Argentina: Resources, Roots and Identity

This September, the municipality of the southern Hungarian city of Pécs lifted the ban on tango dancing introduced in 1922. On this occasion, a ‘Tango Feast’ was held and I had the pleasure to visit the city. Among other activities, I had the opportunity to talk about my country and my people at the University of Pécs.

Welcoming immigrants
I began with a physical description of Argentina, including some sociological and cultural characteristics to help the audience to get to know my country a little better. Argentina, in the extreme south of the American Continent, has an area of almost 2,800,000 square kilometers to which one million more of continental shelf and 200 miles of exclusive economic zone is added. Between the most extreme points to the North and South of the country, there is a distance of 3,700 kilometers. Our maritime coastline has an extension of 5000 kilometers.
In this immense and rich territory live 45 million inhabitants. An important part of them are descendants of foreigners or foreigners who fled from wars, misery or political, religious or racial persecution.
These immigrants were received according to our Constitution when it states that it seeks to "ensure the benefits of freedom, for us… and for all men of the world who wish to inhabit Argentine soil."

Economic capacity
Argentina is known for its immense food production. The total production of my country would feed 400 million people. Almost ten times the total population of Argentina. However, an unjust distribution of wealth means that there are sectors of our population that do not receive adequate food to meet their needs.
In order to demonstrate the importance of the agricultural industry and meat production in Argentina, I presented the audience with some figures for the year 2021: 20.5 million tons of wheat;
51 million tons of corn; 45 million tons of soybean; 3 million tons of beef and veal…
Both in the north and in the south of our country there are important oil and gas reserves. Investments are being attracted in order to resort to new technologies… and to recover self-supply and exports.
Argentina is a nuclear country. Since 1950, it has been researching, producing and exporting nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.
There are three nuclear power plants operating in Argentina with a total energy production capacity of 1,755 Megawatts. The National Atomic Energy Commission and the Province of Río Negro founded INVAP, a state-owned company devoted to research and production of high technology in nuclear, space, industrial, medical and scientific equipment.
Our country is also committed to the production of renewable energies compatible with the environmental protection policies.

Roots and identity
In the lecture, I also made a brief historical reference in order to understand the reality of my people, which recognizes its roots and identity in the original peoples that inhabited our soil.
Today's Argentina has its origin in the mestizaje (the process of interracial and/or intercultural mixing) produced by the arrival of the Spanish conqueror and the successive migratory waves of the most diverse origins that continue to enrich our identity.
We gratefully acknowledge this multicultural reality which, far from weakening our identity, strengthens it and projects it towards a destiny of universal fraternity in diversity, to which we intend to contribute.
It is impossible to ignore the influence that Catholicism had in the formation of our society. It is undoubtedly the majority religion, but at the same time it is especially convenient to distinguish the popular religiosity that nourishes the faith of our people with the institutional conducts of the Church, many times closer to the interests of the earthly power than to the message of the Gospel.
In Argentina there is full religious freedom and the coexistence of all religions is exemplary.
At the same time and as a consequence of the crimes committed by the genocidal dictatorship (1976-1983), the protection, promotion and defense of Human Rights have become a state policy.
Likewise, since the return to democracy in 1983, there have been significant advances in matters of non-discrimination, promotion of gender equality and new rights.

‘Moral pandemic’
Also, I decided to explain briefly how a country so rich in human and natural resources cannot provide its population with the welfare it deserves. Argentina is the victim of a phenomenon that affects humanity as a whole.
It is not about the pandemic that also affects us, but which we hope to overcome soon. I am referring to something much deeper and structural that Pope Francis has denounced in all his encyclicals and statements on social issues.
I believe that the causes that make the world a place where injustice, hunger, diseases, wars and forced migrations among other collective misfortunes reign, are not in the lack of resources, but in the unfair distribution of them. They lie in the selfishness and lack of solidarity of a system that pushes us towards individualism, uncontrolled consumption, exclusion and discarding, both of things and of human beings.
Let us never lose sight of this context. If we do, we will be feeding new tragedies. This "moral pandemic" has proven its danger during the health crisis we are still suffering.
This spiritual pathology has names. Uncontrolled consumerism that anesthetizes our consciences and stifles the fraternity of human beings and an economic-social system sustained exclusively on profit and governed by a market incapable of distinguishing differences, nor balancing inequalities.

Villa Ángela
Returning to my homeland, in the first 30 years of the 20th century, Argentine meat and grains allowed statistics to place us among the first countries in the world. Migration figures from Europe show that Argentina was seen as a land of peace and hope. Between 1880 and 1915, three years before the end of the First World War, 7 million Europeans arrived in Argentina from Spain, Italy, Germany, Poland, Russia and Hungary. As far as Hungarian emigration is concerned, at present there is in Argentina a community of 40,000 immigrants or descendants of immigrants.
During my visit to Pécs, we signed with the mayor of the city, Attila Péterffy the document that leaves without effect the prohibition of tango decreed almost a century ago and agreed to initiate the process of twinning between the city of Pécs and the city of Villa Ángela located in the Province of Chaco in Argentina. In Villa Ángela, there lives an outstanding Hungarian community that respects and cultivates the traditions of this millenary nation.
The current mayor of that city of almost 90,000 inhabitants, Adalberto Papp, is the son of a Hungarian who emigrated to Argentina. We hope that once approved by the authorities of the two cities, we can next year, sign the twinning agreement in the presence of the Mayor of Villa Ángela.