 | |
| Total population | |
| At least 100,000[1][2] | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Mainly Santa Fe, Buenos Aires, Río Negro, Córdoba, Entre Ríos, and others | |
| Languages | |
| Spanish · German (especially Argentinien-schwyzertütsch dialect) · Arpitan · Lombard | |
| Religion | |
| Mostly Catholicism and Calvinism | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Swiss people Swiss Brazilians · Swiss Uruguayans · Swiss Chileans · Other White Argentines |
Swiss Argentines are Argentine citizens of Swiss ancestry or people who emigrated from Switzerland and reside in Argentina. The Swiss Argentine community is the largest group of the Swiss diaspora in South America.[3]
Approximately 44,000 Swiss emigrated to Argentina until 1940, who settled mainly in the provinces of Córdoba and Santa Fe and, to a lesser extent, in Buenos Aires. In 1856, 200 families of immigrants from Switzerland, Germany, France, Italy, Belgium and Luxembourg founded the city of Esperanza, the forerunner of agricultural colonies in Argentina, thus kickstarting a long process of European colonization and immigration. In Río Negro, Swiss settlement began in the late 19th century in the village of Colonia Suiza ("Swiss Colony").
An Argentine of Swiss origin, Dr. Ernesto Alemann, founded the Colegio Pestalozzi in 1934 with the aim of creating a place for free and humanistic education in accordance with the philosophy of Swiss pedagogue Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi.
Félix Fernando Bernasconi was a Swiss Argentine shoe manufacturer to whom Francisco Moreno sold a property on the southside of Buenos Aires. On this site Moreno had already established a charitable school. After the death of Bernasconi in 1914, additional funding by the Argentine government allowed to build the largest school in Buenos Aires at the time, called the Bernasconi Institute,[4] which opened in 1929.
Also associated with Moreno was Santiago Roth, a Swiss immigrant. Roth became a famous Argentine paleontologist who had joined Moreno on many expeditions to Patagonia and whom Moreno established as Head of the Paleontology Department at the La Plata Museum. In addition, Emilio Frey, son of a Swiss immigrant and educated in Switzerland, became an important partner of Moreno as topographer of the Comisión de limites Argentina-Chile from 1896 to 1902 to work out a new treaty for the border between the two countries.
- ^ Swissinfo.ch: "Suizos "de sangre" en Argentina" (10 July, 2019).
- ^ Swissinfo.ch: "Algunos cientos de miles de argentinos con raíces suizas" (24 July, 2019).
- ^ "La emigración suiza a la Argentina" [Swiss emigration to Argentina]. Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Culture of Argentina (in Spanish). Retrieved 29 March 2016.
- ^ Mabel Alicia Crego (2007). "Curiosidades e Historias de los barrios porteños" [Curiosities and histories of the Buenos Aires neighbourhoods] (in Spanish). barriada.com.ar. Retrieved 29 March 2016.