Latin America and Antarctica: New approaches to humanities and social science scholarship

Abstract

Latin America is a region with extensive connections to Antarctica. Argentina and Chile are claimant nations, and both are original signatories of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty.1 Largely as a result of Argentine and Chilean participation in its negotiation, Spanish is one of the four official languages of the Antarctic Treaty. Since 2004, the Antarctic Treaty Secretariat has been located in Argentina’s capital, Buenos Aires. Brazil, Ecuador, Peru and Uruguay have all become consultative members of the Antarctic Treaty through conducting science in Antarctica and contributing to the Antarctic community, and Colombia, Cuba, Guatemala, and Venezuela are non-consultative members. All six Latin American consultative members are also members of the Council of Managers of National Antarctic Programmes (COMNAP), and all six belong to the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR).2 Although Ecuador is not a signatory of the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), the other five Latin American consultative members have signed up to this convention, as has Panama.3 According to COMNAP, there were 27 Latin American stations in Antarctica in 2017 (Argentina with 13, Chile with 9, Uruguay with 2, Brazil, Ecuador, and Peru all with 1). The rapidly expanding Antarctic tourist industry is centered in the gateway cities of Ushuaia (Argentina) and Punta Arenas (Chile).4 More intangibly, a strong Antarctic consciousness can be found in some of the countries of Latin America, especially in the claimant states of Chile and Argentina...