File No. 723.2515/162.
The Legation of Bolivia to the Department of State.2
[Memorandum of the Bolivian Foreign Office handed to the Secretary of State by the Minister of Bolivia on June 9, 1910.]
The Government of Bolivia can not allow the existing circumstances to pass without learning how Chile and Peru would receive suggestions tending to solve the Tacna-Arica controversy.
The only practical importance of those territories resides in their geographical and commercial relationship to Bolivia to the point that they may and will, with the ways of communication now building, constitute a province inseparable from the destinies of this country. For the signatories to the Pact of Ancón they possess no other than that attached to historical sentiment and national dignity.
Chile and Peru, holding the opinion of many of their eminent public men, should cease to: have a common boundary and should [Page 1199] set up the territorial sovereignty of Bolivia over an intermediate zone on the Pacific coast. It is needless to demonstrate the importance of this proposition, vital to the policy and equilibrium of the Spanish-American nations.
Bolivia can not be cut off from the sea and live; now and at all times she will, as far as her strength permits, do all that lies in her power to own at least a convenient harbor on the Pacific, and she will never be content to stand idle whenever the Tacna-Arica question, which affects the very foundation of her existence, is agitated. She has pursued in the last few years a course of absolute fidelity to the conventions by which she was deprived of her coast, and has settled her boundary disputes with Peru by sacrificing much that in the light of her duties and rights appeared incapable of impairment, confident that some day events and high Providence would compel the only possible solution of this grave South American problem: the final embodiment of all or part of Tacna and Arica in Upper Peru.
A sovereign state can not forego the possession through legitimate means of a zone of territory whose existence and prosperity depend on its traffic, commerce and proximity and whose embodiment in the country with which it maintains such intimate relations affects its safety and would assure its sovereign existence and economic development. This is the doctrine which within the canons of human rights this Chancellery professes and which Bolivia will defend with all the power of her will and spirit.
The Bolivian Government is far from seeking difficulties to bring into the controversy but it must fulfill a paramount duty in making known with entire nobility to Chile and Peru that she can not stand idle at the historic moment that confronts the three countries and that she wishes to know whether the two countries that separate her from the Pacific could listen to propositions conducive to results that would conciliate the interests and dignify of the three peoples and insure their peace, good faith and fraternity.
Within the essential purpose that the delivery of a port to Bolivia would achieve and as a direct consequence of cessation of border proximity between Peru and Chile there would lie many forms of agreement by means of which diplomacy could conciliate and seal forever and by indelible bonds the interests and aspirations of each one of the participants in the War of the Pacific.
Bolivia, in taking this step, formulates her inalienable right to exist within the solidarity of America and hopes that the Governments of both Chile and Peru, as well as the Powers able to bring their influence to bear on the course of the destinies of the South American nationalities, will appreciate the importance, sincerity and honesty of our purpose, which rest on aspirations and interests of such magnitude that nothing can suppress them now or in the future.
The Cabinet of La Paz would be ready to propose to those of Santiago and Lima satisfactory bases and compensations in the event of their being willing to enter upon negotiations and their looking upon the attitude of Bolivia in a spirit of justice.
La Paz , April 22, 1910.
- This memorandum was transcribed to all American diplomatic officers of the United States in Latin-American countries, with a request for their opinions (June 11, 1910).↩