Argentina is a country in southern South America. It ranks second in land area in South America, and eighth in the world.
Argentina occupies a continental surface area of 2,791,810 km² (1,078,000 sq mi) between the Andes mountain range in the west and the southern Atlantic Ocean in the east and south. It is bordered by Paraguay and Bolivia in the north, Brazil and Uruguay in the northeast, and Chile in the west and south. The country claims the British overseas territories of the Falkland Islands (Spanish: Islas Malvinas) and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands. Under the name of Argentine Antarctica, it claims 969,464 km² (374,312 sq mi) of Antarctica, overlapping other claims made by Chile and the United Kingdom.
The country is formally called the Argentine Republic. For many legal purposes, Nación Argentina (Argentine Nation) is used.
Argentina is divided into twenty-three provinces (provincias; singular provincia), and one autonomous city (commonly known as the capital federal, but officially Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires): Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires (province), Catamarca, Chaco, Chubut, Córdoba, Corrientes, Entre Ríos, Formosa, Jujuy, La Pampa, La Rioja, Mendoza, Misiones, Neuquén
Río Negro, Salta, San Juan, San Luis, Santa Cruz, Santa Fe, Santiago del Estero, Tierra del Fuego, Tucumán.
Buenos Aires has been the capital of Argentina since 1880 (before that, the country had no capital yet), but there have been projects to move the administrative centre elsewhere. During the presidency of Raúl Alfonsín a law was passed ordering the transfer of the federal capital to Viedma, a city in the Patagonian province of Río Negro. Studies were underway when economic problems killed the project in 1989. Though the law was never formally repealed, it has become a mere historical relic, and the project has been forgotten. Provinces are divided into smaller secondary units called departamentos, or departments. There are 376 departments. The province of Buenos Aires has 134 similar divisions known as partidos. Departamentos and partidos are further subdivided into municipalities or districts. In descending order by number of inhabitants, the major cities in Argentina are Buenos Aires, Córdoba, Rosario, Mendoza, Tucumán, La Plata, Mar del Plata, Salta, Santa Fe, San Juan, Resistencia, and Neuquén.
Argentina is nearly 3,700 km long from north to south, and 1,400 km from east to west (maximum values). It can roughly be divided into four parts: the fertile plains of the Pampas in the center the country, the source of Argentina's agricultural wealth; the flat to rolling, oil-rich plateau of Patagonia in the southern half down to Tierra del Fuego; the subtropical flats of the Gran Chaco in the north, and the rugged Andes mountain range along the western border with Chile.
