What do you do with an entire continent whose sovereignty is unresolved and whose territories are in dispute? Simple: dispatch a pregnant lady, have her give birth there, and then use the baby to stake your territorial claims.
Or at least, that’s the tactic that Argentina tried in 1977, when the nation’s politicians decided to airlift Silvia Morello de Palma, then seven months pregnant, to Argentina’s Esperanza Base near the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula.
On January 7, 1978, newborn Emilio Palma became the first person in history known to have been born on the frigid, unforgiving continent.
Argentina’s Esperanzo Base, where Emilio Palmas was born. (Photo: Andrew Shiva/Wikimedia Commons CC-BY-SA 4.0)
The plan was spurred into action after Chilean President Augusto Pinochet made a visit to Antarctica earlier that year to assert his country’s dominance in the region, a visit that may have inspired Argentina’s unconventional pregnancy grab–perhaps the most extreme of many measures taken over the course of decades of squabbling.
The ensuing joke, apparently, was that Chileans were sending recently married couples to their own Antarctic base in order to claim the first baby both conceived and born in the territory. (Though no claims have been made, since then, couples have lived at these bases for up to a year at a time and more than a dozen births have been registered, so one suspects that it has probably happened by now.)
Baby Emilio belonged to a larger regional trend. In 1979, Argentina created a stamp with two children looking at a map of the nation, which included their alleged portion of Antarctica, with the slogan, “Argentines, we must march to the frontiers.”
Indeed, Argentina is so serious about these unrecognized claims that it is illegal to show a map of the country that does not include the Malvinas, the South Atlantic Islands, and the section of Antarctica that the nation claims is theirs.
Humans did not arrive in Antarctica until the 1820s, when American seal hunter John Davis allegedly made the first Antarctic landing, in 1821 (a British sailor, James Waddell, followed in 1823). Since the continent was without a native population, it was only a matter of time, perhaps, until a politician figured that registering an indigenous birth would be an act of sovereignty.
“All of the countries involved in the issue of Antarctic sovereignty are kind of making up the rules as they go along,” says Dr. Adrian Howkins, associate professor at Colorado State University, who wrote his doctoral dissertation on the history of territorial disputes in the Antarctic region. “In terms of international law, at that time and in the 1940s and ’50s, it was much more of an emotional argument than a legal argument.”
Imperialism and nationalism have characterized the claims. Howkins, who is from the UK, discovered the issue was a mostly unwritten slice of history, and decided to look at it through the lens of decolonization.
The unsupported claims have a lot to do with national pride, he says. For Chile or Argentina to give up Antarctic territory, at this point, would be like giving up national land. “It would be extraordinary if an Argentine or Chilean government said we no longer want this—it’s so ingrained in the consciousness of those countries.”
Not sure what all the fuss is about. (Photo: Stephen Hudson/WikiCommons CC BY-SA 2.5)
Article IV of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty stipulates that any territorial claims made before the treaty’s ratification are neither denied nor acknowledged, and that while the treaty is in place, no new claims can be made. There are now 53 signatories, seven of which have staked previous claims—Argentina, Australia, Chile, France, New Zealand, Norway, and the UK.
Howkins says that France, Norway, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK are “sort of a club within a club of mutual recognition of territorial claims.” Argentina and Chile, meanwhile, recognize each other’s rights to claims, but not the claims themselves, since many of their territories overlap. And as for everyone else? “I think pretty much every other country in the world doesn’t recognize any of these claims,” says Howkins.
It’s a unique legal situation, or lack thereof. Argentina and Chile, and to a lesser extent, the UK, have been by far the most assertive of the bunch, maneuvering in the slight wiggle room left open by the treaty. They assert that Antarctica already belongs to them; they just need to articulate claims, define limits, and establish borders. Legitimacy of such claims is even tied to competition over who can do the most important scientific research in the region. Technically, however, Antarctica belongs to the global commons.
The decades of territorial tiffs have a juvenile air about them. Instances of placing and stealing and replacing flags have been common. For example, in November 1942, an Argentine expedition left a flag in a cylinder to mark its takeover of Antarctica’s Deception Island. Two months later, a British ship’s staff destroyed the evidence, planted their own flag, and notified Argentina of the act. Within another two months, an Argentine vessel had already removed it.
Argentina, Chile, and the UK, as well as France and New Zealand, have even designed special flags for their respective Antarctic territories, all within the last few decades. There’s also been lots of naming and renaming and conflicting names; the Antarctic Peninsula, for example, is known by Argentina as Tierra de San Martin, by Chile as O’Higgins Land, and by the British as Graham Land, while another part of the peninsula “belonging” to the United States is named Palmer Land.
Still, the treaty hasn’t kept Argentina from listing various rationales for its catalogue of continuing claims. These include Argentina’s Orcados base, which, established in 1904, was the continent’s first permanently inhabited base and the only one for 40 years; Argentina’s construction of the first Antarctic airport in 1969; and the fact that Argentina has sent more people to the region than any other country.
One of Argentina and Chile’s major grounds for claims is that the Antarctic Peninsula, geologically, is a continuation of the Andes mountain range, which runs along their borders. Argentina and Chile even argue that their nations’ legal rights go back all the way to when the Spanish Empire made a claim on Antarctica in 1493.
As for the possible escalation of tiffs and tension and the potential for these claims to ever truly come in handy, opinions vary. Howkins thinks it’s going to be a while before anything of value is found or exploited in Antarctica; he sees the hope of discovering valuable resources as more symbolic, though others disagree.
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A Practical Solution To A Philosophical Problem?
Quite a few legal matters, both picayune and of major international significance, depend almost entirely on being taken seriously. For example, Maryland has a law against adultery, but no one remembers the last time it was enforced, and police and the judicial system dont take it seriously. Similarly, a person or a nation can make a claim — ownership, sovereignty, mineral rights, whatever — to a landmass but it wont make any difference if other nations dont recognize it.
Now, heres a thought experiment: If you are going to claim a piece of land for yourself, how can you convince the rest of the world that your claim is legitimate? One way would be to start exploiting the landmass resources, for example. Another way is to colonize it — that is to say, send settlers there who will populate it and, ideally, start producing more colonists through reproduction. This is one of the factors that helped the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, and multiple other nations become colonies and, later, independent nations.
Colonizing Antarctica is not an option, of course, because of its inhospitality to human habitation. However, if a nation sent one mother down there to have one baby on Antarctic soil (or snow), then theoretically anyway, step one towards colonization has been checked off, and the nation has a bit of a stronger claim. At least, thats what two South American dictators thought for a time in the 1970s.
The map pictured above shows that the southern tip of South America is pretty close (relatively speaking) to the northern reaches of the Antarctic landmass. That bit of South America also represents the southernmost limits of both Chile and Argentina.
Back in the 1970s, Chile and Argentina were both governed by dictatorships who wanted to make names for themselves, and both saw solidifying their claims to Antarctica as a way to make that happen, according to Atlas Obscura. The ball got rolling, so to speak, when Chiles Augusto Pinochet made a state visit, of a sort, to the continent to press Chiles claim. Argentinas then-ruling military junta were not best pleased, and in late 1977, sent Silvia Morello de Palma, who at the time was seven months pregnant, to Argentinas Esperanza Base, according to NZ Herald. On January 7, 1978, the first Antarctic baby was born. The Chileans, undeterred, then sent a married couple to conceive, gestate, and give birth to a baby. Then the Argentines sent a couple, then the Chileans, and so on, until 11 babies were born (some also conceived and gestated there) on the continent, according to Medium.
The end result of all of this was a whole lot of nothing, as neither Argentina nor Chile ever managed to convince the rest of the world that the landmass is theirs, babies or no. And, of course, both dictatorships are now things of the past.
The first baby born in Antarctica was Emilio Palma, according to Atlas Obscura, on January 7, 1978. As of this writing (May 2022) Palma would be a 44-year-old man, however, its unclear what hes doing now. The Chilean baby who was conceived, gestated, and born in Antarctica was Juan Pablo Camacho Martino, born on November 21, 1984, according to Web Ecoist (he is equally elusive when it comes to alerting the world to his movements). The last baby born in Antarctica was a Chilean (or an Antarcticer, if you want to recognize Chiles claim), Ignacio Alfonso Miranda Lagunas, born on January 23, 1985. And, it seems he too would like to remain out of the public eye.
Why the Antarctic baby race came to an end is unclear, but the fact that no one outside of Argentina or Chile was taking the matter particularly seriously certainly played a role. And, of course, it goes without saying that the environment there is simply not suitable for raising children.
Meanwhile, in a weird data point in the history of pediatrics, all of the 11 babies born in Antarctica survived infancy, meaning that the continent is the only one on Earth with a 0% infant mortality rate.
“All of the countries involved in the issue of Antarctic sovereignty are kind of making up the rules as they go along,” says Dr. Adrian Howkins, associate professor at Colorado State University, who wrote his doctoral dissertation on the history of territorial disputes in the Antarctic region. “In terms of international law, at that time and in the 1940s and ’50s, it was much more of an emotional argument than a legal argument.”
Imperialism and nationalism have characterized the claims. Howkins, who is from the UK, discovered the issue was a mostly unwritten slice of history, and decided to look at it through the lens of decolonization.
Indeed, Argentina is so serious about these unrecognized claims that it is illegal to show a map of the country that does not include the Malvinas, the South Atlantic Islands, and the section of Antarctica that the nation claims is theirs.
Argentina’s Esperanzo Base, where Emilio Palmas was born. (Photo: Andrew Shiva/Wikimedia Commons CC-BY-SA 4.0)
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The figures for the 2016-17 season show that there were 44,202 visitors. A little down on the figure of 47,225 in the peak season so far in 2007-08, though rising again after falling to 26,509 in 2011-12. The drop was due to the fact that large ships are no longer allowed to visit Antarctica due to fuel spillage dangers.In terms of numbers, tourists greatly outnumber national programme personnel, though the personnel on scientific bases clock up more man-days. While tourists may only only spend a relatively small time ashore on landings (for the most part staying on their cruise ships), it is by its nature relatively “high-impact” time at the most picturesque and easily accessible areas, compare this to a scientist or support worker who spend most of their time working on a permanent or semi-permanent base.
There are two places in Antarctica that are sometimes regarded as civilian “towns”. The first is the Chilean Villa Las Estrellas base (just over 100 residents in the summer, around 80 in the winter) on King George Island, part of the South Shetlands group, off the western tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. The second is the Argentinian Esperanza base (55 winter residents) in Hope Bay at the very tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. They both have facilities such as a school, medical facilities, gym etc. though are more accurately regarded as associations of the military and scientific operations.
In recent years, the Chilean Villa Las Estrellas has become the site of tourist activity for “fly/sail” trips to Antarctica. Only a few years ago, the only way for tourists to reach Antarctica was by ship, now it is possible to fly to Antarctica across the Drake Passage so saving a couple of days sailing in each direction and potentially a lot of sea-sick time to join a cruise ship for the rest of the journey at King George Island. Though to my mind the traditional approach by ship which is then avoided is one of the most magical aspects of going to Antarctica. There are snowmobile and ski trips available from the “town” and of course the local wildlife as an attraction, these are served by a small 20 place hostel.
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