White Argentines

White Argentines (Spanish: Argentinos blancos), also known as Caucasian Argentines (Spanish: Argentinos caucásicos), are Argentines of total or predominantly European, West Asian or North African ancestry, these stand out for having light or olive skin. The vast majority of White Argentines have ancestry from immigrants who arrived in the early 20th century and later years although some have ancestry from the first colonizers. White Argentines are currently the largest group in Argentina.
The term White is also used to refer to olive-skinned people of Mediterranean origin, something very common to what happens in the Mediterranean Basin in places like Iberia, Anatolia, Mezzogiorno, the Balkans or the Levant.
The city of Buenos Aires was first founded in 1536 by the Spanish conquistador Pedro de Mendoza. This foundation was unsuccessful due to problems with the local indigenous peoples (mainly Querandies) and a lack of supplies, leading to the settlement being abandoned in 1541, and was later founded again in 1580 by Juan de Garay. The first permanent European settlement founded in what is now Argentina was Santiago del Estero in 1553. The foundation was carried out by the Spanish explorer Francisco de Aguirre. Santiago del Estero is known as the "Mother of Cities" because several expeditions that founded other cities in Argentine territory departed from there. The current Argentine territory was one of the most irrelevant and forgotten regions of the Spanish Empire because the vast majority of the economic benefits were in Upper Peru and in the viceroyalties of Peru, New Spain and New Granada and so Argentina did not receive a large number of slaves and settlers. In addition to having a fairly low number of native population, that made it the most unpopulated territory of the Spanish Empire, along with the Provincias Internas.
The Spanish settled in the New World during the viceregal era and their children born in America were known as criollos although they could not hold the position of viceroy, which, being the representation of the king, could be occupied only by someone born in Peninsular Spain. Other castes known for having white skin were the castizos and the Octavons although they had a small percentage of native and black blood, respectively. In 1778, during the mandate of Viceroy J. J. de Vértiz y Salcedo, a census was carried out in which it was found that 37.54% of the people in the current Argentine territory were white, then in the years following independence, provincial censuses were carried out, in 1827 in Buenos Aires 73.8% and in 1833 in Corrientes 87.2% of the population was white. It is worth noting that after independence, President Bernardino Rivadavia established the Migration Commission, although during the following years it did not have great relevance due to the instability in the United Provinces of the Rio de la Plata.
In 1880, after the end of the Argentine Civil Wars and the beginning of the period of the Conservative Republic, Argentine immigration policy formally began with Juan Bautista Alberdi, who in his work "Bases and starting points for the political organization of the Argentine Republic" of 1852, proposed promoting European immigration as a way to populate the country and promote its economic and social development. With this began a massive arrival of millions of immigrants from Europe and West Asia, the vast majority of them Spaniards and Italians but included thousands of French, Germans, Croats, Poles, Arab Christians, Irish, Gypsies, Russians, Jews, Ukrainians, Armenians, and others. Between 1869 and World War I the population of Argentina quadrupled due to an influx of millions of European immigrants during the Great European immigration wave to the country, no recent Argentine census has included comprehensive questions about ethno-racial origin, although numerous studies have determined that White Argentines have been a majority in the country since 1914. Also a small wave of white immigrants from Africa between 1899–1902 during the Second Boer War in South Africa, many Boers had lost their farms in the war or considered themselves bittereinders who felt they could not live under a British government so they emigrated mainly to the Chubut Province.
Although some events such as the Crash of 1929 slowed immigration worldwide, events such as the Spanish Civil War, the Unification of Italy, World War I, and the Russian Civil War strengthened the wave of immigration to Argentina. The great majority of immigrants who arrived in Argentina professed Catholicism because of the cultural affinity for which almost all came from Southern Europe, although the Second World War caused the number of immigrants (mainly from Poland) who professed Judaism in Argentina to increase.
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.
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, Santa Fe being the province that received the most in percentage terms. A small number of Italo-Albanians also emigrated to Argentina from Southern Italy.
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. In 1914, Buenos Aires alone had more than 300,000 Italian-born inhabitants, representing 25% of the total population.
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.
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 2011, it was estimated that at least 25 million Argentines (62.5% of the country's population) 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 interplay between Argentine and Spanish culture has a long and complex history. Spanish settlements date back to 16th century, and from then on, many Criollo Spaniards populated the area of Argentina, some of whom intermarried with non-Spaniards. Spain established a permanent colony on the site of Buenos Aires in 1580, although initial settlement was primarily overland from Peru. The Spanish further integrated Argentina into their vast empire by establishing the Vice Royalty of Rio de la Plata in 1776, and Buenos Aires became a flourishing port. Argentina would become a crucial part of the Spanish Empire in South America.
In the post-colonial period (1832–1950), there would be a further influx of Spanish immigrants to Argentina from all over Spain during the Great European immigration wave to Argentina, after the creation of the modern Argentine state. Between 1857 and 1960, 2.2 million Spanish people emigrated to Argentina, mostly from Galicia, the Basque Country, Asturias, Cantabria, and Catalonia in northern Spain, while significantly smaller numbers of immigrants also arrived from Andalusia in southern Spain.
Galicians make up 70% of the Spanish post-colonial immigrant population in Argentina. The city with the world's second largest number of Galician people is Buenos Aires, where immigration from Galicia was so profound that today all Spaniards, regardless of their origin within Spain, are referred to as gallegos (Galicians) in Argentina.
Roughly 10-15% of the Argentine population are descended from Basque people, both Spanish and French, and are described as Basque Argentines. They gather in several Basque cultural centers in most of the large cities in the country. A common practice among Argentines of Basque origin is to identify themselves "French-Basques". This is because of French culture being considered more "fashionable" than Spanish among the average Argentine.
From the second half of the 19th century to the first half of the 20th century, Argentina received the second largest group of French immigrants worldwide, second only to the United States. Between 1857 and 1946 Argentina received 239,503 French immigrants - out of which 105,537 permanently settled in the country. By 1976, 116,032 had settled in Argentina. French immigration to Argentina can be divided in three main periods, as follows: France was the third source of immigration to Argentina before 1890, constituting over 10% of immigrants, only surpassed by Italians and Spaniards; from 1890 to 1914, immigration from France, although reduced, was still significant; lastly, after WWI, the flow of French immigrants was minimal and only grew again after WWII to finally stop in the 1950s.
Half of French immigrants until the second half of the 20th century came from Southwestern France, especially from the Basque Country, Béarn (Basses-Pyrénées accounted for more than 20% of immigrants), Bigorre and Rouergue. Other important groups came from Savoy and the Paris region. It was estimated that at least 70% of French immigrants in Tandil were coming from the Southwestern part of the country and that half of them were of Basque stock. Until the 1880s, the great majority of French immigrants to Argentina were from the Pyrenees.
Today it is estimated that up to 17% of Argentines have partial French ancestry. French Argentines formed a large portion of the elite of the country. While found throughout the country, they are most numerous in Buenos Aires, Santa Fe, Entre Ríos, Córdoba, Mendoza and Tucumán provinces.
German communities developed in the Buenos Aires City and in several provinces such as Buenos Aires, Entre Ríos, La Pampa, Misiones, Córdoba, Chaco, Río Negro, etc.
Of note are the colonias alemanas, first founded in the province of Buenos Aires in 1827. Between 1870 and 1914, Argentina experienced a boom in immigration due to massive economic expansion in the port of Buenos Aires and the wheat and beef producing Pampas. German immigrants began establishing themselves and developing newspapers, schools, and social clubs. A new, Germanic-Argentine identity gradually developed among the population. During and at the end of the First World War, German and other European communities in Buenos Aires struggled between old and new identities. During the rise of Adolf Hitler, Argentina experienced another surge in German immigration. The majority were Jews from Germany although German opponents of Nazism also arrived. After World War II, a propaganda campaign led by U.S. Ambassador Spruille Braden accused President Juan Perón of establishing a ratline to facilitate the escape of prominent Nazis, collaborators, and other fascists from Europe. This narrative emerged in the context of Perón's refusal to align Argentina with U.S. geopolitical interests, fueling tensions between the two nations. The claims were part of a broader effort to discredit Perón’s government during a period of intense ideological and diplomatic rivalry. As early as 1940, Argentina had proposed a “non-belligerent” posture for the Western Hemisphere to address the growing conflict in Europe, a proposal dismissed by the U.S. at the time but later adopted in part by President Roosevelt, further demonstrating the complexity of Argentina’s foreign policy and its divergence from simplistic pro-Axis characterizations.
The vast majority of Germans in Argentina were Volga Germans, many Catholics chose South America as their new homeland because the official religion in Argentina and Brazil was Roman Catholic. The Volga Germans settled mainly in the colonies, with the city of Coronel Suárez being the main settlement, they were mainly dedicated to agriculture and livestock. The fact that Argentina appears among the most important grain producers of the world is, in part, the responsibility of its citizens of Volga German origin.
Today, the population of partial Volga German ancestry exceeds 2.5 million and that of remaining German ancestry exceeds 1 million in Argentina.
In the 19th century Argentina saw the first real wave of Arabs to settle within its territory, mainly Christians. Most of the Arab Christians who came during this time period were from Lebanon and Syria as a result of the 1860 Mount Lebanon civil war (During that time, Lebanon and Syria were Ottoman provinces). While Arab communities existed by 1864, systematic records did not appear before 1868. From 1891 to 1920, 367,348 people of Arabic heritage immigrated into Argentina.
The causes for Arabs to leave their homeland were an accelerated increase in demographics in Lebanon, the persecution by the Ottoman Turks and the Italo-Turkish War. Arab immigrants settled in large numbers in the Cuyo region due to the similarity to the landscapes of the Middle East. Other provinces that received emphasis were Buenos Aires, Córdoba, Salta, Tucumán, La Rioja, Santiago del Estero and Santa Fe.
Currently in Argentina, of the Arab-descendants, 2 million are descendants of Lebanese people, 1.5 million of Syrian people and 30,000 of Palestinian people. Furthermore, Argentina is currently the most Muslim country in Hispanic America and the third on the American continent behind the United States and Canada in numbers with around 1 million (which would be more than 2% of the Argentine population).
The first Poles arrived in Argentina during the 19th century. In 1890, the first Polish organization in Argentina was founded (Towarzystwo Polskie). For many years, the Misiones Province was the major Polish center in Argentina, followed by the Chaco Province in second place. It is estimated that between 25% and 30% of Poles were Jews, a figure that increased greatly after 1933.
In 1897, a group of Polish settlers from Galizia did not have the papers to go to the United States, so they had nowhere to go. The Argentine consul in Trieste offered them land to colonize in their country and they accepted. When this group of Poles arrived in the city of La Plata, no Argentine understood the Polish language except for one official, who called the governor of Misiones to rescue them, this began an intense migration of Poles to the province. These settlers came from Eastern European cities and towns, many of which disappeared during the world wars or changed names with successive border movements. Since Galizia belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire before 1918, they appear as Austro-Hungarians in the migration records of the Argentine Republic.
On the other hand, in Chaco many of the Polish immigrants who arrived worked in the construction of the railway lines that linked Barranqueras-Metán and Santa Fe-Formosa. Later, they worked as farmers in towns such as Las Breñas, Charata and Presidencia Roque Sáenz Peña.
Today it is estimated that around 1,000,000 Argentines have partially Polish ancestry. More than a quarter of the population in the Misiones Province has Polish roots (250,000 people), the highest concentration of Polish-Argentines in the country. There are also a large number of Polish descendants in the cities of Buenos Aires, Rosario, Berisso, Avellaneda, Córdoba and Santa Fe.
The principal source of immigration into Argentina after 1980 was no longer from Europe but rather from bordering South American countries. Given that the main sources of South American immigrants since the 1980s have been Bolivia, Paraguay and Peru, most of the immigrants have been Mestizo, for they represent the ethnic majorities in those countries, but many white people also arrived in Argentina from Paraguay. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, many Lithuanians and Romanians emigrated to Argentina because of the poor quality of life in Eastern Europe, in addition to a wave coming from the Balkans during the outbreak of the Yugoslav Wars. In more recent years, after the 2022 Russo-Ukrainian War, thousands of Russians and Ukrainians emigrated to Argentina due to the ease and strength of the Argentine passport.
There is no official census data on the number of people in the Argentine Republic who have a predominantly or totally European or West Asian ancestry, only natives and blacks are counted.
In 1778, a census was conducted to determine the number of people living in the current Argentine area of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata. According to this census, Argentina had only 185,920 inhabitants, of which 37.54% (about 69,804 people) were white.
It is estimated that the percentage of White Argentines increases in the provinces that received a significant percentage of immigrants at the beginning of the 20th century and those that already had a white majority in the viceregal era. Although there are white people in almost all of Argentina, the provinces of Argentine Northwest have a percentage somewhat lower than the national average.
According to the National Institute of Statistics and Census of Argentina, in 2022 a total of 1,933,463 of the Argentine resident population were born outside Argentina, representing 4.24% of the total Argentine resident population. From the 1990s onwards, there was a sharp decline in immigration from Europe and an increase in immigration from other Latin American countries, something similar to what occurred in the United States.
Unlike other countries such as Australia or Canada, Argentina received greater immigration from Southern Europe and the Levant, the majority of Argentines have olive-white skin.
Light-skinned Argentines are mainly descendants of non-Mediterranean peoples such as Germans, Ukrainians or Irish, although there are also some immigrant descendants from Italy and Spain who also have light skin, mainly from the north of both countries. Immigrants from Southern Italy and Spain had olive skin, so it is common to find Argentinians with this tone in the lower, middle or upper classes. Other Caucasian peoples who emigrated to Argentina and have mostly olive complexions are Arabs, Greeks, Gypsies, Albanians, Turks, Armenians, Portuguese, Bulgarians, among others.
There are no censuses to determine the main ancestry or the origin of the surnames. It is estimated that 62.5% have Italian ancestors, followed by the Spanish with 43.4% (not counting mixed people), the French with 17%, the Arabs with 7.6% and the Germans with 7%. This data is very inaccurate and that most people, for example, may have Italian, Arab and German ancestry at the same time.
Small sample size studies give the following composition, it is estimated that because in the mix between European and Levantine immigrants who were the majority and Argentines from that time who became a minority, it caused modern Argentines to have a predominantly Mediterranean ancestry (mainly Spanish, Italian, Arab Christian and South French) in the criollo or castizo range.
A team led by Daniel Corach conducted a study in 2009, analyzing 246 samples from eight provinces and three different regions of the country. The results were as follows: the analysis of Y-Chromosome DNA revealed a 94.1% of Caucasian contribution, and only 4.9% and 0.9% of Native American and Black African contribution, respectively. Mitochondrial DNA analysis again showed a great Amerindian contribution by maternal lineage, at 53.7%, with 44.3% of Caucasian contribution, and a 2% African contribution. The study of 24 autosomal markers also proved a large Caucasian contribution of 78.5%, against 17.3% of Amerindian and 4.2% Black African contributions.
Several studies found out that the Caucasian ancestry in Argentina comes mainly from the Iberian Peninsula and Italian Peninsula with a much lower contribution from Central Europe, Northern Europe and West Asia. The Italian component appears strongest in the East and Center-West, while the Spanish influence dominates in the North East and North West.