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La cuestión austral articula una serie de disputas por el control de territorios insulares al sur del continente ameri-cano y forma parte de las históricas luchas por el dominio de las confluencias interoceánicas, en particular entre el Atlántico y el Pacífico. Por su ubicación estratégica, el Canal de Beagle y el archipiélago de las Malvinas y las islas Georgias y Sándwich del Sur, revisten una relevancia geopolítica que mantiene su vigencia en pleno siglo XXI. Asi-mismo, las pugnas por su control se vinculan con sus respectivas implicancias en los actuales reclamos antárticos. Las disputas de soberanía de la Argentina con Chile por tres islas en el Canal de Beagle y con el Reino Unido de la Gran Bretaña por los archipiélagos del Atlántico Sur configuran querellas internacionales de larga duración. No obstante, una de sus particularidades en común radica en que fue durante la dictadura cívico-militar que gobernó la Argentina entre 1976 y 1983 cuando estos conflictos se desplegaron en el terreno militar: la discusión por el Beagle estuvo a punto de coagular en un enfrentamiento armado con Chile hacia fines de 1978 y la recuperación de las Islas Malvinas el 2 de abril de 1982 derivó en una guerra internacional cuando el Reino Unido se lanzó a reconquistar militarmente su enclave colonial.En este artículo, abordamos un análisis comparativo de ambos conflictos, atendiendo a un conjunto de tres dimen-siones: las implicancias geopolíticas y el contexto internacional de cada uno de ellos; la situación nacional argentina en términos políticos, económicos y sociales, incluyendo las disputas internas entre los distintos sectores del frente militar que encabezaba la dictadura y sus consecuencias en el desenvolvimiento militar de los conflictos; y las di-versas actitudes sociales, intelectuales y políticas que se pusieron en juego ante cada uno de estos dos episodios.Para ello, desde un enfoque sociohistórico y atendiendo a las contribuciones del campo de las Relaciones Internacio-nales, presentamos sucintamente las características principales de ambos conflictos en las dos primeras secciones y luego, en la tercera, desplegamos un conjunto de aportes para un análisis comparativo. El artículo se cierra con reflexiones finales que subrayan la potencialidad de la perspectiva comparada para el análisis de estos episodios. De ese modo, buscamos aportar a una mayor comprensión de las relaciones internaciones y conflictos entre la Argen-tina, Chile y el Reino Unido en torno a la disputa de la cuestión austral.
The southern question refers to the disputes over the control of island territories to the south of the American continent and is part of the historical struggles for dominance of interoceanic confluences, particularly between the Atlantic and the Pacific. Historically, there have been two sovereignty conflicts that have acquired relevance due to their strategic location and their implications for Antarctic claims: the Beagle Channel and the Malvinas archipelago and the Georgias and South Sandwich Islands.The Beagle Channel is a maritime passage located at the southern tip of America, specifically south of the island of Tierra del Fuego, which connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Together with the Strait of Magellan and the Drake Passage, this channel constitutes one of the strategic natural passages between both oceans. The sovereignty dispute over three islands (Lennox, Picton and Nueva) located between the eastern mouth of the Beagle and Cape Horn, and the possible projections of jurisdiction over the territorial sea from their coasts in the Atlantic Ocean —with their respective implications in the dispute over Antarctica— has formed one of the main points of discussion between Argentina and Chile regard-ing the delimitation of their borders in the southern seas.For its part, the dispute over the Malvinas Islands, since the British usurpation in 1833, has had a sig-nificant impact on Argentina, especially throughout the 20th century when the historical claim of sov-ereignty became over time a people ́s cause, transversal to various political, intellectual, cultural and social currents. In that long journey, the “Malvinas cause” acquired greater notoriety, especially after its treatment since the beginning of the sixties within the United Nations Organization (UN), as a result of which its General Assembly approved, at the end of 1965, the famous resolution 2065/XX. In it, like the dispute over the Rock of Gibraltar, the Malvinas were framed as a case of colonialism as a “non-autono-mous territory pending decolonization” and Argentina and the United Kingdom were urged to establish bilateral negotiations to resolve the sovereignty dispute, taking into account the recommendations of the UN Decolonization Committee and the “interests” of the population of the Malvinas Islands. Both conflicts constitute long-lasting disputes and have affected Argentina’s international relations with Chile and the United Kingdom. Likewise, due to their geopolitical relevance and their influence on the discussion on the Antarctic territories, they remain fully valid in the 21st century. Besides, one of the particularities that both conflicts share is that it was during the civil-military dictatorship that governed Argentina between 1976 and 1983 when they were deployed in the military field: the discussion over the Beagle was on the verge of becoming an armed conflict with Chile towards the end of 1978 and the recovery of the Malvinas Islands on April 2, 1982 led to an international war when the United Kingdom launched a military reconquest of its colonial enclave.Both the diplomatic and military escalation through the Beagle and the recovery of the Malvinas, from the point of view of the dictatorship’s intentions, had the objective of legitimizing the military regime and the Armed Forces as the representatives of the nation and the aspirations for sovereignty of Argen-tine society. However, each of these war episodes unfolded in a different political context. The Beagle conflict was promoted at a time when military power was strengthened based on its repressive policy but, at the same time, maintained strong tensions with the United States; the regime’s intention was to give continuity to its project, after dismantling political, union and social organizations through state terrorism. The recovery of the Malvinas, for its part, was carried out in a scenario of internal legitimacy crisis, a product of the economic crisis and growing social and political resistance, along with greater alignment with the northern country at the international level. The South Atlantic War, popularly known as the Malvinas War, faced Argentina against the United King-dom, which had the support of the United States. This armed conflict had profound consequences and has become a controversial episode in recent Argentine history. This is because the historic demand for national sovereignty configured as a people ́s cause has been intertwined, for more than forty years, with an initiative of that dictatorship and with the consequences of the war in which the conflict led. In this complexity that permeates the event, and in its implications, its potential is condensed to un-derstand symbolic, social and political disputes that shape representations of the Argentinian past, the construction of national identity and the sovereignty challenges of the present.
At the same time, this war acquired novel characteristics as a historical event: it was the only war conflict of the 20th century in which Argentina starred as one of the contending states; the initiative to recover the islands, after one hundred forty-nine years of British usurpation, aroused enormous popu-lar support; civilian men participated in this war as conscript soldiers, mostly born between 1962 and 1963; and, although the dictatorship was already in crisis, the surrender in Malvinas was one of the factors that precipitated the democratic opening, until then denied by the military leadership. It should be noted that, from the political and social point of view, although both episodes mentioned found significant support, the fight in defense of sovereignty over the Malvinas Islands acquired enormous legitimacy as a result of its broad and transversal roots as a national cause and as a people ́s cause in Argentine society, despite the dictatorial context.In this article, we address a comparative analysis of both conflicts, taking into account a set of dimen-sions: geopolitics and the international context of each of them; the Argentine national situation in political, economic and social terms, including the internal disputes between the different sectors of the military front that headed the dictatorship and its consequences in the military development of the conflicts; and the various social, intellectual and political attitudes that came into play in each of these two episodes.To do this, from a sociohistorical approach and taking into account the contributions from the field of International Relations, we succinctly present the main characteristics of both conflicts in the first two sections and then, in the third, we display a set of contributions for a comparative analysis. The article closes with final reflections that highlight the potential of the comparative perspective for the analysis of these episodes. In this way, we seek to contribute to a greater understanding of the international relations and conflicts between Argentina, Chile and the United Kingdom around the dispute of the southern question.
