The National Deputy for Tierra del Fuego, Jorge Neri Araujo Hernández ; presented last week a bill that seeks to restore the original objectives approved in 1990 in terms of limits, approved by the National Congress through Law No. 23,775 ; of Provincialization of the National Territory of Tierra del Fuego, Antarctica and the South Atlantic Islands . Which were observed by former President Carlos Saul Menem ; and later partially reestablished in 2009, through National Law No. 26,552.
The project aims to recover the fullness of the spirit of the original normative complex, which the National Congress debated and approved by a large majority regarding the limits, jurisdiction and borders that it granted to Tierra del Fuego, as a Federal State of Argentina; under original maritime and archipelagic condition, with which it reached its status as a Province.
To this end, it was incorporated in 2009 as Art. 1 of National Law No. 26,552, as to which: "The province of Tierra del Fuego, Antarctica and the South Atlantic Islands comprises: the eastern part of the Big Island of Tierra del Fuego up to the limit with the Republic of Chile, the Island of the States, the Año Nuevo Islands, the Malvinas Islands, Beauchêne Island, the Cormorant and Black Rocks, the South Georgia Islands, the South Sandwich Islands, other islands, islets and rocks located in internal waters and in the territorial sea generated from said territories in accordance with the provisions of Law 23,968, including the islands, islets and rocks located south of the Big Island of Tierra del Fuego up to the limit with the Republic of Chile; the territories located in Argentine Antarctica between meridians 25° West and 74° West and parallel 60° South, the islands, islets and rocks located between the territories that comprise the province of Tierra del Fuego, Antarctica and the South Atlantic Islands”; Araujo Hernández, adds its archipelagic and maritime condition , as established in the Pan-Hispanic Dictionary of Legal Law; in the sense of recognizing as its own, “the waters enclosed by a set of straight archipelagic baselines drawn in accordance with international law between the extreme points of the islands and the furthest emerging reefs of the archipelago, to which the sovereignty of the archipelagic State extends”.
Thus, the deputy adds a second paragraph to the aforementioned article, which states : The archipelagic province of Tierra del Fuego, Antarctica and the South Atlantic Islands includes the seabed and subsoil, as well as its internal waters in accordance with the outer limits of the Argentine continental shelf defined in Law 27,757”. The latter, in accordance with the aforementioned rule (No. 27,757 ), which annexes it to National Law No. 23,968 on Maritime Spaces ; the outer limits “of the continental and insular Argentine Continental Shelf”; and with it the full jurisdictional contour, as well as its internal waters, of the southern province.
According to what was published on Polo Sur's Instagram account , the project is “ Inspired by an idea by Dr. Ernesto Loffler, who was a former national deputy and current minister of the Supreme Court of Justice of Tierra del Fuego” ; who on several occasions expressed himself publicly regarding the lack of concordance with what the National Parliament approved in March 1990 under the conception of what is known as the “Great Province” , with what was subsequently regulated and legislated as a modification of the original text, in 2009 at the proposal of the then National Deputy Nélida Belous.
THE FULL TEXT OF THE BILL