By Daniel Guzmán, Director of Agenda Malvinas

Chilean President José Antonio Kast 's visit to Buenos Aires in April was intended to project an image of brotherhood and support from across the Andes for Argentina's claim to the Malvina Islands. However, the harmony lasted only as long as it took the neighboring leader to return to Santiago. Subsequent events have returned the relationship to the familiar realm of mutual distrust, fueled by British influence and sectors of Chilean politics. These sectors, citing statements by the head of the Argentine Naval Hydrographic Service, Rear Admiral Hernán Montero , are attempting to reinterpret the bilateral agreements between the two countries regarding the border demarcation at the eastern mouth of the Strait of Magellan, from 1881 to the present.

In the context of a debate on the surveillance of maritime spaces, Rear Admiral Montero did nothing more than describe the geographical reality of the bi-oceanic passage: "The mouth of the Strait of Magellan is Argentine," he said.

His remarks were not limited to a single phrase. Montero was precise in defining the area eastward between Punta Dungeness and Cabo Vírgenes as national territory. The crux of his argument was maritime safety, where Argentina has every right to exercise effective control over what enters and leaves the Strait . While pilotage west of Punta Dungeness is administered by Chile, maintaining an active presence to monitor traffic vital to our national security is indisputable. This is especially true given the presence of a British colonial enclave in the Malvina Islands, established in 1833 .

The Chilean reaction: Fear of the map

In Santiago, the response was immediate. Senators such as Alejandro Kusanovic and Representative Zandra Parisi, among others; They characterized the Argentine sailor's statements as a "territorial claim" that violates the 1984 Treaty of Peace and Friendship (TPA) . And to support this claim, they cling to an abstraction: the imaginary line connecting Punta Dungeness with Cabo del Espíritu Santo. According to these Chilean interpreters, this line should function as a wall that erases the continental geology to the east . What lies beyond Dungeness does not exist. It exists, but it doesn't. You can walk along its coast and cliffs, but it's merely a figment of the imagination.

Treaties vs. Geology: An Artificial Tension

Those of us familiar with all the treaties and the border points of Southern Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego cannot deny the existence of successive agreements that established coordinates and imaginary dividing lines. However, these remain merely a convention between the two countries, in contrast to the reality of a geomorphological continuity in South America that extends beyond the border with Chile and even the coastline of the bi-oceanic passage that skirts the Argentine Sea and projects into the Atlantic .

The various treaties are nothing more than political and diplomatic border agreements, which cannot override physical reality. While the treaties establish protocols for sovereign recognition, as well as the administrative and political jurisdictions of each nation, geology demonstrates that Argentina is a coastal state of the Strait system. The coasts of Santa Cruz and Tierra del Fuego are the physical pillars of that eastern entrance . When Argentina speaks of the "Eastern Entrance," it refers to the continuity of the bi-oceanic passage, whose definition and mention transcend the ongoing recognition of the legitimacy of the agreements. It is not an act of territorial claim; it is the characterization of what, with clear geological evidence, is the entrance to a maritime channel between two oceans.

Those sectors of Chilean politics and diplomacy should not argue with geology, history, or the texts of the successive treaties from 1881 onward. Attempting to "erase" Argentina from the entrance to the bi-oceanic passage lacks any political, diplomatic, or scientific basis .

Malvinas and the Strait: Colonial Equidistance

The Strait of Magellan lies on the same latitude as the Malvina Islands; a fact that is not insignificant. It is a maritime route used primarily by Chile and Great Britain to maintain strategic, military, and economic ties, about which this sector of Chilean politics shows no outrage. The icebreaker RRS Sir David Attenborough sails through it —flying the illegal British flag of the Malvinas .

British diplomacy is fueling this conflict . London needs a paranoid Chile to remain its logistical, military, and commercial ally . By 2026 alone, the Chilean Armed Forces have already scheduled 60 joint defense exercises with the United Kingdom . That is a real threat to regional sovereignty, not the technical description of a maritime border .

Argentina is not breaking treaties; it is naming the geography of a continental and insular sector that belongs to it by nature and that is key to the surveillance of the South Atlantic.

For their part, "these" figures in trans-Andean politics must stop seeing ghosts on Argentine maps and provide explanations regarding how they reconcile their support in international forums for Argentina's claim to the Malvinas with their role as Great Britain's main partner in South America, since every year they open their ports and airports for hundreds of air and sea operations to the usurped Argentine archipelago and to Antarctica.

For Argentina, sovereignty over the Malvina Islands and the security of the Strait are two sides of the same coin. The need for control is heightened by the decisions made by Chile's leaders —not its people— as they submit to the system imposed by the British Crown.