This territory’s fate has been indeterminate since the close of the War of the Pacific, 1879–83, and with its fertile causes for agitation has been the focus of endless quantities of argument emanating mainly from the former owner, Peru, to whom no solution is declared to be satisfactory but the unqualified restoration of the province. The interest of Bolivia in the matter is also recognised: she has brought her need for a new outlet to the Pacific before the League of Nations, although without result; and while there is force in the reminder of Chile that Bolivia was able to make little or no use of the Antofagasta littoral while in her possession, and that her great prosperity dates from the time when she lost it and obtained as a kind of solatium an efficient railroad, national pride urges a political group of La Paz to make recovery of a coastal strip one of the planks of the oratorical platform.
Between Bolivia and her two sister republics of the west there is no ill-feeling. She trades freely with both, and in particular has derived a great deal of technical and financial help from Chilean men of enterprise in developing important mining regions. Bolivia’s relations with Peru are equally friendly, although intellectual rather than economic; but the writer’s experience of Bolivia has developed the opinion that Bolivians are extremely unlikely to do what is occasionally urged by the Peruvian press, to take up arms with the object of regaining territory definitely ceded, without question or reservation, by the Treaty of 1904.
The dispute, actually, lies between Peru and Chile. It is utilised by adroit politicians in South America, and farther afield, to divert attention from other inconvenient problems, and the recurrent flurry is a cause of anxiety to the industrialist and investor, whether native-born or foreign, of the West Coast. It demands settlement, and probably could be settled as other territorial questions have been solved, by the exercise of goodwill and discretion and in the spirit of compromise. But the truth is that few public men are sufficiently courageous to adopt a moderate attitude on this subject; the bellicose attitude is easier and more popular. Inflammatory newspaper articles and speeches upon the subject are rarely of Chilean origin, it is but fair to say; but the situation is a standing invitation to the extremist and the path of the mediator is not smoothed by long postponement.
Arica port, a pretty little oasis in the desert, was the centuries-old outlet for Bolivian products; Potosí’s silver came out in a rich stream during colonial days. Charcas Province, or Alto Peru, afterwards part of the Viceroyalty of Buenos Aires, had no other western port. Forty miles inland lies the old city of Tacna, also succeeding an Inca settlement, and an ancient stopping-place on the highway to the Andes.
The desert, veiled by the strange mist of this region, the camanchaca, lies all about these little cities; they are connected by an old strip of railway, and there are no other sizable towns. Tarata, in the spurs of the mountains, is reached only by horseback, is chiefly important as head of the department of the same name, and is only a degree nearer modern life than the villages of sturdy mountaineers that cling to the Andean folds above it. Here the llama is still the chief means of transport.
Nitrate has not been found in workable quantities in Tacna province, nor any precious mineral deposits of consequence, although silver and copper are known. The value of the territory, politically unified by Chile as one province, Tacna, 23,000 square kilometres in area, with three departments, Tacna, Arica and Tarata, and the city of Arica as the chief centre of the province, is thus not great, until irrigation permits agricultural development upon a big scale. But strategically it acts as a buffer between Chile and Peru, and it was with the object of erecting such a buffer that Chile refrained from doing what her dominant position after the War of the Pacific permitted, taking the little provinces finally, at the same time that she secured Tarapacá, a region enormously rich in nitrate.
Peru was obliged to accept definitely the cession of Tarapacá: that loss is beyond discussion. But the indeterminate position of Tacna permits national feeling, irritation and sentiment full sway.
It is common to hear of the old unity of Peru and Chile, of the mutual sacrifices during Independence struggles, their like origin and present intertwined interests. Undoubtedly, the two states are commercially necessary one to the other; the traders of the communities are little disturbed by political aspects and own a brotherly kinship so far as the Spanish language, religion, and culture are concerned. But there are also marked divergences. There has been a much greater proportion of west European blood in Chile than in Peru; the native races were of completely different speech and customs; and climate has done its share in modifying the modern population of each country. It is a serious error to class any two South American peoples together, and the characteristics of Bolivian, Ecuadorian, Peruvian and Chilean are strongly marked. Nor, between Peru and Chile, was cordiality invariably marked in colonial days, from the time when Almagro’s returned followers opposed the Pizarros and were set apart as “Men of Chile.” The dominance, political and financial, of Lima during the three hundred succeeding years in legal, political and religious matters, the use made of Chile as a dumping-ground, and at the same time the endless and unproductive expense in blood and treasure of the Araucanian wars, created irritation that was not all on one side.
Peru was rich and proud, Chile and Buenos Aires were comparatively poor: yet from the two latter political independence from Spain arrived, borne upon the swords of San Martin’s army. An ocean of tact has been needed to smooth similar situations in other regions and times, and San Martin’s arbitrary conduct, although objectionable to Chileans and Peruvians alike, did not ease the situation. Later, when South America’s freedom from Spain had become a fact accepted by the world at large, a result due in great measure to Canning’s long vision, the eyes of the new countries turned to their nebulous boundaries. Settlement of the exact frontiers has been so difficult that the disputes and efforts of a century have not, in some cases, yet decided the question. When all was Spain’s, the limits of separate provinces or viceroyalties was of secondary importance; the hinterlands were frequently wooded, mountainous, or desert country, where none but Indians penetrated. It has only been since forestal products such as quinine and rubber were valorised, the worth of the commoner metals enhanced by great industries, that great interior regions of the southern continent have acquired interest, and the marking of boundaries has become a burning question.
In Chile’s case, her area as a province or “kingdom” during Spanish times included the present Argentine provinces of Mendoza, San Luis and San Juan, and all Patagonia. The three first-named provinces went, with Charcas (part of the modern Bolivia), to Buenos Aires when that Viceroyalty was erected in 1776, but the possession of Patagonia and the islands below the Strait of Magellan remained a fertile source of disagreement with Argentina, narrowly averting war, until 1881. A treaty then made between the two countries fixed a line in the Andes as the boundary, to follow the highest peaks dividing the rivers, while all land south of the fifty-second degree of south latitude went to Chile, except the eastern part of Tierra del Fuego. This agreement was found indefinite; the water-parting and the highest peaks were discovered to be frequently far distant from each other, and the exact boundary was only settled in 1902 when the award of King Edward VII fixed a new line, by which 54,000 square kilometres of the disputed area was assigned to Chile and 40,000 to Argentina. One small point only remains unsettled—the question as to the exact position of the eastern entrance to Beagle Channel, involving possession of Picton, New and Lennox Islands. The senates of Chile and Argentina agreed in 1915 to abide by an award to be made by the British Government.