Casa Rosada

Casa Rosada (the Pink House), the presidential palace and seat of the executive branch in Argentina. Located in the Plaza de Mayo near the Río de la Plata, the palace began to be built during the presidency of Domingo Sarmiento (1868–1874) and was completed in 1882, during the presidency of Julio A. Roca (1880–1886; 1898–1904). Its name, which intentionally evokes its North American antecedent, came as a result of Sarmiento's decision to paint it with a blend of the Federalists' red and the Unitarians' white—the colors of the two major political factions that competed for power in Argentina after its break from Spain in 1810.

In the twentieth century the Casa Rosada has been the site of many of the most important demonstrations and rallies in Argentine history. During the presidency of Juan Domingo Perón, Perón's wife Eva spoke to large groups of workers from the balcony of the Casa Rosada. In 1955 a dissident group within the military bombed the Casa Rosada in an attempted coup against Perón; this attack killed more than 300 people. In the 1980s the Madres de Plaza de Mayo walked around the plaza where the Casa Rosada is located to protest against the military government that "disappeared" their children.

See alsoBuenos Aires; Perón, Juan Domingo; Perón, María Eva Duarte de.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Gálvez, Lucía. Casa Rosada: Su Historia Y Su Plaza. Buenos Aires: Manrique Zago Ediciones, 1997.

Scobie, James R. Argentina: A City and a Nation, 2d ed. (1971), pp. 163, 165.

                                     Daniel Lewis