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Antartica Chilena Province
Antartica Chilena Province is one of four provinces in its southernmost region, Magallanes and Antartica Chilena Region. The capital is Puerto Williams. The province is nearly 1,250,000 km in area, which makes it almost twice as large as all other provinces of Chile combined. The province is divided into two communes:
Commune of Cabo de Hornos , area 14,146 km, population as of census 2002: 2,262, of which 1,952 are in the capital.
Commune of Antartica
Consist of Chiles Antarctic claim. Antartica and Cabo de Hornos are administered by the Municipality of Cabo de Hornos and is the only instance of one municipality running more than one commune provided for in the Chilean constitution.
Territory recognition
The Commune of Cabo de Hornos is recognized as part of Chile, however, the Commune of Antartica, which encompasses most of the area of the province , is disputed, as it forms the Chilean claim to Antarctica, stretching south of the 60th parallel to the South Pole.
It is practically uninhabited except for research stations of various countries, although Chile attempts to give the appearance of permanent habitation at Villa Las Estrellas (near Frei Montalva Station), by the presence of women and children, a small school, and even a bank, in order to support its territorial claim of the area. The official population for the area as of the census 2002 is 130 . This does not include the staff of non-Chilean bases in the area.
According to the Chilean argument, its claim to the Antartica Chilena Province is as old as Chile itself. The Tordesilhas Line established a west/east division of colonial territories between Portugal and Spain. On the first organization of the new conquered territories, Carlos V, ruler of the Spanish Empire assigned to Pedro Sancho de la Hoz control over Terra Australis, which included the Southern part of South America, Tierra del Fuego Archipelago, and all southern undiscovered territories (Terra Australis Ignota). This gobernation eventually merged with other territories in the Captaincy General of Chile.
Under the provisions of the Antarctic Treaty, of which Chile is an original member, neither Chile nor any other nation is currently making efforts to establish, advance or dispute their sovereignty or that of any other country over any part the Antarctic continent.
See also
Argentine Antarctica and Tierra del Fuego, Antarctica, and South Atlantic Islands
British Antarctic Territory
Antarctic Treaty System
Antarctic Peninsula
Diego Ramirez Islands
Ildefonso Islands
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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Antartica Chilena Province
