INTERNATIONAL: Right and Good

The Americas settled last week their toughest boundary dispute in a way which did them proud. The final awards that ended the century-old quarrel between Bolivia and Paraguay over the title to the Chaco Boreal* were made in the names of the Presidents of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Peru, Uruguay and the U.S. And no one could fail to contrast the operation of Pan-American peace machinery with that recently observed in Munich.

First there were three years (1932-35) of disastrous warfare over the half-desert, half-swamp of the Chaco. About 100,000 men lost their lives. Then there were three years of patient negotiations at Buenos Aires. Last July Bolivian and Paraguayan representatives signed an agreement submitting to final arbitration by the six Presidents, pledged to act ex aequo et bono—”according to what is right and good.” Two weeks later Paraguay’s electorate voted ten-to-one to accept any boundary awards made. Bolivia’s Constitutional Assembly soon followed suit.

Working under no threat of immediate mobilization or war, the personal representatives of the six Presidents proceeded—almost leisurely, if compared to last month’s hasty Czechoslovak map redrawing—to have photographic surveys of the disputed, triangular-shaped territory taken, to consider what would be natural boundaries, to take full economic account of such entities as river valleys and mountain ranges. The arbitrators were to make their awards on the basis of “antecedents” as well as problems of “mutual security and geographic and economic necessities.”

By last week the commission had decided “what is right and good.” To Paraguay the map makers awarded the lion’s share of the area. Paraguay will get about three-quarters of the disputed Chaco Boreal, an area about the size of Missouri. Generally regarded as impassable swamp in winter and dry-as-dust desert in summer, the Chaco has long been held by Paraguay to be potentially a land of cattle raising, wheat and cotton growing.

To Bolivia went a strip of the western Chaco, the border drawn so that it keeps Paraguay 100 miles away from Bolivia’s rich oil fields. Most notable Bolivian gain, however, is a gateway to the sea through the Paraguay River. Ever since the War of the Pacific (1879-1883), in which Chile defeated the combined Peruvian-Bolivian armies, Bolivia has sat in her Andean aerie without a handy water outlet for her tin, silver and oil. Between Bolivia and the Pacific there were 75 miles of none-too-friendly Chile. The final arbitration in 1929 of the Tacna-Arica dispute between Peru and Chile, in which Bolivia had hoped for a corridor, gave Bolivia nothing.

Since that time the land named for Simon Bolivar has adopted a Drang nach Osten (Drive toward the East) policy of her own, with only tough little Paraguay to oppose her in obtaining a water route to the Atlantic. Now Bolivia will have a small corridor between the Brazilian border and the new Paraguayan border (see map) to the Paraguay River, where she can build a port of her own. By filling in swampland, roads and railroads can be built from the Andean plateau to that port. From there Bolivian products can be transported down the broad Paraguay River into the Paraná River, then into the River Plata and finally into the Atlantic. Puerto Casado, further down the river in Paraguay, may also be made a free port.

The genesis of the Chaco dispute was a 16th-Century royal grant. Ignorant of New World geography, the Spanish Crown granted conflicting titles to two audiencias (old Spanish territorial divisions). The Latin-American republics formed after winning independence from Spain generally followed the old Crown grants. From 1810 on the Chaco dispute smoldered. Although in 1894 a straight line was arbitrarily drawn to indicate the two borders, the controversy continued and in 1932 it burst into a declared war. No less than 18 attempts at arbitration of the dispute failed. The League of Nations once imposed an arms embargo, the U. S. followed suit. Finally the Pan-American Conference of 1934 at Montevideo took up the question, arranged a truce a year later, then began its long, drawn-out negotiations.

To most South Americans last week’s boundary drawing seemed a final settlement, unlikely to cause any future war between Paraguay and Bolivia.

* El Gran Chaco (Great Chaco), bestriding the Pilcomayo River before it meets the Paraguay River, is in Argentina as well as Bolivia and Paraguay. El Chaco Boreal (Northern Chaco) is wholly north of the Pilcomayo River, has concerned only Bolivia and Paraguay.