La guerra de los mapas entre Argentina y Chile: una mirada desde Chile

Summary

Through schools, newspapers, and military quarters from Argentina and Chile, it is taught that the neighbour country is always the expansionist and lands’ robber one. On the one hand, to all lands to the south of the Bío-Bío belonged to Río de la Plata’s Viceroyalty, and therefore, they should be now Argentinian. On the other hand, to Chileans, the Patagonia would have been owned by Chile until the Treaty of 1881, which Chile would have signed under pressure, since the Pacific War was taking place at that moment. This article shows that both positions are untrue, since some documents, antecedents and royal dispositions haven’t been taken into consideration by these two countries. These serious mistakes are already standardized in both, Argentinian’s and Chilean’s historiography. In this article the errors are described and explained through new documentary evidence.