During the
War of the Pacific, Chile focused its efforts on its north, as with the
war against the Peru-Bolivian Confederation, neglecting for a while, the
occupation of Araucanía, Eastern Patagonia and Pampa Seca, leaving them for later. In 1843 Chile founded
Fort Bulnes and in the 1870s occupied the territory south of the
Santa Cruz River, founding the settlement called
Puerto Gallegos Rosas tried to reach direct agreements with the Pincheira, defending for Argentina what was the
southern indigenous border of the viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata. from which it was segregated in 1776. The main commercial relations of Mendoza and the surrounding cities were still linked to the Pacific and not to the Atlantic. they sought to approach Minister
Diego Portales, however, he rejected the offer, arguing that such an annexation would have been a great responsibility of a province located on the other side of the Andes. Calle insisted by sending him a letter on March 11 to his Hacienda Rayado, in
La Ligua. He argued that the Andes were "a hundred times" less difficult to cross than the desert that separated Mendoza from Buenos Aires and the Atlantic. This letter went unanswered, and instead a trade agreement was signed on April 3, ratified in Mendoza on July 3 and in Santiago on October 22.
Incident in the mountainous area of Talca, potreros of the Andes In the context of the tensions between the unitary and federal sides in River Plate politics, the presence of exiles from this country in Chile, and the cutting of commercial traffic with Mendoza ordered on April 13, 1842, by the Chilean president
Manuel Bulnes, and the anger of the Mendocino governor
José Félix Aldao (from the federal side of
Juan Manuel de Rosas), a tense event occurs in March 1845, when the Chilean cattle rancher residing in Talca, Manuel Jirón, is approached by a gang of ten or twelve Argentine rustlers coming from Cuyo in his hacienda. They requested a payment of money in the name of the Governor's Office of Mendoza. They asked for payment for the cattle grazing that Jirón was doing in the pastures of El Yeso, Los Ángeles, Valenzuela and Montañés. Jiron paid the amount when they threatened to take away his animals, which he later confirmed to the Chilean authorities, expecting compensation for the money. The incident was known as the "mountain potreros issue". The territory where this occurred is located south of the Diamante River in the mountainous area of Talca, so the territory was understood by Jiron as part of Chilean jurisdiction. The Municipality of Talca was in charge of protecting the cattle ranchers in the area, and the investigation of the case showed that the aggressors came from
San Rafael de Mendoza Fortress. The Government of Chile sent a note of protest to the Government of Argentina saying: To which Argentina did not protest. After the 1881 treaty the boundary divided the disputed area with the areas of Valle Hermoso,
Las Leñas and the eastern sector of Paso Potrerillos for Argentina, and the lands near Curicó of
Potrero Grande,
Potrero Chico, El Planchón,
Teno lagoons, those of the
Maule river basin, such as the
Maule river basin, such as the lagoon and river of La Invernada, and the sector of
El Colorado for Chile. To achieve this objective, the government of President Bulnes sent a
schooner (the "
Ancud") to take possession of it in the name of the republic. The intendant of
Chiloé Domingo Espiñeira organized and directed the operations that were executed by frigate captain
John Williams Wilson, who finally carried out the
Takeover of the Strait of Magellan on September 21, 1843, at the historic site of
Puerto del Hambre, founding
Fuerte Bulnes. This was done in part of the eastern section, that is, in a sector between the Andean mountain range and the Atlantic, so that from that moment Chile began to exercise rights of
possession east of the Andes The addition of "and its territory" would later give Chilean chancellors the argument that the dispute with Argentina was not limited only to the shores of the strait, so that Chile's uninterrupted possession of it also granted it possession of a much larger inland area, at least as far as the
Santa Cruz River. Due to the inhospitable climate it was not possible to form a large and stable population, the governor
José de los Santos Mardones deemed it convenient to found the city of
Punta Arenas in the Sandy Point (
Punta Arenosa) in 1848, after six years of innumerable hardships, to the north of the territory and with a better climate. Once the population finished moving and settling in the city of Punta Arenas, Fort Bulnes began its decadence and its ruins were even set on fire by the Chilean Army artillery lieutenant
Miguel José Cambiaso during the
Cambiaso Mutiny. Between 1941 and 1943 the reconstruction of the fort was carried out and it was reopened in 1943. In 1852 the governor of Magallanes,
Bernhard Eunom Philippi died in October of that year murdered by indigenous
Tehuelche in an assault in the vicinity of
Punta Arenas in Cabeza del Mar, while trying to resolve a local conflict by peaceful and diplomatic means, however, the reasons for his murder were not clarified by the authorities of the time, nor were the perpetrators of the crime convicted. The governor wanted to explore, populate and make southern Patagonia produce wealth. His death occurs when he was preparing to install an outpost to the north, which would have been followed by others, consolidating Chile's dominion in the southern territories. with Amunitegui's report as the basis, Chile also claimed to the north, up to the Río Negro in the Atlantic, and the Río Diamante, at the latitude of Buenos Aires, in the mountain range. The Argentine government upon learning of Amunátegui's book, commissioned
Dalmacio Vélez Sarsfield in 1855 a response, which, in turn, was subsequently answered by Amunátegui. In 1856 a
Treaty was signed between both countries which reaffirmed their commitment to the principle of
uti possidetis juris, however, they maintained their respective differences on what this was. In 1859 the Argentine
Luis Piedrabuena unofficially established a post on
Pavón Island and in 1865
Welsh settlers in the service of Argentina established a settlement in Chubut with the intention of penetrating the territory in dispute between the two countries. During that year, in moments of tension with Chile, Argentina had sought accession to the
Treaty of Defensive Alliance (Bolivia–Peru), a secret pact that sought to force Chile to accept the borders convenient to the three bordering states. The Argentine Chamber of Deputies in secret session approved the accession in 1873, but the government of Buenos Aires failed to reach an agreement with that of Bolivia over the Tarija issue. When Argentina offered Peru a bipartite treaty, Peru rejected the offer. After the capture off the coast of Patagonia of the
Jeanne Amélie on 27 April 1876 and the
Devonshire by the
cañonera Magallanes on 15 October 1878 protests in Buenos Aires rose to such a degree that the government decided to send its sea fleet south to strengthen its claim in the area. In 1879, British Captain of the
Chilean Navy Juan Tomás Rogers first sighted the glacier, which he named "Francisco Gormaz", after the director of the Hydrographic Office of the Chilean Navy, the sponsoring organization of the discovering expedition. Some years later,
Rudolph Hauthal, attached to the Argentine Boundary Commission, came across the glacier, and decided to name it "Bismarck" in honor of the then
Prussian Chancellor. It is currently known as
Perito Moreno Glacier. The
National Government, convinced of the need to preserve sovereignty on the Patagonian coasts, appoints the
Vapor Villarino under the command of Captain
Federico Spurr, to make the regular voyage between
Buenos Aires and the ports of
Patagonia.
Río Gallegos, an Argentine settlement, was born when the Sub Prefectura Marítima (Maritime Sub Prefecture) was installed on December 19, 1885. Its destiny was apparently very modest, in the material aspect, but of dense content for its purpose: "To exercise permanent, direct and categorical dominion over the continental end of the country, within the framework of the defense of the Sovereignty".
Dispute over the Strait of Magellan and the territories south of the Santa Cruz River Argentina claimed the Chilean takeover of the strait by means of the official letter of December 15, 1847, signed by the Minister of Foreign Affairs,
Felipe Arana. The Argentine government responded by claiming for itself all the territory south of the Diamante River, including the Strait and Tierra del Fuego. In 1848, the Chilean government invited the Argentine government to a comparative study of sovereign rights over Patagonia. Argentina accepted, but asked to postpone the debate because it wished to gather the necessary cartographies and documents for its plea, and so it expressed this to Chile. Upon returning to the strait, Casimiro showed a great attachment to the Argentine cause, beginning to perform acts of sovereign presence in the area. In an interview with the governor of Punta Arenas in 1865, he expressed his virtual ignorance of Chile's jurisdiction over the eastern Patagonian territory, showing him that he was acting not as a Tehuelche but as an Argentine authority, by showing him that he was paid by the authorities of El Plata and that he had a high military rank. The cacique was definitively won, by means of gifts, honors and entertainments, to the Argentine cause. The governor replied that if he answered that he really felt he was Chilean he would give him 9 ounces of gold as payment for services, but Casimiro indicated that it would not be possible because he "was not Chilean, but Argentine". Casimiro waited unsuccessfully in San Gregorio for the ship with the materials. Faced with the possible decision of the governor of Punta Arenas to extend the dominion of the Magellanic colony to the
Santa Cruz River, Piedrabuena asked the cacique to leave the bay and move his entire tribe to Pavón Island. Casimiro gathered his hosts from two nuclei, one in the pampas and the other, in January 1865, in San Gregorio; both groups united at a point called Comlel (this denomination corresponds to Coy-Inlet) In that same year, a party of Indians arrived in Punta Arenas, old acquaintances of the governor, carrying an Argentine flag (until that occasion they had entered with the Chilean flag). The Chilean representative, annoyed by the incident, told them that he would no longer allow them to enter the colony with that flag, and asking them for it, he gave them the
Chilean flag in exchange, telling them that it was "a prettier one". The latter immediately made them fly them on their awnings. A year later, Juan Cornell continued to demand that the shipment of the vessel with the materials be fulfilled, and even offered a private vessel, so that it would not represent any cost for the state. The fact was that the Argentine government had its eyes and energies focused on the northern border, and with Argentina already engaged in the war against Paraguay, its leaders were convinced that it would be a serious mistake to generate a new source of conflict with the western country. Meanwhile, Casimiro's secretary, Doroteo Mendoza, perished strangely at the hands of a cacique, Piedrabuena and Casimiro still kept alive the hope of being able to realize the foundational project, so both remained patiently expectant, waiting for a new opportunity. But Piedrabuena was not discouraged, so that, without official support, he set sail from Buenos Aires on his fragile vessel to the southern regions on October 26, 1868, with the purpose of carrying out on his own the occupation of San Gregorio Bay for his country, a task that was thus reduced to his own human resources. . The navigation was tortuous due to the storms that accompanied him incessantly. First he went through his factory at
Isla de los Estados and then to
Isla Pavón, to finally set course for
Punta Arenas. He was only able to anchor the "Espora" in the port of Punta Arenas in February 1869. During that year he worked on the Isla de los Estados. Finally he embarked, together with G. H. Gardener and two other men, for the strait. He tried to make land at the entrance of the strait to place the beacon, but furious storms prevented him from doing so, so he set course again for Punta Arenas. The day after arriving, he was visited by the governor, Lieutenant Commander of the
Chilean Navy Oscar Viel y Toro, who recommended him "not to populate that colony, wait for a diplomatic resolution between both governments to remain in friendship", warning him that he was also authorized to prohibit it, counting on "artillery" to impose his purpose; in the same way he notified him that he would proceed in the same way with the luminous signal that the Argentine was planning to install at the eastern entrance of the strait. Piedrabuena at first gave in to the serious warning of the Chilean authority without insisting on his objectives, however, a few days later he sailed to San Gregorio Bay, where he arrived in March 1870, with the ships "Espora" and "Julia". On the shore of the bay, Piedrabuena had a wooden hut erected as an "observatory", with the apparent purpose of facilitating trade with the Tehuelches and the real intention of laying the foundations for the foundation of a colony. When Viel was warned, he ordered the construction to be dismantled and forced the Argentine sailor to leave the place. Faced with the possibility that the beacon he intended to erect would be destroyed by the artillery of Chilean ships, he decided to deposit it on
Pavón Island until he received official authorization from the Argentine authorities, something that finally never happened because they wanted to avoid a conflict with Chile. Soon after, from Pavón Island, Piedrabuena returned to San Gregorio, surprised to see that the Chileans had not yet populated the port that had so dazzled him. There he met with Casimiro, to whom he warned him to be on the alert for the next moves of the Puntarenas authorities. Piedrabuena, displeased by the predictable hostility he was already suffering in Punta Arenas, and the attitudes of permanent rejection of the project he received from the succession of rulers who administered his country, wrote to a friend about his regret: . Around 1874, the cacique Casimiro died as a result of alcoholism, and with him, the influence that Argentina tried to exert in the Strait of Magellan finally ended, since all the Tehuelche caciques (Olki, Sámel, Kaile, Cholpa, etc.) swore loyalty to Chile, even Casimiro's son, the
cacique Papón, and all of them were assigned salaries and food rations, as well as the Chilean state, and the Chilean state assigned salaries and food rations to them.) swore loyalty to Chile, even Casimiro's son,
cacique Papón, and to all of them the Chilean state assigned salaries and food rations, just as the Argentine state did with Casimiro when he was alive. Luis Piedrabuena remained in southern Patagonia until mid 1875, when he settled permanently in Buenos Aires, where he died on August 10, 1883, at the age of 49; in 1878 his wife had died, at the age of 41, victim of
pulmonary tuberculosis, contracted during the harsh southern winters. He achieved great renown in the colony of
Magallanes from 1870 to 1890, to whom the governor
Diego Dublé Almeyda granted the title of "
Chilean Subdelegate of
Patagonia" in 1873. Cacique Papón established an alliance with the Chilean governor
Diego Dublé Almeyda, so that the seven hundred Tehuelches who adhered to his intentions, from the territory located between the
Santa Cruz River and the
Strait of Magellan, would also swear allegiance to the Chilean State, which appointed him subdelegate of
Chilean Patagonia. The latter country, after renewing its alliance, would begin to populate the Magellanic continental coast from 1878 with sheep ranches, including in
bahía San Gregorio, in addition to bringing cattle directly from the
Falkland Islands.
Adolfo Ibáñez Gutiérrez as Chilean Foreign Minister argued that the boundary with Argentina should be set at the
70th meridian west longitude, that is, to the east of the Andes mountain range, until it touched the
Santa Cruz River, and from there to the Atlantic. To avoid a territorial and strategic imbalance. Ibáñez sent notes to the Argentine ambassador in Chile,
Félix Frías arguing that the Strait of Magellan is of great importance to Chile, stating that the
water mass is "not only her progress and development, but also for her very existence as an independent nation". by heading a diplomatic mission whose main objective was to prepare an alliance between Argentina and Chile against Spain. Lastarria was also in charge of negotiating the possession of Patagonia, proposing an agreement that left Argentina almost all of the territory in question, with the exception of Tierra del Fuego and some other nearby portions. On his return to his country, his negotiations were not too strongly condemned by the government, and were later one of the arguments used by the Argentine authorities to justify their subsequent domination of the great majority of Patagonia. Lastarria did not believe that Chile should possess those territories and, given his Pan-Americanist convictions, he was very reluctant to go to war over them. On February 22 of that year he sent his superior in the Chilean Foreign Office,
Álvaro Covarrubias Ortúzar, a memorandum explaining why renouncing the claims to East Patagonia would be advantageous. At that time the Argentine president was
Bartolomé Mitre, who having rejected Lastarria's offer, on July 28 of that same year decreed the formation of a settlement in Chubut, forty leagues south of Río Negro and in the middle of the Patagonian territory, in addition to the creation of the colony in the bay of San Gregorio in the Strait of Magellan. His successor,
Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, who came to power in 1868, provided resources to the colonies created by Mitre in the region and promoted the formation of new ones through bills that were discussed in the Argentine Congress between 1871 and 1873. Until before that the balance was in favor of Chile as to the strategic advantage of controlling the region.
Fierro-Sarratea Pact On December 6 of the same year, the
Fierro-Sarratea pact was signed in
Santiago de Chile by the Chilean Minister of Foreign Affairs
Alejandro Fierro and the Argentine consul in Santiago
Mariano Sarratea. The agreement was approved by both houses of the
Congress of Chile and on January 14, 1879, the Chilean government informed the Argentine government that it approved it. However, the
Congress of Argentina never approved the agreement, and thus, never came into effect. Article 6 established that until a boundary agreement was reached, Chile would exercise jurisdiction over the coasts of the
Strait of Magellan and
Argentina over
East Patagonia coasts and its islands. On January 4, 1879, the
corvette Cabo de Hornos commanded by
Luis Piedrabuena arrived at
Puerto Santa Cruz with the news of the cessation of hostilities between the two countries and carrying on board the surgeon major
Federico R. Cuñado -grandson of the Spanish physician
Gabriel Cuñado- in addition to carrying provisions, coal cargo and the
launch steamboat Monte León needed to provide
fresh water at
Pavón Island, since the estuary of the river where the port was settled is
brackish water. In addition, it would have arrived alongside the bomber
República. For Chile, the pact had a very important effect because it allowed, at least, to postpone the border problems with Argentina and focus on the solution of its problems with Bolivia: on December 17, 1878
Hilarión Daza had ordered the collection of the 10 cents tax and a few months later the
War of the Pacific would begin after Bolivia's refusal to revert the measure that violated previous treaties with Chile. Papón would be succeeded by his brother called
Mulato in 1892, who ended up settling in a reserve in Chile, near Punta Arenas, until he died of smallpox in 1905.
Diplomatic negotiations prior to the Treaty of 1881 Through historical maps it is possible to follow the course of the negotiations that led to the signing of the treaty. The Chilean maps show Argentine proposals of 1872, 1876 and 1879, as
status quo between the two countries until the definitive boundary treaty was signed. Map of Seelstrang of 1875 On the right we can appreciate the Argentine map made by Seelstrang and Tourmente in 1875 that was used by the Chilean minister in
Buenos Aires,
Diego Barros, to communicate on July 10, 1876, to his government in Santiago a proposal for a solution from the Argentine foreign minister, Bernardo de Irigoyen, extended during the negotiations that preceded the signing of the 1881 Treaty of Limits. The proposal is drawn with a red line and is in fact very similar to what is today the boundary between the two countries. The map illustrates the difficulty of demarcation due to the lack of knowledge of the area. The map does not show any natural feature to mark the border, with the exception of some hills: Cerro Moore near
Puerto Natales and further north Cerro Cay in front of the
Guaitecas Islands. This Argentine map shows the Argentine interpretation of the 1856 Treaty marked as a line of crosses (++++). It can be seen that the border passes a few kilometers east of the Chilean city
Punta Arenas and continues through the center of the Strait of Magellan towards the Pacific Ocean (northwest) leaving all the islands south of the Strait of Magellan as Argentine territory. Map of Carlos Prieto The following map on the right was made by the engineer Carlos Prieto of the
Oficina Hidrográfica de Chile and published by the Chilean government in 1881 to show the genesis and content of the 1881 Boundary Treaty. Three proposals and the final solution are indicated in it: • Proposal of October 1872 marked with "----". This proposal offered to define the common border only up to the northern shore of the strait, leaving the division of the territories to the south for the future. The strait would be shared between Chile and Argentina. • July 1876 proposal marked with "-...-...-..." which is the one we have seen on the Seelstrang and Tour map above. In Carlos Prieto's map it can be seen that in the 1876 proposal the border is not the 52nd parallel, as it is today, but somewhat further south, in favor of Argentina. • May 1879 proposal marked with a line "......". This delimited all the territories with a line that divided the strait east of Punta Arenas and divided the
Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego between Chile and Argentina by
Bahía Inútil,
Admiralty Channel crossing the
Beagle Channel to continue along the
Murray Channel. It left
Navarino,
Picton, Lennox and Nueva as Argentine territory. The islands
Hoste Island,
Wollaston Islands,
Hornos Island, etc., as Chilean territory. Proposition by Rufino de Elizalde Another map that is related to the gestation of the Treaty of 1881 is that of the proposal of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Argentina,
Rufino de Elizalde of March 1878. This map bears the minister's signature and is in the
National Library of Chile. The boundary offered passes largely through canals, like that of May 1879, but leaves all islands south of the Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego under Chilean sovereignty. The "legitimate boundary" of the map, i.e., the Argentine interpretation of the 1856 Treaty, is drawn with a blue line and runs west of Punta Arenas, leaving Punta Arenas in Argentine territory. Both Seelstrang and Tourmente's map (1875) and Rufino de Elizalde's map (1878) also show a point that would later be of fundamental importance in the Argentine argumentation during the
Beagle conflict. Argentina postulated the bioceanic principle, according to which the
uti possidetis juris of 1810, agreed in the Treaty of Limits of 1856, prevented Argentina from possessing coasts in the Pacific, Argentina assumed that implicitly Chile could not possess coasts in the Atlantic. The
oceanic thesis would be one of the pillars of the Argentine presentation before the
Arbitral Court of 1977. In both maps the Argentine interpretation of the Treaty of 1856 left Argentina in possession of extensive coasts in the Pacific Ocean in contradiction with that thesis.
Arturo Prat as a spy in Buenos Aires In 1878 the now famous Chilean sailor,
Arturo Prat, is sent to Buenos Aires as a spy and notes that the mood of the Argentine public was in favor of a war for Eastern Patagonia, as it was believed to be full of useful natural resources. He was promoted to
frigate captain on . By the end of the following year, and following the
Argentine government's intentions to mark sovereignty in
Patagonia, particularly in the
Santa Cruz River, On he arrived in
Montevideo, where he introduced himself as a lawyer and writer, and stayed at the Hotel de la Paz. In December of the same year, he twice visited
Buenos Aires, where he established contacts and met briefly with the president
Nicolás Avellaneda. During his mission, he delivered a series of Argentine military and naval data requested by the Chilean government. He underestimated Argentina's effective military power, citing factors such as the impact of the economic crisis, the
large number of foreigners and the inexperience of its sailors, but, at the same time, he warned about the accelerated preparations for war. On the possibility of conflict, he stated: The mission was not to his liking, so he requested his return to Chile after completing the essentials of his mission; on he received authorization to return to Chile, and landed in Valparaíso in mid-February.
Treaty of 1881, the basis of the present boundaries of 1899 took place, which symbolized the acceptance of the border fixed in 1881, after years of border tension in the area The
boundary treaty would be carried out between both disputing countries in the year 1881, with
later corrections. These treaties ended much of the Southern Patagonia dispute, Argentina finally recognizing Chilean sovereignty over the entire
Strait of Magellan, while Chile recognizes Argentine sovereignty over the Patagonian coasts north of the latter and the eastern portion of
Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego. The Treaty fixes the border at the highest peaks and the watershed to the 52° parallel. Chile in 1881 was fighting in the
War of the Pacific against
Peru and
Bolivia, and with the treaty it also prevented Argentina from joining the alliance of its northern neighbors. Argentina previously in 1878 created the
governorship of Patagonia, later, in 1884, the Law of National Territories (law 1532) is sanctioned, thus emerging the Patagonian territories with their own names: Neuquén, Río Negro, Chubut, Santa Cruz and Tierra del Fuego. For its part, Chile created in 1853 the
Magallanes territory, covering all the territory claimed in Southern Patagonia, Subsequently, differences continued to arise over the international boundary. == Legal discussion ==