 million people. Argentina is a founding member of the United Nations, Mercosur, the Union of South American Nations, the Organization of Ibero-American States, the World Bank Group and the World Trade Organization, and is one of the G-15 and G-20 major economies. Argentina is located in South America, bordered by Chile to the west and south, Bolivia and Paraguay to the north and Brazil and Uruguay to the northeast. Argentina claims sovereignty over part of Antarctica, the Falkland Islands (Spanish: Islas Malvinas) and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands. The history of Argentina is divided by historians into four main parts: the pre-Columbian time or early history (up to the sixteenth century) the colonial period (15301810), the period of the nation-building (1810 to 1880) and the history of modern Argentina (from around 1880).