In 1881, the
Treaty of Boundaries was negotiated between Argentina and Chile to settle the overlapping boundary dispute concerning
Patagonia, which had occurred when each country gained their independence from Spain. By 1886,
José Nogueira, a Portuguese shipping magnate, had begun to plan a ranching enterprise for the area. He leased of Fuegian land in April 1889 and in November, his brother-in-law,
Mauricio Braun acting as Nogueira's agent, leased an additional of land. In 1890, Nogueira and his wife,
Sara Braun, secured a lease from President
José Manuel Balmaceda's administration on a third of the available land in
Tierra del Fuego, containing . A condition of the last lease was that Nogueira establish a Chilean business to manage the land. As he was Portuguese and his wife was
Latvian, Nogueira made a deal with Ramón Serrano Montaner to sell him a third of the lease, at cost, in exchange for Serrano's recruitment of Chilean investors. Before they were able to finalize the organization of the business, Nogueira died, leaving his vast estate to his wife. This group controlled slightly less than a half of the shares, to meet the requirement that the business venture have a majority of Chilean participants. Among the remaining shareholders were Serrano, Juan and Gustavo Oehninger, Cruz Daniel Ramírez, and Guillermo Wilms, who each owned 100 shares of the stock and various minor shareholders from
Magallanes and
Valparaíso. but in 1895, Menéndez became Mauricio's father-in-law when Braun married Menéndez's daughter, Josefina. While the investors varied over time, until her death Sara Nogueira Braun remained the largest individual shareholder in the association. Facing starvation and with no concept of ownership, they began to steal livestock. The Exploitation Society asked and received permission from the Chilean government to remove the indigenous population from the area. Menéndez gave orders for the extermination of the Selkʼnam, paying a bounty for each death. Under agrarian reforms in the 1960s, the society changed its name in 1964 to
Ganadera Tierra del Fuego S.A. and was dissolved officially in 1973. ==References==