Provinces of Argentina became provinces in 1951. Misiones did so in 1953, and Formosa, Neuquén, Río Negro, Chubut and Santa Cruz, in 1955. The last national territory, Tierra del Fuego, became the Tierra del Fuego, Antártida e Islas del Atlántico Sur Province in 1990. Argentina is a federation of twenty-three provinces and one autonomous city, Buenos Aires. Provinces are divided for administration purposes into departments and municipalities, except for Buenos Aires Province, which is divided into partidos and "localidades". Buenos Aires City itself is divided into communes ("comuna") and non-official neighbourhoods ("barrios"). Provinces hold all the power that they chose not to delegate
San Fernando del Valle de Catamarca founded until 1683, by Fernando de Mendoza y Mate de Luna. "Catamarca" comes from Quechua meaning "fortress on the slope". The city, which had only 8,000 inhabitants in 1882 and was reached by a railway line in 1888, grew very slowly, and the region remained poor even in the middle of the 20th century. This situation was exacerbated by nepotism on the part of the ruling Saadi family, before they lost political power in the 1990s. In spite of this, the province remains still politically unstable, and a large part of its population lives in precarious conditions. The warm semi-arid