Little is known about the original inhabitants of Argentina. The only known natives were in the North West. Europeans first arrived in Argentina in 1502. However it wasn’t until 1580 that Spain established the first permanent colonies in Buenos Aires. In 1776 the Spanish government made Buenos Aires a free port and the capital of a viceroyalty that included present Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and briefly Bolivia. Buenos Aires formally declared it’s independence on July 9, 1816. After defeating the Spanish they established national unity and wrote a constitution in 1853. Argentina’s neighbors: Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia and Chile all had similar starts. All of them at one point were part o