In a move sparking outrage from the country's nationalist and Peronist opposition, Argentina's central government under President Javier Milei has taken control of the port of Ushuaia—the country's southernmost port and a key gateway to Antarctica. Milei's move places operation and administration of the port under the National Ports & Navigation Agency (ANPyN), a body of the executive branch, for one year—over the objections of the Tierra del Fuego provincial government. Milei, in turn, says corruption by the local authorities mandated the move.
The takeover of the port came last month just days before a US Air Force C-40 business jet landed at Ushuaia, bringing in a delegation of US lawmakers from the House of Representatives' Energy & Commerce Committee.
Milei, in power since December 2023, has already received two heads of the US Southern Command in Ushuaia: Laura Richardson in 2024 and Alvin Holsey last year. Both visited the Ushuaia Integrated Naval Base project, which Argentina has been building since 2022. While Milei insists the base will be under full Argentine control, in October he signed an executive order allowing US Naval troops to carry out joint exercises with Argetine forces at Ushuaia and two bases in in Buenos Aires province.
The country's opposition press notes that the takeover of Ushuaia came just as Milei was attending the World Economic Forum [10] in Davis, Switzerland—the scene of much contestation [11] over Trump's annexationist designs on Greenland. The Argentine press is full of speculation that on the sidelines of the Davos summt, Milei offered the Integrated Naval Base and all of Ushuaia to the US in exchange for an invitation to join the "Board of Peace [12]" being touted by Trump as an alternative to the United Nations. (BAT [13], BAH [14], BAH [15], MercoPress [16], MercoPress [17], La Jornada [18])
