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by gadders
5005 days ago
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Thanks for such an informative reply. I hope one day Argentina gets a government worthy of them :-) I also hope to go fishing in Patagonia one day, but that's another story... As an aside, are those wealthy families that own all the land of Spanish or Welsh origin? I've heard there are a lot of Welsh immigants in Argentina. |
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Most of them are from Spanish origin, "familias patricias" - "patrician families" that were here and were somewhat powerful at the time when we were still a colony, our independence in 1816 or in the following decades, during the War of the Triple Alliance [1], and later at the Conquest of the Desert[2].
However, during the last two decades, there's being a new wave of landowners, mostly from USA, Italy, Chile, England, Israel, etc.
Benetton and Douglas Tompkins are two cases of foreigners buying LARGE amounts of land. It has become a big problem, because they bought lots of strategic locations (periglacial lands, river sources, estuaries, etc), and then blocked access to water and other resources to people downriver, turning those lands sterile, and then buying them at vile prices.
This was so severe, that a new law was made on February 2012 [3], limiting the amount of land owned by foreign people/companies to 15% of the country.
You can see the amount of land owned by foreigners in this picture (spanish annotations, sorry): http://hosting11.imagecross.com/image-hosting-46/1669TIERRAg...
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[1] A war between Paraguay vs an alliance of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay that resulted in the death of 90% of the Paraguayan people at the time. Very Sad. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraguayan_War
[2] Our equivalent to the Wild West Conquest, when Patagonia was finally dominated. That's where your image of the Argentine "Gauchos" comes from ;) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conquest_of_the_Desert
[3] Spanish, use translator: http://www.prensa.argentina.ar/2012/02/29/28494-se-reglament...