The federal intervention in the Port of Ushuaia , carried out by Javier Milei's government in January 2026, is often presented as a "centralist overreach." However, the technical documentation of the report prepared by the The Federal Investment Council (CFI) reveals a much more brazen truth: Governor Gustavo Melella had already decided to privatize the port's management long before the libertarians arrived at the Casa Rosada.

What we see today is not a defense of Tierra del Fuego's heritage, it is the lament of an administration that had a port "snatched away" from it, regarding a state entity that it itself was about to put up for sale.

1. The CFI 2023 Report: The DNA of Delivery

To understand Melella 's pro-privatization stance, one must refer to the CFI Final Report of November 2023. In that document, the Provincial Government—signed by the then Deputy Minister Jorge Canals —not only acknowledged the "critical state" and "structural collapse" of the dock and container yard, but also expressly requested advice to move towards a Public-Private Consortium model.

As can be read in the SUMMARY of the document itself, it was not a recent burst of inspiration from the governor; rather, it was a technical plan that emerges from the text of the CFI report itself. What this puts in Evidence suggests that, at least as early as 2022, FORJA and MOPOF were already planning to privatize the port. The data:

2. The depletion of 2025

While the CFI report warned that the port needed urgent investment to avoid collapse, Melella , bypassing the entire Legislature , did the opposite. In August 2025 , they passed a law to transfer the port's surplus to the OSEF political coffers. In the end, they didn't, but the libertarians didn't care. The port was taken over anyway.

This was the "step zero" of the manual applied to the scrapping process:

1.   Empty the port's coffers so that there are no funds for the urgent repairs requested by the CFI.

2.   To generate the technical "emergency" that would justify the entry of a private entity or, in this case, national intervention.

3.   Offer the asset as a flexible "business platform" without state controls.

3. The lost battle with the libertarians

Herein lies the political irony: Melella prepared the port to hand it over to his own political partners and backers, under the umbrella of a corporation he intended to control . But Javier Milei's national government , using the same arguments of "insecurity" and "misappropriation of funds" —which Gustavo Melella himself had generated—beat him to the punch.

Milei didn't invent the port crisis ; he simply appropriated the IFC's diagnosis to run his own business , potentially trading the port for membership on Donald Trump 's Peace Board .

The national intervention of January 2026 was not to "save" the port, but to ensure that it is the National Government and not Gustavo Melella, who signs -in that case- the contracts with the companies and consortiums, or with the global security forces and the US holdings .

4. A sovereignty without an owner

The Legislature's unanimous rejection of Melella's proposed corporation (Bill 131/26) may have come too late. Under these circumstances, the port faces a serious risk of being transnationalized due to local mismanagement and national greed . Melella sought a "friendly" privatization but instead encountered a radical intervention that stripped him of control and governance of the most important strategic asset in the maritime and Antarctic province of Tierra del Fuego.

The debate today is not between "public or private," but between two delivery models; between supposedly antagonistic political projects. The port of Ushuaia, the gateway to Antarctica, has been reduced to a business unit that Melella began planning at least as far back as 2022; and which Milei has now taken over "turnkey" in 2026.