On 7 January 1978 a baby was born in Antarctica. Emilio Palma came into the world as a geopolitical weapon, intended by the Argentine government to reinforce its claim to a portion of the world’s southernmost continent.
When Emilio’s mother Silvia Morello de Palma was seven months pregnant she had been sent to the region by the Argentine military dictatorship, as a response to Chilean president Augusto Pinochet’s visit to an Antarctic base. Emilio’s birth marked the beginning of a tit-for-tat competition between the two Latin American countries, with each sending people to Antarctica to conceive and birth children. By 2009, 11 babies had been born there.
