Tierra del Fuego

Abstract

Tierra del Fuego (literally, Land of Fire) is the name of the archipelago in the southernmost part of the Latin American continent. It consists of a large island, Isla Grande, and dozens of islands and islets to its south that together form the southern tip of Patagonia, the immense peninsula covering the southern provinces of the Republics of Chile and Argentina. Patagonia is different from the rest of Latin America: it has a relatively cold, windy and barren climate; when the continent is mostly tropical to subtropical. Perhaps that explains why Patagonia was never successfully colonised by European powers and remained unclaimed until the beginning of the 19th century, when Chile and Argentina started a squabble over its sovereignty that lasted almost two centuries and finally divided the territory up to the last isle. Within this division, Isla Grande of Tierra del Fuego was to suffer an artificial political partition by means of a vertical line that divides Chilean from Argentine territory (see Table 11.1).