Buenos Aires
Port-origin capital (1536/1580) concentrating 40% of population. Milei's base: inflation 25%→2.4%, poverty 53%→38%, GDP -4%. By 2026: testing if reform benefits reach the capital that elected him.
Buenos Aires exists because the Río de la Plata exists—the widest river in the world creating natural harbor where Spanish colonizers established settlement in 1536, re-founded 1580, to control access to the continent's interior. This port origin imprinted patterns of concentration: the city became political capital, economic hub, and cultural center simultaneously, creating the federal-provincial tension that defines Argentine politics four centuries later.
The contemporary city (autonomous since 1994) hosts approximately 3 million residents with the broader metropolitan area reaching 17 million—40% of national population in a country spanning 2.8 million km². This concentration reflects port-based development patterns: wealth, institutions, and power clustering at the export gateway rather than distributing across productive hinterland.
President Milei's December 2023 election represents the city's ideological divergence from Peronist-dominated provinces. Milei won only 40 of 257 lower house seats; none of Argentina's 24 governors belong to his "La Libertad Avanza" movement. Yet reforms proceeded: 50%+ peso devaluation, ministry cuts, subsidy elimination, rent control removal. The housing market responded dramatically—rental supply in Buenos Aires jumped 195% within months, asking prices fell 10% as apartments returned to market.
Economic shock therapy produced contradictory outcomes: monthly inflation dropped from 25% (December 2023) to 2.4% (November 2024)—lowest in four years. But poverty peaked at 53% before declining to 38%; GDP contracted nearly 4% in 2024 while achieving the first budget surplus since 2008.
By 2026, Buenos Aires tests whether Milei's reforms generate growth benefiting the capital's service economy, or whether provincial-federal conflict constrains national recovery.