Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, Transmitted to Congress, With the Annual Message of the President, December 5, 1881
No. 586.
Señor Garcia to Mr. Evarts.
New York , December 18, 1880. (Received December 21.)
Sir: I have the honor to transmit to you a copy of the circular which the secretary of foreign relations of Peru has addressed, under date of 5th November, ultimo, to the diplomatic agents of my country abroad. I would have desired to go in person to fulfill the gratifying duty of reading the document in question to your excellency, as therein prescribed, but a serious illness prevents me.
I improve, &c.,
circular.
Lima , November 5, 1881.
To the diplomatic agents of Peru.
The mediation offered by the United States of North America in order to put an end to the war in the Pacific, and accepted by the allies with the greatest sincerity [Page 962] and self-denial, has failed in consequence of the absurd pretensions of Chili, who has likewise refused the arbitration proposed in the conferences of Arica, because, as she does not seek justice, neither does she desire an impartial judge.
We have gone as far as dignity and honor permit us, endeavoring to forget our just indignation and the anger which Chilian vandalism has excited in the breast of the people. The noise of arms, which has not ceased, even when the enemy affected to enter upon the paths of conciliation, will therefore continue.
All that is inhuman, disastrous, and abominable in the present struggle, and whatever may occur until its end, will be exclusively chargeable to Chili, who has allowed herself to be carried away by the most ignoble and degrading passions, which cannot be satisfied but by the complete extermination other adversaries, which she considers easy in the midst of her madness caused by the innocent blood she had shed, and her depredations and iniquities. She accepted the mediation with the deliberate intention of making it useless if Peru accepted it, reserving to herself the placing of insurmountable difficulties in the way of an agreement.
Thus is explained that, at the same time that she agreed to such a measure of friendly reconciliation, she brought ruin and devastation to the undefended departments of the coast of the north, destroying in a moment valuable property, the result of industry, and the disappearance of which is prejudicial to commerce.
Thus is explained her tenacious obstinacy in fixing on the port of Arica, a place under the pressure of her arms, for the holding of the conferences. She endeavored to irritate our susceptibility in order to leave to us, at least in appearance, the responsibility of refusing to enter into the conferences for peace.
Thus is explained how, in the first of them, her plenipotentiaries presented, as unalterable, conditions the acceptance of which would have been an ignominious suicide.
Peru, after having deferred to everything which was merely fortuitous, and controlling the fiery impetus of her pride, which, on the other, hand, she satisfied by ordering her plenipotentiaries not to stipulate, except in the last case, the cessation of hostilities during the conferences, assumed in these the noble attitude she has maintained since the commencement of the war, and which she will not deviate from to its end.
The law of honor, and only that, prescribed to her the taking part, unarmed, in the struggle, and she feels quite sure of concluding it with honor and glory.
Here it is as well to record briefly the conduct observed by Chili since the commencement of the war, always the same in her uncontrollable employment of double dealing and treachery.
After obtaining immense advantages in the two treaties of 1866 and 1874, respecting boundaries with the neighboring Republic of Bolivia, unsatisfied and restless then, and every day still more so, at not having pushed her frontiers to the point her covetousness longed for, she waited the first opportunity and sought the first pretext which might present itself to revindicate, according to the language employed by her on the occasion, the rich territories which international faith has guaranteed definitively to our ally.
We feel ashamed at having to present to the world the occasion which Chili found propitious for the realization of her unlawful design; such was the tax of ten cents, sanctioned by the Congress of Bolivia, on the “Compañia de Salitre y Ferrocarriles de Autofagasta,” which then declared itself in a most skillful manner under the projection of Chili.
The diplomacy of this republic anticipated and hastened the proceedings of Chili; very soon afterwards a rupture of relations took place; Chili spoke of arbitration as to-day she does of mediation, and obtained, as she now wishes to do with respect to the latter, that it should remain a chimera. Thus she pretended, according to the system to which she is accustomed, to give a color of justice, first, to the sudden invasion of Autofagasta, and afterwards to that of the whole Bolivian coast.
Peru, who prides herself on having initiated almost from the commencement of her independent life, with the most exalted views, the real fraternity of the American republics; who has on different occasions assembled in her capital congresses for such an important object; who at this very moment has the pleasure to see in this city the congress of jurists of her sister republics which endeavor to realize the beautiful ideal of harmonizing the institutions of modern society; Peru, leagued by a treaty of defensive alliance with Bolivia, the secret of which for well-founded reasons was stipulated in it, but which imposed on her a mission of peace in the disagreement between her ally and Chili, went to Santiago animated with the most sincere wishes; and it is necessary to acknowledge that neither good-will nor the most assiduous solicitude was wanting on the part of our representative in the fulfillment of his honorable mission.
The secret, merely official, of the alliance (because for statesmen in the three republics, with few exceptions, no such secret existed) served as a pretext to the Government of Chili for rejecting the mission of Señor Lavalle, rendering useless the fraternal purposes of Peru, precipitating the declaration of the casus fœderis, and immediately afterwards darting upon our coast, commencing the series of shocking hostilities which [Page 963] have continued since, each time with more fury, and which she proposes to crown worthily without any other limit than the extent of her power to carry them out.
Chili, on turning her arms against Peru, who she knew could only defend herself by her courage and her natural nobleness, was under the delusion that she could humiliate and trample upon Peru without great efforts or sacrifices.
Desperate and frantic at being undeceived, she carried to a greater extent than was conceivable, even to those acquainted with that nation, her barbarous hostilities.
Nothing has sufficed to stay the hands of our ruthless enemies. Neither the undefended state of the towns, nor the innocence of the victims, nor the chastity of the women, nor the weakness of infancy, nor the veneration due to old age, nor unfortunate courage, nor the convulsions of agony, nor the sacred character of neutrality, nor the even more sacred character of the ambulances in which the wounded have been assassinated without pity, nor the sanctity of the temples, in fact no respect, divine or human, not even that due to her own honor, has been sufficiently powerful to make Chili return to the bosom of Christian civilization, in which, after what has been referred to, it is licit to doubt whether she ever really was, notwithstanding her ridiculous vanity and much talked of progress.
Full of hatred and envy against Peru, whose superiority cannot be unacknowledged without blotting out history and stifling the voice of a fame which has become a universal proverb; drunken with blood and devoured by thirst for our fabulous riches, Chili proclaims an attack upon this capital which she considers as the last bulwark of defense of Peru. For this reason she has not hesitated to reject, openly, the arbitration proposed by our plenipotentiaries at Arica, who designated at the same time as judge the great republic of the north, which had the highest title in every respect to fulfill such a noble and humane duty. Chili would not admit it, under the frivolous pretext that the time for arbitration had passed, as if at any moment the intervention of wisdom and justice should not be welcome in order to put an end to a struggle which is a disgrace, not only to America but to Europe, and when only a short time ago, the 3d of September last, she has made a treaty with the United States of Colombia in which it is stipulated that all differences between both republics are to be settled by arbitration, and when Peru has been asked to adhere to said treaty by an invitation received by our government only by the last steamer.
Peru is, therefore, for Chili a hateful exception in treating of peace. Be it so! Let her come, not as she imagines, to end, but to begin the war. The generous blood which Peru has shed in torrents will become fruitful. The entirely disinterested worship which she pays to honor, without being terrified by the sacrifice of all her other treasures, which she considers as secondary, will give to her arms the reward they deserve. Her heroes of to-day will repeat the action’s of those of yesterday, and the crown of a final triumph, so much the more splendid as it will have been costly, will bind her proud and immaculate brow.
This is the faith of the government of his excellency the supreme chief, to whom the republic, on constituting him arbiter of her destiny, charged him, above all, with the triumph of the national arms. He will omit nothing to attain this object, and he confides in attaining it as the judgment of God in the duel to the death which has become inevitable, owing to the want of reason and the insolence of our enemy.
You will be pleased to read this dispatch to the minister for foreign affairs, and leave him a copy should he desire it.
May God preserve you many years.
- This translation is taken from the South Pacific Times of November 12, 1880.↩