ABSTRACT
Argentina has a much larger middle class than the other Latin American nations do. Argentina has been a political failure. In the seventy years from 1929 to 1999 there have been twenty-seven different governments in power at the national level, and twenty-four different presidents. Instead of building up a stable constitutional order, without which no sustained development is possible, Argentina has become a paradise of ideological intransigents. Argentina's population of just over thirty-five million is overwhelmingly urban, with approximately one-third living in the greater Buenos Aires metropolitan area. Argentina has a sophisticated economy based on plentiful natural resources, especially oil, a highly skilled labor force, an efficient, export-oriented agricultural sector, and a great variety of industries. As one of Argentina's most famous writers, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, put it decades later, the country was divided into civilization versus barbarism. Obviously, it was the city's duty to civilize the country by promoting economic and cultural development.
