The Economist October 10th 2020 pp30-31|The Americas|Argentina| “Alberto of the Antarctic”. “South America’s second-largest country doubles in size. Or so it claims”
Buenos Aries 2020. Image credit USNEWS.COM
2244 being a student of much and certainly, at times, the eclectic delved into this short brief on how Argentina’s President Alberto Fernandez, “a left-leaning Peronist”, signed in August an Argentinian law “which expands Argentina by 1.7m square km (650,000 square miles), an area three times the size of metropolitan France. As a result of this unilateral action, Argentina now claims to span South America and Antarctica, "from the Tropic of Capricorn to the South Pole.” This area is rich in fishing grounds and possibly oil and gas but also the Falkland Islands (Britain), the South Georgia and The South Sandwich Islands (Britain). Through a UN commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) a small part of the newly claimed swath was legally granted but with this action actually codified into law. In a country, like so many, besieged by COVID-19 and a suffering economy Fernandez is calling on Britain to negotiate what they call the disputed Falklands and by extension the other British territory. For some of us of the boomer and before generations, we remember the Falklands War of 1982 whereby the British removed Argentine soldiers that had invaded earlier that year. “The British always try to say there is no dispute over the islands…and are unlikely to “dialogue” as is wished by Fernandez. The Economist notes “So Mr Fernandez may have to be content with smaller satisfactions.”
Map Source Credit theeconomist.com