The Ukrainian community in Argentina is the second most important in the world and represents one percent of our population. Some of his main legacies are the introduction of cooperatives and the creation of the famous musical group “Camerata Bariloche”.
One of the most important contributions of Ukrainian immigrants in Argentina is political. It was this community that introduced the concept and idea of cooperatives in the country. The first law that regulated cooperatives in Argentina was passed in 1926. At that time, in western Ukraine there was already a strong cooperative movement and it was immigrants who implemented it in the country.
The Ukrainian migratory waves were also marked by politics and wars, and they followed one after another from the 19th century to the present: from 1897 to 1914; from 1920 to 1939; from 1946 to 1960, and the last from 1994. But Ukrainian nationality was not always recorded in the records. It is one of the few that does not appear in the National Immigration Registry, because Ukraine lost its independence in the second half of the 19th century and regained it only after the fall of the Berlin Wall, with the end of the Soviet Union. In that time period, many immigrants arrived with Austro-Hungarian, Russian or Polish passports.
The first immigrants moved to Misiones and dedicated themselves to agriculture. In the subsequent waves it was when the Ukrainian immigrants settled in and around the BA City. These immigrants had another profile: they were no longer farmers but technicians, professionals and artists who saw in the city more attractive opportunities for labor insertion. And they knew how to take advantage of them.
Precisely, half of the Ukrainian immigrants who arrived in Argentina settled in BA and Greater Buenos Aires. There are about 150.000 who settled, mainly, in the Almagro and Palermo neighborhoods. There are the main institutions of the community and many of the social and cultural activities of the descendants of Ukrainians take place.
