page_title: Beagle conflict
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Beagle conflict / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: Summary of Argentine cartography of the Beagle channel zone
context_page_description: The Beagle conflict was a border dispute between Chile and Argentina over the possession of Picton, Lennox and Nueva islands and the scope of the maritime jurisdiction associated with those islands that brought the countries to the brink of war in 1978.
  The islands are strategically located off the south edge of Tierra del Fuego and at the east end of the Beagle Channel. The Beagle Channel, the Straits of Magellan and the Drake Passage are the only three waterways between the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean in the southern hemisphere.
  After refusing to abide by a binding international award giving the islands to Chile, the Argentine junta advanced the nation to war in 1978 in order to produce a boundary consistent with Argentine claims.
  The Beagle conflict is seen as the main reason for Chilean support to the United Kingdom during the Falklands War of 1982.
  The conflict began in 1904 with the first official Argentine claims over the islands that had always been under Chilean control.
context_section_description: For a long time after its first exploration by Europeans, the region of Patagonia and the Tierra del Fuego archipelago remained free from colonial settlements because of its inhospitable climate, harsh conditions and sparse local vegetation. After the disaster of Puerto del Hambre (1584) during the regency of Philip II of Spain no other attempts of settlements were made in the zone.
  In 1843 the Chilean government sent an expedition with the appointed task of establishing a permanent settlement on the shores of the Strait of Magellan. The founding act of the settlement of Fuerte Bulnes took place on 21 September 1843. A few years later (1848) the settlement moved to Punta Arenas.
  Argentine Ushuaia was founded by English born Thomas Bridges in 1869.
  In 1881, Chile and Argentina attempted to definitively resolve their territorial disputes through a comprehensive agreement known as the Boundary treaty of 1881 between Chile and Argentina. This agreement provided that the border between the two countries would follow:
  (Article I, from north to parallel 52°S) the highest peaks and Drainage divide,
  (Article II, from 52°S to the Straits of Magellan) mainly the parallel 52°S and
  (Article III, south of Straits of Magellan) mainly the meridian 68°34 W and the Beagle channel.
  Until 1887 there was no doubt in Argentina and Chile that the islands Picton, Nueva and Lennox belonged to Chile:
  There can be no doubt that in the immediate post-Treaty period, that is to say from 1881 to at least 1887/88, Argentine cartography in general showed the PNL [Picton, Nueva and Lennox] group as Chilean;
  In 1904 the Argentine government solicited Chile to define jointly which was the deepest arm of the Beagle channel in the zone in order to find the demarcation of the border. On the basis of the international cartography of the zone, the descriptions of the discoverer of the channel, and the discourse of the signatories of the 1881 Treaty, Chile initially did not attach importance to the note.
  The chief of the Argentine exploring commission of the southern territories, Francisco P. Moreno in a memorandum to the British Ambassador in Buenos Aires, 1918, saw the Argentine claim as baseless:
  No atino a explicarme por qué el Gobierno argentino pretende hoy soberanía sobre las islas Picton, Nueva, Lennox, etc., fundándose en los tratados vigentes, es decir, en el de 1881 y en el protocolo de 1893, cuando el primero de ellos lo invalida para tal pretensión y el segundo nada tiene que ver con la demarcación en el canal de Beagle. Insisto: la mención en el Tratado de 1881, con excepción de la isla de los Estados, le hará perder un pleito tan malamente planteado … También repetiré que la excepción que hace el Tratado de 1881 con la isla de los Estados, que reconoce como argentina, no permite poner en duda la propiedad chilena de las tierras situadas tanto al sur de la isla de la Tierra del Fuego como al sur del canal de Beagle.
  (Transl.: I can't understand why the Argentine Government claims sovereignty over the islands Picton, Nueva, Lennox, etc., basing its arguments on the 1881 Treaty and the 1893 Protocol, when the first one invalidates its claim and the second one has nothing to do with the demarcation of the Beagle channel. I insist: the phrasing in the 1881 Treaty, ["]except the Isla de los Estados["], will put paid to any such badly planned lawsuit… I repeat that the exception the 1881 Treaty makes for the Isla de los Estados, that stated as Argentine, does not permit any doubt over the Chilean property of territories located south of the Tierra del Fuego and south of the Beagle channel)
  The unresolved conflict continued to simmer. During the Snipe incident, Argentine forces destroyed a Chilean lighthouse on the Snipe islet at the entry of the Beagle Channel installed on 1 May 1958, put up their own and landed marines on the islet, provoking a dangerous buildup. Later both countries agreed to pull back military forces and dismantle the lighthouses.
caption: Different Argentine Interpretations of the Boundary treaty of 1881. The red line of "La Ilustración Argentina", chronological the first one and the Chilean one, is currently valid. See maps in Beagle Channel cartography since 1881
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