Territorial organization
The four regions in which the Argentine provinces are grouped. The province of Buenos Aires and the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, in yellow, do not make up any region.
As a country located in South America according to PHARMACYLIB.COM, the Argentine Republic is organized into 23 provinces and the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, where the seat of the federal government is located. [39] By Law No. 23,512 of 1987, the Capital of the Republic must be transferred to the municipalities of Viedma and Guardia Miter (Río Negro) and Carmen de Patagones (Buenos Aires). The transfer was accepted by the provinces of Río Negro (Law No. 2,086) and Buenos Aires (Law No. 10,454), but it expired in both cases in 1992 as it was not carried out. As of March 2008 the national law has not been repealed.
The provinces divide their territory into departments and these in turn are made up of municipalities, with the exception of the province of Buenos Aires, which only does so in municipalities called parties. [40] The departments, in general, do not have administrative functions, although in the provinces of Mendoza, San Juan and La Rioja each department is a municipality. In some provinces, the departments are used as electoral districts to determine representatives to the provincial legislatures and serve as decentralization units for various provincial bodies such as the police and the Judiciary. In the case of Córdoba, its departments (except Capital), are in turn divided into districts.
The 1994 National Constitution recognizes municipal autonomy, but gives power to the provinces to regulate its scope and content, [41] so there are autonomous municipalities with the power to sanction Municipal Organic Charts and others that cannot. There are also provinces that do not recognize the autonomy of their municipalities. As of December 2006, 123 municipalities, making use of their institutional autonomy, had issued their own charter.
With the exception of the province of Buenos Aires and the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, the other provinces have signed interprovincial integration treaties [42] forming four regions for various purposes:
- Region of the Great North of Argentina, formed by the provinces of: Catamarca, Corrientes, Chaco, Formosa, Jujuy, Misiones (Argentina), Tucumán, Salta and Santiago del Estero.
- Nuevo Cuyo Region, made up of the provinces of: La Rioja, Mendoza, San Juan and San Luis.
- Patagonian Region, formed by the provinces of: Chubut, La Pampa, Neuquén Province, Río Negro, Santa Cruz and Tierra del Fuego, Antarctica and South Atlantic Islands.
- Central Region, formed by the provinces of: Córdoba, Entre Ríos and Santa Fe.
Public ministry
The Constitution also establishes the Public Ministry as an independent body with functional and financial autonomy, with the function of promoting justice. The Public Ministry is a constitutional body and is considered by the doctrine as a fourth power, while another part maintains that it is an extra power body. [31] It is a two-headed body made up of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, directed by the Attorney General of the Nation and in charge of the action of the prosecutors, and the Public Ministry of Defense directed by the General Defender of the Nation and in charge of of the action of the official defenders. [32]
Argentine provinces
The provinces that make up Argentina, along with their respective areas and populations, are the following:
| Province | Capital | Population (2010 census) |
Area (in km²) |
GDP per capita [43] (US $, 2008, est.) |
Map | |||||||
| City of Buenos Aires [n 1] | 2,890,151 | 202 | 23,309 | |||||||||
| Province of Buenos Aires |
Silver | 15,625,084 | 307,571 | 7,310 | ||||||||
| Catamarca | San Fernando del Valle de Catamarca | 367,828 | 102,602 | 6,009 | ||||||||
| Chaco | Endurance | 1,055,259 | 99,633 | 2,015 | ||||||||
| Chubut Province | Rawson | 509,108 | 224,686 | 15,422 | ||||||||
| Cordova | Cordova | 3,308,876 | 165,321 | 6,477 | ||||||||
| Currents | Currents | 992,595 | 88,199 | 4,001 | ||||||||
| Between rivers | Parana | 1,235,994 | 78,781 | 5,682 | 5 | |||||||
| Formosa | Formosa | 530,162 | 72,066 | 2,879 | ||||||||
| Jujuy | San Salvador de Jujuy |
673,307 | 53,219 | 3,755 | ||||||||
| The Pampa | Santa Rosa | 318,951 | 143,440 | 5,987 | ||||||||
| The Rioja | The Rioja | 333,642 | 89,680 | 4,162 | ||||||||
| Mendoza | Mendoza | 1,738,929 | 148,827 | 9,079 | ||||||||
| Missions | Inns | 1,101,593 | 29,801 | 3,751 | ||||||||
| Neuquen | Neuquen | 551,266 | 94,078 | 26,273 | ||||||||
| Black river | Viedma | 638,645 | 203,013 | 8,247 | ||||||||
| Jump | Jump | 1,214,441 | 155,488 | 4,220 | ||||||||
| San Juan | San Juan | 681,055 | 89,651 | 5,642 | ||||||||
| saint Louis | Saint Louis | 432,310 | 76,748 | 5,580 | ||||||||
| Santa Cruz | Rio gallegos | 273,964 | 243,943 | 30,496 | ||||||||
| Santa Fe | City of Santa Fe de la Vera Cruz | 3,194,537 | 133,007 | 8,423 | ||||||||
| Santiago del Estero | Santiago del Estero | 874,006 | 136,351 | 3,003 | ||||||||
| Land of Fire | Ushuaia | 127,205 [n 2] | 21,478 | 20,682 | ||||||||
| Tucuman | San Miguel de Tucumán |
1,448,188 | 22,524 | 3,937 | ||||||||
| ARGENTINA | 40,117,096 [n 2] | 2,780,400 | 8,269 | |||||||||
Armed forces
The Argentine armed forces are under the command of the President of the Nation, who is its commander-in-chief and handles their issues through the Ministry of Defense. [30] Historically, they have had one of the best equipment in the region (for example, developing their own jet-powered aircraft early in 1950). The minimum age to enter is 18 years old, without there being compulsory military service.
The armed forces are made up of the Argentine Army, the Argentine Air Force, and the Argentine Navy. The territorial waters are patrolled by the Argentine Naval Prefecture and the border regions by the Argentine National Gendarmerie, under the control of the Ministry of the Interior; both forces also maintain ties with the Ministry of Defense. The National Intelligence System directs intelligence actions, among which the Intelligence Secretariat stands out, popularly known as SIDE from its previous name. Each province has its own police force, which can work together with the Argentine Federal Police, the security force that deals with crimes of an exclusively federal scope or that involve more than one jurisdiction. [38]
