The president of Chile, Gabriel Boric, issued a harsh warning to Argentina this Monday morning: “You must remove those solar panels as soon as possible or we are going to do it.”
Boric made brief statements to the Chilean journalists who accompanied him on his visit to Emmanuel Macron, in France, when they asked him about the unusual new bilateral escalation: the Argentine Navy placed facilities in Chilean territory to supply energy to a detachment that has in the southern tip of Tierra del Fuego.
Military panels: what happened to Chile
Apparently those panels were installed by mistake. Boric also stressed that he told Javier Milei, who would have been receptive, according to the Chilean president.
The foreign ministries of both countries considered it “a mistake” that, to tell the truth, had not been initially noticed by the Chilean Navy either. And as occurs with several of the differences between Chile and Argentina, the incident escalated with nationalist overtones on the trans-Andean side.
On Saturday there was even a demonstration against citizens of that country in front of the Argentine consultancy in Santiago.
“I would like to tell you very clearly that borders are not something that can be ambiguous and that it is something basic of respect between countries and that therefore they must remove those solar panels as soon as possible or we are going to do it.” “Boric said this Monday.
What Boric said to Milei about the military panels
“I mentioned it to President Milei and he told me that he was going to send (instruct) it to his Minister of Foreign Affairs. I imagine that we are not going to have problems in this regard, but it is a wrong signal and one that we do not like. And we demand that it be resolved in the shortest possible time, otherwise, we are going to do it ourselves,” he added, seeking to lower his tone but visibly tense and uncomfortable due to a new problem with Argentina as a result of the unusual diplomatic tangle over the solar panels placed at three meters of Chilean territory.
Argentina will remove the panels
The Argentine government stated that it will remove those solar panels that generated controversy.
The Clarín newspaper published that Milei and Boric did not meet in the end as the Chilean president initially sought. But they did have a brief, friendly exchange of words that the Argentine government did not communicate. It is unknown why there was no bilateral conversation and there was a brief hallway conversation.
It was a greeting previously coordinated during the summit for Ukraine that took place between Saturday and Sunday in Bürgenstock, Switzerland. After participating in the G7 summit in Bari, Italy, Milei traveled to Switzerland, gave an opening speech and met with Volodimir Zelensky.
The Argentine Presidency only communicated which presidents Milei greeted, something that had been established with certain governments when progress could not be made with bilaterals in the G7. The greeting with Joe Biden (United States), with Macron (France), Fiumo Kishida (Japan) and his brief approach to Pope Francis. In Switzerland they only broadcast the bilateral with the Ukrainian president. The rest was social networks.
In Switzerland, Milei was seen accompanied by his sister Karina Milei (secretary of the Presidency) and Foreign Minister Diana Mondino. The rest of the delegation does not appear in the images. It is known that the President of Chile wanted a bilateral agreement with him.
The new escalation with Chile
Meters from the cliff known as Cape Espiritu Santo and at the eastern mouth of the Strait of Magellan, the so-called Maritime Transit Surveillance and Control Post Hito 1 is located. It is the initial point of the border between Argentina and Chile on the island of Tierra del Fuego.
In the place there are two inhabited posts, one of the Argentine Navy and the other of the Chilean Navy, which are separated by a very rudimentary fence, which marks the border between both countries. It is a completely remote place. At the gates of the sea.
And the military and diplomatic incident is news because the complaint of Gabriel Boric’s government emerged, which accuses that part of the recently inaugurated facilities (two modules of 60 square meters each) were placed not on the Argentine side as they should have been, but in Chilean territory.
The donation to the Argentine Navy of these housing modules, which are solar panels and batteries, was made by the Mirgor Foundation and the company Total Energy. And they are intended to improve control tasks over maritime traffic in Argentine waters, and were inaugurated at the end of last April.
The border line was not clear
What surprised both Foreign Ministries is that the work to place the panels began in February and during this time neither the Argentine nor the Chilean sailors noticed the error. According to reports, they were not clear about the border between one country and another in that place in the southernmost area of the American continent, adds Clarín.
By the way, Senator Alejandro Kusanovic wrote in his X account with irony towards the Chilean Navy “Explanatory drawing HITO 1, the existing fence (blue) upon reaching the HITO should go to the right (yellow) and continue straight. In celestial solar panels part of Chilean territory. How did the staff at the site not notice the problem in the installation? And he posted a photo of the panels and their location.
Aware, the Chilean Foreign Ministry called the Argentine ambassador in Santiago, Jorge Faurie, and gave him a document describing the problem. They asked him to remove the solar panels.
The Chilean Foreign Ministry avoided a diplomatic conflict. In fact, Minister Alberto van Klaveren said from Europe that they believed that “this is an error obviously made in good faith and as appropriate we duly made it known to the Argentine government through the appropriate channels.”
Asked by journalists, Faurie said that it was “a material error because whoever installed the solar panels is a company that donated those panels (…) was guided by a fence from a ranch in the area.”
The Chileans affirm that “in reality they should have been guided by the satellite coordinates that demarcate limits (…) the issue is that moving them, at this time, would not be possible. “We would have to wait for the summer.”
One of the alternatives that the Chileans were considering is for the Argentines to share electricity with them, but apparently the military did not want to.
