Villa Las Estrellas
Villa Las Estrellas is a town with civilian and military personel in King George Island, South Shetlands, Antarctica. It was inaugurated by President Augusto Pinochet on April 9, 1984. It is located next to the President Frei Meteorological Center and three kilometers from the Lieutenant Marsh Base. Pinochet visited the continent more than once, the first time in 1977. Today there is the Lucía Mountain named after his wife Lucía Hiriart, the Augusto Pinochet Massif (also known as Dufek) and the Admiral Merino Channel (also known as Plata).
Population and births
Initially with only six families, in a few months it had already doubled to 12 families and was already the first and only population of civilian settlers established in Antarctica, with no other similar experience in history. The success of this project allowed the registration of some of the first human births in Antarctic territory, which up to 1985 totaled three:
- Juan Pablo Camacho Martinez (November 21, 1984)
- Gisella Ester Cortés Rojas (2 December 1984)
- Ignacio Alfonso Miranda Lagunas (January 23, 1985).
In practice, this means that Chile has allowed the birth of another of the first men with Antarctic gentilage, among the first authentic "Antarctics" in the world, after a registry apparently initiated at the Argentinean base "Esperanza" on January 7, 1978 (Emilio Marcos Palma), but which has been put in doubt by some technical and historical criteria, such as the much earlier birth of a girl in South Georgia Island, United Kingdom: Solveig Gunbjörg Jacobsen, born on October 8, 1913. The case is recorded by Robert K. Headland in his work "The Island of South Georgia" (Cambridge University Press, 1984). Moreover, in the Argentine case, the parents were not resident civilians, but rather officials of a temporary base, although they had been living in specially arranged cabins since that same year. It should be noted that in the case of the Chilean births, they were also residents, since they belonged to families who were members of the settler community. The confusion of the Argentine case and its registration as the "first" in the world, which has even been accepted by the Guinness Book of Records, seems to derive from the campaign carried out during the last Argentine military governments as propaganda in favor of their aspirations over the southern territory.
Buildings
At present, villa "Las Estrellas" has a large population of its own, including an inn, a nursery, a school, a mini hospital, a small supermarket, a post office and a bank, which make it a real human colony, and not an imitation or a set-up of one, to the point that it has become an important enclave of logistic support for the other eight nations that have installations on King George Island and its surroundings.
Supplies are periodically flown in by air, a task carried out by the Chilean Air Force. The colony's houses are built with great comfort, in a hundred square meters and with lenga wood on a solid steel chassis, with special adaptations in roofs and windows to insulate the cold environment.
Legacy
The success of villa "Las Estrellas" has not been unique for Chile. In July 2000, another good scientific news took place, after a Chilean research group discovered a natural sanctuary for Antarctic Minke whales, which developed their own habitat on the frozen continent, adapting to its extreme climatic conditions. The whales' refuge was defined by the scientists as "a new population and species of Minke whales for the southern hemisphere". Apparently, the cetaceans developed an extraordinary adaptation that allowed them to permanently inhabit Antarctic waters without having to migrate in the austral winter.
This type of progress is also fundamental for the defense of Chile's Antarctic rights, protected by the Antarctic Treaty, since the country has achieved remarkable advances and discoveries on the white continent, knowledge and foundations that will later be vital for the validation of its rights, since discoveries such as these demonstrate that Chile is one of the few countries with a constant Antarctic relationship. Numerous scientific and geographical studies thus support Chilean sovereignty over the area.
In April 2001, a project to transfer Chilean jurisdiction over Antarctica and the village of "Las Estrellas" from Punta Arenas to the Municipality of Navarino, on the island of the same name, which would be renamed the Municipality of Cape Horn, was approved in April 2001. This measure, although it has some critical remarks, makes a great administrative approximation of the Chilean Antarctic alien to any inductive projection as is the case in other countries, demonstrating another instance of the true close relationship that exists between continental Chile and its polar territory.
In this sense, it may constitute a great advance, but it will be of no use if the serious problem derived from the reduction of the number of people who live in Chile's Antarctic territory persists.[1]