File No. 723.2515/266.
The American Chargé d’Affaires at Buenos Aires to the Secretary of State.
Buenos Aires, November 17, 1911.
Sir: I have the honor to report that while calling upon the Minister for Foreign Affairs, yesterday to obtain the agreement of the Argentine Government to the appointment of Mr. Garrett to this post, the Minister told me that about a week previous he had received a memorandum from the Peruvian Government enumerating many annoying acts committed by the Chilean authorities in the Provinces of Tacna and Arica against Peruvian citizens residing there, and drawing the attention of the “mediating Powers” to the particularly harassing attitude of the Chilean Government as shown by these acts, and requesting the cognizance on the part of the “mediating Powers” thereof with a view to putting an end to them.
The Minister went on to say that Peru, by this memorandum, was endeavoring to extend the friendly intervention on the part of the United States, Brazil, and Argentina in the Peru-Ecuador boundary dispute to include the long-unsettled Tacna-Arica question. He assumed that a similar communication had been made to the other two Governments of the tripartite mediation and that they had not taken any steps in the direction desired by the Peruvian Government, since he had received no information in the matter from the Argentine representatives at Washington and Rio de Janeiro. To the Minister’s question as to whether I had been advised in the matter, I replied that my Government had made no communication to this Legation relative to the receipt of such a memorandum as he had just described.
Dr. Bosch then went on to say that a short time ago the Brazilian Government had offered its good offices to Chile as a mediating power in settling amicably with Peru the Tacna-Arica question, and that these overtures had been received with distinct signs of annoyance by the Chilean Government. From this, and from statements which he said had recently been made to him by the Chilean Minister, he drew the conclusion that any offers of intervention by friendly [Page 1213] powers would be distasteful to Chile. He further said that in Peru the matter was so complicated by political considerations that there was apparently no hope of its Government voluntarily accepting a monetary compensation until there should appear, in that country, a strong statesman, unswayed by spasmodic public demonstrations or the certainty of ending his political career.
I have [etc.]