Which country colonized the Beagle Channel? Chile or Argentina?
13939841#0
The region of the Beagle Channel, explored by Robert FitzRoy in the 1830s, was one of the last to be colonized by Chile and Argentina. The cold weather, the long distances from other inhabited regions, and the shortage of transport and subsistence, kept it far from the governmental task.
Beagle Channel cartography since 1881
19486130#1
Both countries disagreed about the sovereign rights over the zone and Snipe, an uninhabitable islet between Picton Island and Navarino Island, claimed by both. Chileans call the waterway around the islet "Beagle Channel", but in Argentina they called it "Moat channel" on the grounds that the Beagle Channel, allegedly, went south around Navarino Island. In accordance with the Beagle Channel Arbitration and the Treaty of Peace and Friendship of 1984 between Chile and Argentina, it should be called Beagle Channel.
Snipe incident
17805779#0
The direct negotiations between Chile and Argentina about the islands and maritime rights in Beagle conflict began after the Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom announced on 2 May 1977 the judgement of the Beagle Channel Arbitration to the governments of both countries. The court ruled that the islands and all adjacent formations belonged to Chile. The direct negotiations finished with the Act of Montevideo on 9 January 1979, where both countries accept the papal mediation after Argentina's call off of the Operation Soberanía. This was the most dangerous phase of the Beagle Conflict and there was a real possibility of open warfare.
Direct negotiations between Chile and Argentina in 1977–78
17489464#11
About the course of the Beagle Channel there were discrepancies. The eastern end of the Channel can be seen as a delta with an east-west arm and a north-south arm (around Navarino Island). The channel specified in the border treaty of 1881 was seen by Chile as the east-west arm, but by Argentina as the north-south arm. Following this controversy, two clauses were in dispute: Chile argued the Channel clause ("... to Chile shall belong all the islands to the south of Beagle Channel up to Cape Horn..."), while Argentina the Atlantic clause ("... the other islands there may be on the Atlantic to the east of Tierra del Fuego ..."). Some Chileans argued that the text ""until it touches the Beagle Channel"" in article III meant that Argentina had no navigable waters in the Beagle Channel, although this interpretation was not supported by the Chilean claim.
Beagle Channel Arbitration
19283960#104
Most of the members of the Junta are currently in prison for crimes against humanity and genocide.
The Beagle conflict began to brew in the 1960s, when Argentina began to claim that the Picton, Lennox and Nueva islands in the Beagle Channel were rightfully hers. In 1971, Chile and Argentina signed an agreement formally submitting the Beagle Channel issue to binding Beagle Channel Arbitration. On May 2, 1977 the court ruled that the islands and all adjacent formations belonged to Chile. See the Report and decision of the Court of Arbitration.
History of Argentina
10002382#15
Both countries submitted the controversy to binding arbitration by the international tribunal. The decision (see Beagle Channel Arbitration between the Republic of Argentina and the Republic of Chile, "Report and Decision of the Court of Arbitration") recognized all the islands to be Chilean territory. Argentina unilaterally repudiated the decision of the tribunal and planned a war of aggression against Chile.
Argentina–Chile relations
1645580#8
Due to their strategic location south of the Beagle Channel, Chile and Argentina disagreed if the islands were on the Pacific Ocean or the Atlantic Ocean. The dispute started in 1904 when Argentina started to claim the islands, overlapping the Chilean claim. In 1893, both countries agreed that Argentina should only have access to the Atlantic Ocean and Chile to the Pacific Ocean. Both countries disagreed if the Beagle Channel was to the north or the west of the islands. Whichever government controlled Picton, Lennox, and Nueva could stake territorial rights further into the ocean (important for the fishing industry), to several other islands, and to a larger part of Antarctica (import for resource development and exploration).
Picton, Lennox and Nueva
1132278#7
Several small islands (Picton, Lennox and Nueva) up to the Cape Horn were the subject of the long-running Beagle conflict between Chile and Argentina; by the terms of a Treaty of Peace and Friendship of 1984 between Chile and Argentina they are now part of Chile. From the 1950s to 1970s several incidents involving the Chilean and Argentine Navy occurred in the waters of the Beagle Channel, for example the 1958 Snipe incident, the 1967 "Cruz del Sur" incident and the shelling of "Quidora" the same year. See List of incidents during the Beagle conflict.
Beagle Channel
2446229#10
Until 1887 there was no doubt in Argentina and Chile that the islands Picton, Nueva and Lennox belonged to Chile:
In 1904 the Argentine government solicited Chile to define jointly which was the deepest arm of the Beagle channel in the zone in order to find the demarcation of the border. On the basis of the international cartography of the zone, the descriptions of the discoverer of the channel, and the discourse of the signatories of the 1881 Treaty, Chile initially did not attach importance to the note.
Beagle conflict
18694883#5
The treaty recognizes the Boundary Treaty of 1881 between Chile and Argentina and its "«…supplementary and declaratory instruments…»" as the unshakeable foundation of relations between Chile and Argentina and defines the border "«…from the end of the existing boundary in the Beagle Channel, i.e., the point fixed by the coordinates 55°07.3' South latitude and 66°25.0' West longitude…»" (Bold by Wikipedia). That is, Argentina recognizes the borderline determined by the Beagle Channel Arbitration in 1977 (Report and Decision of the Court of Arbitration), which it had earlier rejected. Hence, there is no mention of Picton, Nueva, Lennox and other islands. The Treaty calls its content a "Transaction"
Treaty of Peace and Friendship of 1984 between Chile and Argentina