Argentina | Good News For Humankind

A jaguar resting near water in a South American forest, for an article about jaguar population recovery along the Brazil-Argentina border

Jaguars in the Brazil-Argentina border forest have more than doubled since 2010

By Peter Schulte / June 11, 2025 / Good News For Humankind

Jaguar population recovery in the Upper Paraná Atlantic Forest has more than doubled since 2010, the result of a coordinated conservation effort spanning Brazil and Argentina. The two countries built a continuous wildlife corridor of over 6,800 square kilometers linking their shared national parks, enabling jaguars to move, hunt, and breed across what was once a divided range. Joint patrols, shared data, and community programs that reduced retaliatory killings made the corridor function in practice, not just on paper. The recovery matters beyond one species, since protecting jaguar habitat shields hundreds of other plants and animals. Researchers now study this binational model as a replicable framework for large-carnivore recovery worldwide.

Whale tail, for article on sei whale return

Sei whales reappear in Argentine waters after nearly 100 years

By / May 16, 2024 / Good News For Humankind

Sei whales are back in Argentina’s coastal waters for the first time in roughly 100 years, after industrial whaling wiped them out in the 1920s and 30s. These blue-grey giants are the third-largest whales on Earth and among the fastest, which once made them prime targets for hunters. Their slow return — the species reproduces just once every two or three years — is a quiet testament to the 1946 international whaling treaty that gave them room to rebuild. Global numbers now sit around 50,000 and are trending upward, though sei whales remain endangered. Their reappearance off Patagonia carries a hopeful lesson for marine conservation everywhere: give a species enough time and enough protection, and it can find its way home.

Argentinian flag flying near a building, for article on crimes against trans women

In first, an Argentine court convicts ex-officers of crimes against trans women during dictatorship

By / March 26, 2024 / Good News For Humankind

Argentina just made legal history: a court in La Plata convicted 11 former officials of the 1976–1983 dictatorship for crimes against humanity specifically committed against transgender women — believed to be the first ruling of its kind anywhere in the world. Eight trans plaintiffs took the stand to testify about rape and torture at the Banfield Pit, one of the country’s largest clandestine detention centers. Ten defendants received life sentences; one was sentenced to 25 years. When the verdict was read, survivors and families packed the courtroom and wept. Argentina has been quietly building the world’s most ambitious reckoning with state terror, and this ruling extends that work to a community long left outside official memory — a model other nations are studying.

Giant anteaters lead biodiversity resurgence in Argentina’s Iberá

By Peter Schulte / February 23, 2022 / Good news links

In 2007, the first pair of giant anteaters was reintroduced Iberá reserve, a region from which it had gone extinct decades earlier. Today, more than 200 anteaters live free in the reserve.

Argentina’s new trans employment law further protects LGBTQ rights

By Peter Schulte / August 26, 2021 / Good news links

In June, the country passed a new law establishing a one percent quota for transgender people employed in the public sector, which means that one percent of all public sector jobs should be held by trans people.

Argentina makes abortion legal in landmark vote

By Peter Schulte / December 30, 2020 / Good news links

Argentina becomes the first large Latin American country to ditch stringent antiabortion regulations in a vote expected to boost feminist movements across the predominantly Catholic region.

image for article on UNASUR Constitutive Treaty

All 12 South American nations sign the UNASUR Constitutive Treaty

By Peter Schulte / May 23, 2008 / Archive of Human Genius

UNASUR was born on May 23, 2008, when all 12 South American nations gathered in Brasília to sign a single treaty binding a continent of more than 400 million people into one union. For a region long defined by rivalry and isolation, it was a rare written promise that their futures would be shaped together.

Tango dancers, for article on tango global spread

Tango crosses the Atlantic and captivates cities around the world

By Peter Schulte / January 1, 1910 / Archive of Human Genius

Tango arrived in Paris around 1910, carried from the port neighborhoods of Buenos Aires and Montevideo where it had taken shape a generation earlier. Within a few years the dance reached London, Berlin, and New York, stirring both fascination and scandal. A music born at the margins had quietly found its way to the center of the world.

Flag of Uruguay, for article on Uruguay independence treaty

Treaty of Montevideo ratified, granting Uruguay its independence

By Peter Schulte / October 4, 1828 / Archive of Human Genius

Uruguay’s independence was sealed on October 4, 1828, when envoys in Montevideo ratified a peace convention between Brazil and Argentina. After three years of stalemated war, British mediator Lord John Ponsonby had brokered an unlikely compromise: neither empire would claim the land, so it became its own country. A small nation, born from a deadlock.

La Independencia del Perú, for article on Peru independence declaration, for article on argentina independence declaration

Congress of Tucumán declares Argentina’s independence from Spain

By Peter Schulte / January 1, 1816 / Archive of Human Genius

Argentina’s independence was declared on July 9, 1816, when 33 deputies gathered in the city of Tucumán and voted unanimously to break from Spain. They called their new country the United Provinces of South America, and had the declaration translated into Quechua and Aymara — a rare acknowledgment that the nation they were founding was older than its colonizers.