There was a Welsh general called Thomas Pictonwho died at the battle of Waterloo; also Matthew Stuart, 4th Earl of Lennoxwho was notable as a Catholic leader of the Scottish nobility in the 16th century, and an English missionary, Allen Gardinerdied of hunger in 1851 along with other settlers in Tierra del Fuego after trying to create a settlement called Nueva on a small channel island.
The three were immortalized well south of South America, starting from the islands claimed by Argentina and Chile.
Picton, Lennox and Nueva were the center of an eternal border conflict. Always inhabited by the Yagans, the one that had the most significance was Lennox, when gold was discovered in 1888, which was exhausted at the beginning of the 20th century. The true wealth was in the sea.
At noon on Thursday, November 29, 1984, in the Sala Regia of the Apostolic Palaces, located between the Sistine and Paoline chapels in the Vatican the end of one of the biggest border problems was putthe question of the Beagle Channel.
For John Paul II, the solution to the conflict that had confronted both nations for decades had been resolved long ago, when in 1978 a war between the two countries was avoided.
The first treaty concluded with Chile was on November 20, 1826 and addressed issues of trade, transit of citizens and a commitment to assistance if independence were compromised. There was another longer friendship treaty, of 41 articles, dated April 29, 1856.
Patagonia then was an unexplored region and, although Argentina always considered it its own, Chile claimed the lands south of the Negro River to Cape Horn. In 1843 he had founded Fuerte Bulnes on the Strait of Magellan.
In the pact signed on July 23, 1881, with an additional protocol signed on September 15, 1893, different limits were established according to the high peaks and watersheds and almost five thousand kilometers of border were defined. Its article 3 stated that “as for the islands, they will belong to the Argentine Republic: the Island of States, the islets immediately adjacent to it and the other islands in the Atlantic to the east of Tierra del Fuego; and all the islands south of the Beagle Channel to Cape Horn and those west of Tierra del Fuego will belong to Chile.” The islands located south of the Beagle Channel were Chilean. But the question lay in the layout of that canal. Chile maintained that it ran between the island of Tierra del Fuego and the Picton and Nueva islands to Cabo San Pío and Argentina that it ran between Navarino island and the Picton and Lennox islands.
The difference in the layout of the canal was what caused the conflict.
The maps that Chile published in the following years included the intended layout and Argentina did not question it. In article 2 of the 1893 protocol, the bioceanic principle was established, where Argentina could not claim any point towards the Pacific nor Chile towards the Atlantic. The Pacts of May 1902 included the possibility of British arbitration to settle border disputes.
During the Peronist government, it was proposed to divide the channel in the middle and subject the islands to arbitration and in 1959 our country wanted to discuss the sovereignty of all the islands south to Cape Horn, which was rejected by the Chileans.
In July 1971, both countries – based on the General Arbitration Treaty signed in Santiago de Chile on May 28, 1902 – They asked Great Britain to form an arbitration court of five judges within the scope of the International Court of Justice to establish the limits and thus determine the sovereignty of these three islands.
The opinion of the commission, made up of an Englishman, an American, a Frenchman, a Nigerian and a Swede, was known in 1977, and collapsed the Argentine position. Our country maintained that the two arms into which the Beagle Channel is divided, the arm that borders Picton should be considered the main one for drawing the limit, and not the Moat Channel, which runs between the islands and Tierra del Fuego. .
Then the commission ruled that the limits established in the 1881 treaty, which favored the Chilean position, would be respected by marking the Moat Canal as the limit.
On January 19, 1978, Generals Videla and Pinochet and their teams held a conference at the El Plumerillo airport in Mendoza, and the eight hours in which they and their teams met, They were not able to agree on the canal issue.
Although six days later Argentina declared the British award null and void, on February 20 both soldiers signed the Puerto Montt Act but, again, the negotiations, as of November 1978, had gone nowhere.
On Christmas 1978, both countries were on the verge of going to war. until John Paul II, who had assumed his pontificate in October of that year, agreed to be the mediator after having meditated at length, as he would confess in 1985.
The Pope appointed for the task Cardinal Antonio Samorean expert on Latin America. The religious began his work on December 26, 1978. He met first with General Videla and then with the Chilean military. He was accompanied in the task by the nuncios of Chile and Argentina, Angelo Sodano and Pío Laghi. Your phrase “I see a little light of hope at the end of the tunnel”was his way of saying that there was a way to avoid a war. Our country stopped “Operation Sovereignty” (launched on the night of December 21) and the warships, which were heading to the area in question, returned to Argentine ports.
Two weeks after beginning their task, the foreign ministers of the two countries signed on January 8, 1979 the Montevideo Actin which the mediation of the Holy See was formally requested.
May 4, 1979 was the first meeting of both parties in the Vatican. On December 12, 1980, John Paul II delivered his peace proposalwhich Chile accepted three weeks later but which was objected to by Argentina. Chile was recognized with sovereignty over the islands and 12 miles of sea, and Argentina with maritime jurisdiction from there to 200 miles. Within that area of the Atlantic, he proposed the creation of a space of about 118 thousand square kilometers called the “Zone of Common or Concerted Activities.” Argentina rejected this point, considering that the points in that area were imprecise.
On January 19, 1982, our country unilaterally denounced the treaty signed in 1972 and on April 23, the Pope made a new appeal, based on the 1980 proposal. In September the two countries extended the General Treaty for the Peaceful Settlement of Disputes.
From then on, meetings between the cardinal and the Supreme Pontiff multiplied in the Casina Pius IV, a building built in 1558 inside the Vatican, where John Paul II was informed of the progress of the negotiations. These meetings were not interrupted even when John Paul II was admitted to the Gemelli Hospital in July 1981.
When he assumed the presidency in December 1983 Raul Alfonsinproposed giving a final closure to the issue and instructed Foreign Minister Dante Caputo in that regard. With his Chilean counterpart and the teams of both parties they engaged in discussions and negotiations. In July 1984, the government announced the decision to call a popular consultation.
On October 4, 1984, it was announced that the parties had reached an agreement and Cardinal Agostino Casaroli was the one who presided on October 18 over the signing of the agreement between the Argentine Marcelo Delpech and the Chilean Ernesto Videla. “It represents the result of the efforts of good will and political wisdom and prudence of the countries concerned,” said the prelate.
The treaty delimited the borders in 232 thousand square kilometers of land and maritime spaces. A dozen islands and islets went to Chile and established the southern division through Cape Horn, an old claim of our country. In addition, it limited Chilean maritime expansion in the Atlantic, the limits at the eastern mouth of the Strait of Magellan were determined and navigation conditions were established in the conflict zone.
On November 25, a popular consultation in Argentinawhere the results were overwhelming. Out of almost 13 million votes, more than 10 leaned toward “yes.” Ten days before there was a memorable television debate between Chancellor Caputo and Peronist senator Vicente Saadi, opponent of the agreement.
That November 29 the great absentee He was the one who had shouldered the mediation. Cardinal Samoré could not see his work completed as he died of a heart attack on February 3, 1983. He was succeeded by Monsignor Gabriel Montalvo Higueraa Colombian who served in various apostolic nunciatures, and was assisted by Monsignor Faustino Sainz Muñoz.
Foreign ministers Dante Caputo – seated to the right of Casaroli – and Jaime del Valle signed copies of the treaty, which they had initialed the previous month. They made it with goose feathers in the colors of the Holy See. They signed two copies, one in a red cover, which was the Chilean one, and the other in blue, the Argentine one.
The next day at noon, the Pope received both delegations separately, first the Chilean one and then the Argentine one and finally the two together.
On December 28, the Chamber of Deputies gave half-sanction to the agreement with 127 votes in favor of radicalism, intransigent, bloquistas from San Juan, popular people from Neuquén and Jujuy, against 73 from the opposition, mostly Peronist. On March 14, 1985, the Senate converted it into law 23172. by 23 votes in favor, 22 against and one abstention.
On May 2 of that year was the final act in the Vatican of the ratification of the treaty, with the presence of the Pope, who will never have forgotten the difficult mission of ending an earthly dispute that had brought both countries closer to the doors. from hell.
