Argentine sovereignty over the Malvina Islands is not a mere patriotic aspiration, but a historical right supported by irrefutable documentary evidence that the British colonial occupation of 1833 cannot hide.

In this context, a discovery of profound significance emerges as a beacon illuminating historical truth.

This is the request submitted on January 30, 1813, by the English captain Henry Jones to the authorities in Buenos Aires . This officer, in command of the brig "El Rastrero," formally requested authorization to hunt sea lions on the coasts of the archipelago.

That administrative act, recorded in the official documentation of the then United Provinces of the Río de la Plata, constitutes an early and compelling proof of the explicit recognition, by a foreign vessel, of the authority exercised by the nascent Argentine State over its island territories.

Just three years after the May Revolution, the national government was already administering, regulating and controlling economic activities in that maritime space, consolidating formal jurisdiction mechanisms.

The request, addressed to the Director of Customs, Enrique Torres, reflects the normal dynamics of a state exercising its sovereignty fully and peacefully. In a context where wolf hunting was a vital economic activity, the requirement of a permit reinforces the notion of a territory under the effective administration of Buenos Aires.

This episode categorically dismantles the British narrative that attempts to justify its 1833 show of force by invoking a supposed prior sovereignty. History demonstrates the opposite: after being expelled by Spain from their precarious settlement at Port Egmont in 1774, the British abandoned the archipelago for 55 years without once protesting the numerous acts of sovereignty that Argentina carried out from 1810 onward. Their lack of reaction then, and Captain Jones's gesture of submission in 1813, speak for themselves.

The revealed document is not a mere archival curiosity. It is the cornerstone that, together with the jurisdictional continuity since the Spanish viceroyalty period—evidenced by orders such as that of Minister Gálvez in 1777, executed by the Viceroy of the Río de la Plata—structures Argentina's unquestionable right. It demonstrates that the Malvina Islands were, are, and will be an integral part of our territory, legitimately administered from the heart of our institutions.

Before the international community, this discovery strongly reinforces Argentina's position: it is not a dispute, but the restitution of a territory seized by an anachronistic colonialism that history itself refutes.