[11] The first wave of Ukrainian immigration to Argentina included 12-14 families from Eastern Galicia (at the time part of Austria-Hungary) in 1897.

[12] Their settlement here was part of the local governor's strategy of building up European immigration in his province as a way of preventing neighboring Brazil's claims on the region.

Initially, they struggled with adapting to climatic conditions quite different from those of their native Ukraine, and eventually largely switched to tending crops that were appropriate to their new homes, such as sugar cane, rice, tobacco, and especially yerba mate -an Argentinian beverage similar to the tea- as proper crops.

Indeed, the first person to grow tea in the province of Misiones was Volodymyr Hnatiuk, a Ukrainian immigrant.

[13] An estimated 3,000 highly educated Ukrainians, many from the third wave, left Argentina for the United States or Canada in the 1950s due to greater economic opportunities.

Another 3,000 Ukrainians left Argentina for the Soviet Union during the late 1950s, after having been promised a "prosperous life in the homeland."

These demographic losses were compensated for by small numbers of Ukrainians moving to Argentina from Paraguay and Uruguay.

In response, many of them converted to Eastern Orthodoxy, whose rituals are virtually identical to those of Ukrainian Catholicism.

[13] In April 1987 Pope John Paul II visited the Ukrainian Catholic community in Buenos Aires.

Many Orthodox immigrants who came to Argentina from Ukraine between the World Wars, among whom were several priests, who created parishes in Buenos Aires and surrounding areas.

Ukrainian all-day elementary schools exist in Berisso and San Vicente (both towns in the Buenos Aires region).