Overview

Latin American countries have a long tradition of settling boundary disputes peacefully. Approximately seventeen border conflicts have been effectively resolved, more than in any other region of the world, since the Independence era. These were concluded through arbitration and mediation by European nations, the United States, Latin American countries, and tribunals of jurists. Generally these conflicts have been adjudicated as a response to immediate crises. In addition, the Inter-American System since the turn of the century and the Organization of American States (OAS), founded in 1948, created mechanisms for the peaceful conclusion of border controversies. Several pending boundary disputes in the late twentieth century are still based on the diverse claims of a colonial legacy. However, they have taken on new dimensions because the territories with rival claims contain energy and economic resources of great value. Strategic areas, too, are sources of future conflict, as are tensions arising between states from the migration and dislocation of people.

THE COLONIAL LEGACY

Boundaries in Latin America have been shaped by the colonial heritage of the Spanish and Portuguese empires in the New World. Independent states inherited demarcation lines that were once administered by Portuguese and Spanish ecclesiastical, civil, and legal bodies, each of which influenced the establishment of independent countries. Boundaries were confirmed by the principle of uti possidetis juris, which holds that new nations adopt the same boundaries as the colonial entity they replace. Since Independence in the early nineteenth century, there have emerged numerous boundary conflicts which reflect confusion over the jurisdiction of colonial viceroyalties and their subdivisions, such as captaincies-general, presidencies, and audiencias. The boundaries of these smaller administrative units were frequently as vague as the larger entities of which they were once a part. As of 2007, at least twelve countries from Mexico to the Antarctic have unsettled boundary issues and territorial claims against one or more of their neighbors. Each of them can be traced back through three hundred or more years of history, beginning with the competing imperial interests of Spain, Portugal, and their European rivals for domination of the American continent.

SOUTH AMERICA: THE NORTHERN TIER

At the northern tier of South America, boundary issues occupy a major portion of the diplomatic activity of the region's nations. For most of the nineteenth century and on into the twentieth, Colombia and Venezuela struggled to establish an acceptable boundary. An agreement in 1881 gave Colombia the entire Guajira Peninsula, which juts out into the Caribbean Sea. In 1894 Bogotá agreed to cede the eastern portion of this territory, but Venezuela rejected the compromise and demanded that the matter be submitted to arbitration. Since the 1920s partial boundary markings have been agreed on, but a definitive demarcation line including the Guajira Peninsula has yet to be established. In the late twentieth century, sea rights in the Gulf of Venezuela, the entryway from the Caribbean to Venezuela's petroleum fields in Lake Maracaibo, with possible oil resources of its own, have been a major issue in a boundary dispute between these nations. A 1980 accord gave 75 percent of the Gulf and an archipelago at its mouth to Venezuela and set up provisions for sharing equally any oil that might be found there.

Since the mid-nineteenth century, Venezuela has had a border dispute with Guyana (formerly British Guiana) in which it claims a 53,000-square-mile area west of the Essequibo River—well over half of Guyana's territory. The area contains bauxite, aluminum, timber, potentially vast hydroelectric power, and possible oil deposits off the northern coast. Since 1966 several attempts have been made to establish a boundary. Both countries have agreed to use diplomatic means to resolve the conflict, namely the good offices of a mediator. Venezuela has suggested the secretary general of the United Nations, and Guyana had proposed that the International Court of Justice rule in the matter. Like Venezuela, Guyana has an unsettled boundary with its eastern neighbor, Suriname. The dispute originates from a late-eighteenth-century conflict between British and Dutch settlers. The issue centers on the validity of a boundary formed by the Courantyne-Kutari rivers and the New River.

SOUTH AMERICA: THE ANDEAN STATES

Most of South America's Andean countries have as yet been unable to establish definitively accepted boundary lines. Disagreement has arisen over vast unsettled lands of earlier colonial powers and newfound mineral and sea resources in the region.

The War of the Pacific (1879–1882), one of the great conflicts in South American history, arose from vague boundaries. Chile, Bolivia, and Peru vied for the vast nitrate and guano resources in the Atacama Desert. The conflict also had roots in a disputed boundary between Bolivia and Chile that stemmed from their imperial colonial legacy. Territory belonging to the Bolivian department of Atacama on the Pacific Ocean had been designated as part of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata (with its capital Buenos Aires) in 1776. When Bolivia became independent, the area in question joined the new nation.

In the 1840s Peru issued licenses to companies exploiting resources in its territory of Tacna, Arica, and Tarapacá. Chile meanwhile claimed territory up to twenty-three degrees south latitude, a claim Bolivia rejected outright, saying it was an encroachment into its domain. In 1874 Chile and Bolivia established their boundary of 24 south latitude while agreeing to share resources between the twenty-third and twenty-fifth parallels through a condominium arrangement. When Peru nationalized all private mines in its nitrate-producing area of Tarapacá in 1875 to create a national monopoly, Chilean mine owners in the territory resisted the action. Bolivia in turn proposed a new tax on nitrates exported from its Atacama region in 1878. The Anglo Chilean Nitrate and Railroad Company, which had been granted a concession by Bolivia, refused to pay an export tax on its nitrate exports.

The intense rivalry among the Andean states for the vast resources in the Atacama along with a Bolivian-Peruvian treaty alliance resulted in war. When Chile ended Peru's control of the sea and defeated its army, Bolivia could no longer remain in the conflict and lost its Atacama territory. The Treaty of Ancón (1883), which ended the conflict, stipulated that Chile could hold Tacna and Arica for ten years. A plebiscite would decide the future disposition of the two areas. In 1929 Arica was ceded to Chile and Tacna to Peru. Bolivia lost its outlet to the sea.

Bolivia continues to look for access to the Pacific Ocean through territory it lost to Chile. It wants a free port on the Pacific Ocean and unimpeded access to it without paying compensation to Chile. Bolivia has presented its case for resolution before the OAS as a "hemisphere problem." This conflict is further complicated by the fact that the only corridor that Chile feels would be feasible is located along its northern border with Peru and consists of territory taken from the latter in the War of the Pacific. Peru has a treaty right, dating from 1929, to approve any arrangement involving its former territory should Chile decide to cede it to a third party. In 2007, Bolivia offered an economic incentive by promising to export its natural gas to Chile in return for access to the coastline; Chile refused the offer.

Peru and Colombia had conflicting claims to Leticia, a 4,000-square-mile area near the Putumayo River in the northeastern Peru-southeastern Colombia region. The dispute emerged from the confusion of boundaries between the colonial viceroyalties of Peru and New Granada and the existence of rubber in the region. The borders agreed upon in 1924 gave Colombia much of the disputed area between the Putumayo and Amazon rivers, including the town of Leticia. Although both sides ratified the treaty, Peru—resenting the loss of land—invaded Leticia in 1932. The League of Nations created a Commission of States (Spain, Cuba, the United States, and Brazil) to regulate the disputed region. In 1934 both nations accepted the boundaries set by the 1924 agreement, and the disputed area was then ceded to Colombia.

Vague colonial jurisdiction in a 100,000-square-mile jungle, bounded by the eastern slopes of the Andes, the Ecuadorian-Colombian border, and the Marañon River, brought Peru and Ecuador to war in 1941. Oil and rubber resources made land claims in this area valuable. The Rio Protocol of 1942, drawn up by mediators (the United States, Argentina, Brazil, and Chile as guarantor powers) and signed by both countries, gave most of the disputed territory to Peru. In 1960 Ecuador, smarting under the 1942 accord, formally declared the Rio Protocol null and void. That same year, fighting broke out in a still-unmarked area between the two states that was believed to have oil resources. Again in 1981, armed conflict erupted in the same region, known as the Cordillera del Condor. Ecuador called for the OAS to convene a meeting of its foreign ministers to deal with the issue. The four guarantor states of 1942 again arranged a cease fire in 1981. In the mid-1990s, Ecuador still demanded that the 1942 Rio Protocol be renegotiated. Peru asked that only the remaining unmarked border of 125 miles be established. After another conflict in 1995, the same guarantor states brokered another agreement, which Peru and Ecuador signed in 1998.

Paraguay and Bolivia lost substantial territory in two nineteenth-century conflicts: Paraguay in the Paraguayan War (1864–1870), or War of the Triple Alliance, and Bolivia in the War of the Pacific. They had conflicting territorial claims in the Chaco, an area of 150,000 square miles believed to have oil deposits. Boundaries were not established in the area either during the colonial era or after independence. Although both nations lay claim to the Chaco under the principle of uti possidetis juris, Paraguay began colonization projects in the 1930s to assert effective occupation, or uti possidetis actual. The three-year Chaco War (1932–1935) ended with that nation occupying a substantial part of the Chaco. In 1938 a peace treaty establishing boundary lines did not give Bolivia the access to the Atlantic by way of the Río de la Plata waterway system that it wanted. However, the mediating powers did give some of the territory under Paraguayan military occupation to Bolivia. A buffer zone of approximately 60 miles was established to separate Paraguay from Bolivia's oil deposits in the Camiri region in the Chaco.

Boundaries between Argentina and Chile were settled rather easily in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Great Andean Range, stretching 2,900 miles and separating the two states, was considered an easily recognizable divide. Between 1881 and 1905 the boundary along the northern portion of the Andes was set at a point "that divided the waters." Later erosion by rivers flowing eastward toward Argentina pushed the watershed west of the Andes to Chile. Consequently, Argentina pressed for the water divide, while Chile favored the crest. By 1905 arbitration had set a boundary line agreeable to both countries.

Further south, a more contentious boundary dispute erupted between Argentina and Chile over the ownership of three islands, Lennox, Picton, and Nueva, in the Atlantic mouth of the Beagle Channel, north of Cape Horn. The key issues were whether the channel entered the Atlantic north or south of the islands and where the channel ended and the Atlantic Ocean began. The dispute also included jurisdiction over surrounding waters, which involved potential offshore rights to rich fishing areas and undersea oil as well as strategic access to the Antarctic.

Both states agreed to submit the issue for arbitration by the British crown. A special tribunal selected by Argentina and Chile from the World Court assisted England in six years of study that resulted in awarding the three islands to Chile in 1977. Argentina rejected the decision. Three years later, under the good offices of the Vatican, Chile would receive all the disputed islands but only limited offshore rights in the Atlantic meridian passing through Cape Horn. Both countries would share scientific and economic ventures in the archipelago as well. Chile, which owned 12 miles of territorial waters east of the islands, would have to share resource development in the outer 6 miles of that strip. Argentina, sovereign in a 200-mile area into the Atlantic, would have to allow Chile to take part in resource development there, too. In 1984, with still no resolution to the issues, Pope John Paul II drafted a friendship pact, signed by both countries, which provided for continued mediation of this boundary and territorial issue. Later in the year, both countries accepted a treaty that was essentially the same as the 1980 proposal.

Brazil concluded boundary settlements with all of its neighbors (mostly Spanish American states) in the first decade of the twentieth century. Since the colonial era, Brazil had been expanding in all directions either through treaty agreements with Spain or later through occupation in the vast unchartered lands of the southern continent. In the so-called Age of Territorial Diplomacy (1880–1900), Brazil fixed its borders with countries contiguous to it mostly through the latter method.

In 1903 boundary settlements with Bolivia concerning the rubber-producing Acre region gave the territory to Brazil. In return Brazil paid about $10 million to Bolivia for the construction of a railroad to the sea by way of the Amazon River. Other boundaries were fixed in a treaty agreement with French Guiana (1900), in a convention with Argentina (1910) ratifying a treaty concluded in 1898, and in treaties with Peru (1904), Colombia (1928), Venezuela (1929), and Dutch Guiana (1931).

CENTRAL AMERICA, MEXICO, AND THE UNITED STATES

Boundary disputes in Central America have been similar in origin to those in the Southern Hemisphere. Conflicting territorial claims and the existence of valuable economic resources have been prominent among the sources of these disputes. When the Central American Federation broke up in 1838, disputes over boundaries occurred throughout the region. Yet in the twentieth century, demarcation lines have generally been established peacefully. There have been exceptions to this trend, most notably the El Salvador-Honduras War (Soccer War) in 1969. Honduras claimed territory corresponding to the colonial bishopric of Honduras. El Salvador asserted its sovereignty based on administrative areas established during Spanish rule. When Honduras expelled Salvadoran migrants from the disputed area, war broke out. The OAS was called upon to step in and mediate the issue. It took ten years for it to do so, but the result was a peace treaty signed in 1980. The agreement established a boundary for 135 miles. A commission of representatives from both nations was formed to determine the remaining areas for demarcation, mainly in the Chalatenango, La Unión, and the Goascoran River delta.

A Guatemala-Belize (formerly British Honduras) dispute as well as a Nicaragua-Colombia conflict over several Atlantic islands reflect more than border issues. They involve territorial claims of each state. As has been common in all of Latin America, conflicting colonial jurisdictions have been the main cause of the dispute between Nicaragua and Colombia over nine islands off the former's eastern coast. Nicaragua claims sovereignty over five of them. The dispute began when Spain gave the viceroyalty in New Granada (Colombia) responsibility for defending San Andrés and Providencia islands in 1803. This order was rescinded in 1806, and similar authority was given to the captaincy-general of Guatemala, of which Nicaragua was a part. During the U.S. military intervention in Nicaragua, Managua was persuaded in 1928 to recognize Colombian sovereignty over San Andrés, Providencia, and Santa Catalina islands. Nicaragua abrogated the treaty in 1980. The dispute continues unresolved. As of 2007, the dispute was before the International Court of Justice for a final settlement.

The Guatemala-Belize controversy originated with Great Britain's effective occupation of Spain's eastern Central American territory in the seventeenth century. Guatemala claims the area on the principle of uti possidetis juris, asserting sovereignty based on colonial jurisdiction. When British Honduras (later Belize) declared its independence in September 1981, it became a member of the British Commonwealth and the United Nations over Guatemala's protest. In a Heads of Agreement (Britain, Belize, and Guatemala) document drawn up the same year, Guatemala yielded on the territorial claim and Belize granted it permanent and unimpeded access to its isolated port of Puerto Barrios on the Gulf of Honduras. However, negotiations have not yet resolved this dispute definitively, and Guatemala still maintains its claim to about half of Belize's territory.

The Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo (1848), ending the Mexican-American War (1846–1848), established the middle portion of the Rio Grande as the boundary between Mexico and the United States. Floods and torrential rains in 1864 forced the river southward around an area in the El Paso-Ciudad Juárez vicinity called the Chamizal. This left Mexican territory on the north bank. The United States assumed the boundary had changed by erosion. Mexico in turn claimed the course of the Rio Grande had altered suddenly, leaving its land on the north bank of the river. A subsequent boundary dispute in 1884 over the Morteritos Island at the Texas-Tamaulipas border concluded that the demarcation line would move if the river shifted gradually. An International Border Commission was created in 1889 to implement the new guideline and deal with future disputes of this kind.

The commission was unable to resolve the disputed Chamizal area, as both states recognized that its proximity to the expanding urban centers of El Paso and Ciudad Juárez made the area valuable. Yet Mexico and the United States agreed to arbitrate the issue in 1910. The appointed commission concluded that the Rio Grande had changed course in a sudden and violent shift in 1864. Therefore, the boundary was to be reestablished as it existed in 1864. Although Washington rejected the decision, various governments attempted to resolve the controversy.

Finally, in 1963 the Kennedy administration concluded that Washington's rejection of the commission's decision had been a mistake. The dispute was resolved so that Mexico received 630 acres of the Chamizal area, including Córdova Island, an area that juts into United States territory. The latter, in turn, received 193 acres. A final agreement was signed by presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Gustavo Díaz Ordaz in October 1967. The resolution of this protracted controversy was cited as a model for the peaceful settlement of border disputes by American states. Washington, therefore, created the Chamizal National Memorial and Mexico built a park in Ciudad Juárez commemorating the settlement. While the official border has been settled, the increased immigration into the United States from Mexico has caused U.S. politicians to focus on border security. Some U.S. politicians have called for a wall to be built on the border to keep out Mexican labor, but others hope to establish a guest worker program for Mexican migrants.

CONTEMPORARY BOUNDARY AND TERRITORIAL DISPUTES

Causes of the Argentine-British Falklands-Malvinas War (1982) over a group of disputed islands go back to the sixteenth century, when both Spain and England made claims of discovery. England, France, and Spain established settlements there in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. After independence Buenos Aires claimed the islands, located some 300 miles east of the Patagonian city of Río Gallegos. However, Britain took effective control of them in 1833. Argentina seized the islands in April 1982, but Britain recaptured them two and a half months later after a brief war. Although diplomatic relations were restored between the two countries in 1990, as of 1994 there was no final settlement.

Several Latin American countries, namely Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, and Peru, have laid claim to territory in Antarctica. They have done so because of the area's geological and political continuity with the South American mainland. These states have asserted interest in a quadrant between longitude 0 and 90 west in which they have overlapping claims. But issues such as sovereignty, resources, and the presence of non-Western Hemisphere countries pose a threat to their claims there.

Chile, Argentina, and Brazil have also viewed their interests in the Antarctic as part of a wider strategic role in the South Atlantic. The Antarctic Treaty of 1959, ratified by mid-1961 by the twelve states named in the preamble (thirty-nine states by 1994) might prevent a Latin American power struggle there, but a confrontation was considered a possibility.

See alsoWar of the Pacific; War of the Triple Alliance.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Gordon Ireland, Boundaries, Possessions, and Conflicts in South America (1938).

William J. Dennis, Tacna and Arica: An Account of the Chile-Peru Boundary Dispute and of the Arbitrations by the United States (1967).

Peter Calvert, Boundary Disputes in Latin America (1983).

Jack Child, ed., Maintenance of Peace and Security in the Caribbean and Central America (1984).

Jack Child, Geopolitics and Politics in South America: Quarrels Among Neighbors (1985).

William I. Krieg, Ecuadorian-Peruvian Rivalry in the Upper Amazon, 2d ed. (1986).

J. R. V. Prescott, Political Frontiers and Boundaries (1987).

Jorge Gumucio Granier, The United States and the Bolivian Seacoast (1988).

Alan C. Lamborn and Stephen P. Mumme, Statecraft, Domestic Politics, and Foreign Policy Making: The El Chamizal Dispute (1988).

Stephen P. Mumme, The United States-Mexico Boundary (1991).

Marshall Bertram, The Birth of Anglo-American Friendship: The Prime Facet of the Venezuelan Boundary Dispute (1992).

Paul Ganster and Eugenio O. Valenciano, eds., Mexican-U.S. Border Region and the Free Trade Agreement (1992); and Ronald B. St. John, Boundaries, Trade, and Seaports: Power Politics in the Atacama Desert (1992).

Additional Bibliography

Domínguez, Jorge I., and David R Mares. Boundary Disputes in Latin America. Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 2003.

Farcau, Bruce W. The Ten Cents War: Chile, Peru, and Bolivia in the War of the Pacific, 1879–1884. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2000.

Moraes, Antonio Carlos Robert. Bases da formação territorial do Brasil: O território colonial brasileiro no "longo" século XVI. São Paulo: Editora Hucitec, 2000.

Parodi, Carlos A. The Politics of South American Boundaries. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002.

Passarelli, Bruno. El delirio armado: Argentina-Chile, la guerra que evitó el Papa. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1998.

Simmons, Beth A. Territorial Disputes and Their Resolution: The Case of Ecuador and Peru. Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 1999.

Stoddard, Ellwyn R. U.S.-Mexico Borderlands Issues: The Binational Boundary, Immigration, and Economic Policies. El Paso, TX: The Promontory, 2001.

Van Dijck, Pitou et al. Cruzando fronteras: Reflexiones sobre la relevancia de fronteras históricas, simbólicas y casi desaparecidas en América Latina. Quito: Ediciones Abya-Yala, 2004.

Winders, Richard Bruce. Crisis in the Southwest: The United States, Mexico, and the Struggle over Texas. Wilmington, DE: SR Books, 2002.

                                           Thomas Dodd