Buenos Aires | History, Climate, Population, Map, Meaning, & Facts

Home » What Does Buenos Aires Mean » Buenos Aires | History, Climate, Population, Map, Meaning, & Facts

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Character of the city

The Argentine poet and philosopher Ezequiel Martínez Estrada (1895–1964) called Buenos Aires “The Head of Goliath,” a metaphor that likens the imbalance of the city’s relation with the rest of the country to that of a large-headed giant with a frail body. The city’s wealth and influence overshadow the life of the rest of the country, and Buenos Aires also presents Argentina with its severest economic and social problems. This dichotomy has made Buenos Aires a center for political and social unrest.

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Buenos AiresIntersection of Avenidas Corrientes and 9 de Julio, Buenos Aires.(more)
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Buenos AiresCongressional Plaza with the National Congress building at rear left, Buenos Aires.(more)

This grandiose city with wide avenues and a vibrant cosmopolitan flair is more generally European than Latin American in character. Having little colonial architecture and few landmark buildings, Buenos Aires is chiefly a city of distinctive neighborhoods that have their own meeting places, generally coffeehouses or bars. This is a tradition rooted in the colonial period, when the center of each neighborhood was a general store and bar known as a pulpería. These neighborhoods provide a sense of community for people who live in an urban sprawl that by the early 21st century was growing twice as fast as the country as a whole.

The energy and bustle of modern Buenos Aires is most evident in the city center—the locus of entertainment, shopping, and café-going. Porteños relish politics, football (soccer), and the city’s cultural offerings. At night Buenos Aires’s boites (nightclubs) swell with revelers dancing the tango, the emotional dance that originated in the lower-class areas of the city and that is said to reflect the essence of the soul of the porteño.

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