Buenos Aires: Migration, Memory & Democracy

Few cities tell the 20th century as clearly as Buenos Aires: mass migration from Europe, Perón, a military dictatorship, and a return to democracy that put its generals on trial. Students walk the places where it happened and meet the people who keep the memory alive.

What students will learn

  • Explain how European migration built modern Argentina
  • Understand the 1976–1983 dictatorship, the disappeared and transitional justice
  • Discuss how economic crises have shaped Argentine politics
  • Use memory sites as primary sources

Day by day

  1. Day 1, Buenos Aires: Plaza de Mayo. Arrival and a first walk through Plaza de Mayo, the Casa Rosada and the Cabildo, where the May Revolution of 1810 began.
  2. Day 2, Buenos Aires: A city of immigrants. The Museum of Immigration in the old Immigrants’ Hotel, then La Boca and the conventillos where Italian and Spanish families arrived, and where tango grew up.
  3. Day 3, Buenos Aires: The dictatorship and the disappeared. A guided visit to the ESMA Museum and Site of Memory, a former clandestine detention centre and a UNESCO World Heritage site since 2023, and a meeting with the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, who are still finding grandchildren taken as babies.
  4. Day 4, Buenos Aires: Democracy on trial. The National Congress and the Parque de la Memoria. A seminar on the 1985 Trial of the Juntas, a landmark in transitional justice.
  5. Day 5, Buenos Aires: Boom, bust and inflation. A session with economists on the 2001 crisis, inflation and the search for stability, and a guided visit to the Teatro Colón.
  6. Day 6, Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay: Across the River Plate. Ferry to Colonia, a Portuguese outpost turned Spanish town and a UNESCO World Heritage site, for the colonial rivalry that drew the region’s borders.
  7. Day 7, Buenos Aires: Departure. A closing session and flights home.