Resumen:
Based of Chilean and other newspaper sources, as well as relevant diplomatic correspondence, this paper analyses the context and content of the 1956 Indian iniciative related to the Antarctic at the United Nations. India called for Antarctica to be dedicated only to peaceful uses and all nations should agree not to extend to that region of the world international tensions existent at the time of the Cold War. Antarctica would be internationalized and thermonuclear tests were to be forbidden. It is amazing that the former British colony, which had only just achieved independence and was trying to build-up the still weak membership of the Non-Alignment Movement, would be able to provoke such international commotion at the time of the preparatory meetings for the International Geophysical Year (IGY) and, according to the Chilean historian Mario Barros van Buren, the alarm it generated acted as a strong element of cohesion which led to the strengthening of a common front of opposition among nations with Antarctic interests. This paper attempts to clarify why India threatened to table its proposal, and what it expected to gain if it were to do so. Did she want to split the Afro-Latin American bloc –at the time the most important alliance within the UN General Assembly- or play upon the US-USSR confrontation, or the different Anglo-Saxon and South-American approaches towards an Antarctic settlement, or was the Indian objective mostly seeking to gain international “prestige”? As indicated in this paper, the outcome was that the Indian proposal was met by a very strong opposition and the alarm it generated acted as a strong factor of cohesion which ultimately led to the political and legal accommodation accomplished by the 1958/59 Washington Conference.