Néstor Kirchner applauds his wife and successor, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, upon her inaugural in 2007.

The Argentine Republic (famously known as the “Land of Evita”) on Thursday became the first nation in Latin America to legalize same-sex marriage, turning aside protests from the Roman Catholic Church to give gay couples the same rights as their heterosexual counterparts.

The Argentine Senate approved the measure in a hard-fought 33-27 vote, with three abstentions.

President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, the first female president, indicated that she will sign it into law quickly.

The 4:05 a.m. vote came after an exhaustive debate that dragged on for more than 14 hours. Hundreds of supporters of the law, waiting outside Congress in freezing temperatures, erupted in cheers and tears of joy when news of the vote reached them.

It was not immediately clear if the provinces will accept the Federation’s legalization of same-sex marriage.

Argentina is the second largest country in South America, constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires. It is the eighth-largest country in the world by land area and the largest among Spanish-speaking nations, though Mexico, Colombia and Spain are more populous.

Argentina Flag: "In Unity and Freedom"

Each province has also its own government, with a provincial constitution, a set of provincial laws and justice system, a supreme court, a governor, an autonomous police force (independent of the Federal Police), and a congress: in eight provinces the parliament is constituted by an upper chamber (senate) and a lower chamber (deputies), while in the remaining fifteen provinces and in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires the congress has just one chamber.

Since the return of democracy to the country in 1983, some provinces have had governments traditionally controlled by a single family; in one case, it is still the situation as of 2009: the Province of San Luis was ruled almost without a break by the Rodríguez Saá family since December 1983.