What is the name of the subway system in Buenos Aires?

The subway system in Buenos Aires is called the Buenos Aires Subte.

“Subte” is the everyday short form of subterráneo, Spanish for “underground.” The system is also known in English as the Buenos Aires Underground or Buenos Aires Metro, but “Buenos Aires Subte” is the clearest canonical name for the city’s subway network and the answer most closely matching local usage.

The first line opened on December 1, 1913, between Plaza de Mayo and Plaza Miserere. Built by the Anglo-Argentine Tramways Company, it became the first underground railway in Latin America. That inaugural route is now Line A, one of the network’s most historically distinctive lines.

The system later expanded through several companies and was nationalized and centralized in 1939. Its lines are identified mainly by letters, from A through H, rather than by the color-based naming common in some other cities. Buenos Aires also has the Premetro, a street-running light-rail feeder, which is separate from the heavy subway lines.

A frequent mix-up is Mexico City Metro, another major Latin American system. Buenos Aires’s “Subte” specifically means the underground network in Argentina’s capital.