Plaza de Mayo: The Square That Made a Country

Stand in the center of this square. This is where Buenos Aires began. In 1580, Juan de Garay founded the city for the second time: the first founding, in 1536, had failed due to indigenous attacks and famine. Garay laid out a grid of blocks around a central square, following the typical Spanish model of that era. On one side he placed the defensive fort, facing the river. On the others, he distributed the buildings of power: the town hall, the church. For three hundred years, this square was actually two squares separated by a street: Plaza de la Victoria, facing the fort, and Plaza del Fuerte…

In front of you stands the Pirámide de Mayo, the oldest monument in the city. It was inaugurated on May 25, 1811, for the first anniversary of the May Revolution. Back then it was much simpler: an obelisk of adobe and brick, with no decoration at all. In 1856 it was completely remodeled. They added the current base and, at the top, a statue of a woman representing Liberty, the work of French sculptor Joseph Dubourdieu — the same man who later carved the relief on the Cathedral's facade. The original pyramid became encased inside the new structure: it's still in there, hidden, like a stone Russ…

The Cabildo you see now has only five arches on each side. It originally had eleven. On May 22, 1810, inside this building, a group of residents gathered in an open town council to discuss what to do about the fall of the King of Spain. Three days later, on May 25, the First Governing Junta was formed, the first step toward Argentine independence. Over time, the building was mutilated twice: in 1894 three arches were removed to open Avenida de Mayo, and in the early twentieth century three more were removed to lay out Diagonal Sur. It came close to being demolished entirely. It was saved by a …

Look at the ground around the pyramid. You'll see white headscarves painted there, going around in a circle. On April 30, 1977, in the middle of the military dictatorship, fourteen women gathered in this square to demand answers about their disappeared children. A police officer told them to move along, that they couldn't stand still: the government had banned gatherings of more than two people. So they started walking, arm in arm, circling the pyramid. That's how the Thursday rounds were born, still repeated today, every week, at three thirty in the afternoon. In October of that same year, to…

On June 16, 1955, shortly after noon, Navy and Air Force planes flew over this square and began dropping bombs. The goal was to kill President Juan Domingo Perón, who was inside Casa Rosada. The pretext for gathering the planes had been an aerial tribute to San Martín, scheduled to fly over the Cathedral where his remains rest. The coup plotters used that flight to launch their attack. Perón survived. The square, full of people on an ordinary working day, was not so lucky. More than three hundred people died — women, workers, kids walking through on their way to school. Over eight hundred were…

On October 17, 1945, this square experienced one of the largest mobilizations in Argentine history. Then-colonel Juan Domingo Perón, very popular among workers for the labor laws he had championed, had been arrested days earlier by his own fellow officers in the military government. The news spread through the unions. Thousands of workers, many from the industrial neighborhoods south of the city, began walking toward downtown. They crossed the Riachuelo river however they could. By afternoon, the square was overflowing: it's estimated that as many as three hundred thousand people gathered. It …

Stand in the middle of the square one more time before you go. Over the last two hundred years, this space has been the stage for revolutions, bombings, coups, popular celebrations, and collective mourning. It was the place where the idea of Argentine independence was born, in 1810. It was the place where a group of mothers started walking in circles to keep silence from winning. It has been bombed, occupied, overflowing with happy crowds and furious crowds, countless times. Around you stand Casa Rosada, the Cabildo, and the Cathedral: executive power, the colonial power that preceded it, and …