Situated in the southern cone of Latin America, Argentina holds a position of significant strategic importance. With an area exceeding 2.7 million square kilometres, it is the second-largest country on the continent after Brazil.

It overlooks the South Atlantic Ocean for almost five thousand kilometres and borders Chile, Bolivia, Paraguay, Brazil and Uruguay, thus being a natural crossroads between the Atlantic, the Pacific and Antarctica. This position has made Argentina a significant geopolitical player in the South American region and has fuelled over time a strong territorial claim to the Antarctic continent, to which it is connected not only by geographical proximity but also by scientific, military and diplomatic history.
Argentine history has its roots in the colonial period, when, in the 16th century, the Spanish conquistadors founded the first settlements along the Río de la Plata, including Buenos Aires, which quickly became a strategic commercial hub. For centuries, the area belonged to the Viceroyalty of Peru and later to the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, but already at the end of the eighteenth century, independence movements began to spread, accelerated by the influences of the American and French revolutions and the crisis of the Spanish empire.

Italian immigrants arrived at the port of Buenos Aires. Archivo General de la Nación Argentina

Formal independence was proclaimed on 9 July 1816, but the consolidation of the Argentine state was long and troubled, marked by civil wars, conflicts between federalists and unitarians and rivalries between regional caudillos. Only in the second half of the nineteenth century did the country manage to establish a centralised state, extending its effective control over peripheral territories, often to the detriment of indigenous populations, and starting a process of modernisation that attracted millions of European immigrants,
especially Italians and Spaniards.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Argentina was experiencing an era of extraordinary prosperity. It was one of the ten richest countries in the world, thanks to the fertility of its pampas, which made it a major exporter of grain and meat, and the stability of its liberal institutions.
Buenos Aires, cosmopolitan and opulent, was called the Paris of the South, and the agro-exporting model seemed to guarantee lasting development. However, during the twentieth century, the country experienced a continuous alternation of hopes and crises. The coup d’état of 1930 marked the beginning of a long period of political instability, with frequent military interventions and a growing polarisation between different visions of the country.

The President of Argentina, Juan Domingo Perón. Perón was one of the most important and controversial Argentine politicians of the 20th century, and his influence continues to be felt to this day. National Archive

In the 1940s, the rise of Juan Domingo Perón, an emblematically central figure in the nation’s history, whose movement – Peronism – combined elements of economic nationalism, social justice and populism. Peronist ideology was structured around a so-called “Third Position,” which rejected both Anglo-Saxon capitalism and Soviet communism, and instead promoted an autonomous path for the development of Latin American nations.
In this framework, Perón also formulated a vision of regional cooperation based on the idea of a South American bloc capable of asserting its sovereignty in the face of the great powers. One of the pillars of this strategy was the attempt to strengthen relations with Brazil which Perón considered a strategic partner to create a form of continental alliance, based on shared interests, economic complementarity and political affinities.
Despite many difficulties and with limited results in the short term, these initiatives anticipated some dynamics of regional integration that would develop in the following decades, helping to lay the conceptual foundations for future projects such as Mercosur, Unasur, ALBA, and Celac.Although Perón was deposed several times, his political legacy has survived to this day, making Peronism a transversal and still influential axis on the Argentine party landscape.
The 1970s were marked by an escalation of political violence, culminating in the military coup of 1976. The dictatorship that followed was one of the bloodiest in Latin America, responsible for the forced disappearance of around thirty thousand people, including political opponents, students, trade unionists and activists. Only in 1983, with the return to democracy, did Argentina begin a long and difficult process of civil and legal reconstruction, in which the symbolic role of the trial of the military juntas stands out, one of the first attempts in Latin America to achieve justice after a dictatorship.

Buenos Aires. Monument in tribute to the soldier veterans and fallen in the Malvinas war. Shutterstock/Carolina Jaramillo

One of the events that marked the end of the regime was the defeat in the Falkland Islands War – called Malvinas in Argentina – in 1982. This conflict, triggered by the attempt of the military junta to reconquer the islands controlled by the United Kingdom since 1833, ended with a rapid British victory and a strong national trauma.
The Malvinas issue is still a sensitive point in Argentine diplomacy, which continues to claim sovereignty in international forums, although without concrete progress. The dispute with London is a symbol of Argentine nationalism and a recurring element in political discourse, transversal to all parliamentary forces.
In parallel with this claim, Argentina has strengthened its presence on the Antarctic continent over time. The link with Antarctica is deep and historic. Argentina was among the first countries to establish permanent bases on the frozen continent and has been an active participant, since its signature in 1959, in the Antarctic Treaty that regulates the peaceful and scientific use of the area.

Argentine scientific base in Antarctica. Pixabay

The recent relaunch of the Antarctic Logistics Hub in the city of Ushuaia, the capital of Tierra del Fuego, fits into this context.
This project aims to transform Ushuaia into the main operational base for scientific and logistical missions in Antarctica, making Argentina a point of reference for the international community. The Hub includes the development of advanced port infrastructure, material depots, maintenance services for icebreakers and climatological and geological research laboratories.
The Argentine government has placed great emphasis on this initiative, both to strengthen its geopolitical projection in the global south and to ensure an active role in the future exploitation of Antarctic natural resources, currently bound by international treaties but increasingly at the centre of global strategic interests. Competition with Chile, which has similar facilities in Punta Arenas, is significant, but Argentina has the advantage of greater geographic proximity and a consolidated tradition in the region.  (open Photo: Sunset sky over the Monument to the Bicentenary of Argentina, located in Andacollo, Neuquen. 123rf)
(F.R.)