Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, With the Address of the President to Congress December 2, 1913
File No. 723.2515/264.
The American Minister to Peru to the Secretary of State.
Lima, December 4, 1911.
Sir: Following my cable of this date, I have the honor to report the receipt, from the Minister for Foreign Affairs, of memorandum No. 2, continuing the narrative of October 23, concerning Chilean [Page 1217] activities on the Peruvian frontier and the former’s preparation for war.
I had called at the Foreign Office to obtain confirmation or denial of some of the many current rumors, and was there informed of the preparation of the inclosed memorandum, and that up to this time the Chileans have driven as many as 5,000 Peruvians from their homes, a fact not mentioned in the memorandum.
I have [etc.]
[Untitled]
memorandum.
Chile has made no halt in the series of provocations and abuses briefly outlined in this office’s memorandum of the 23d of October last, which it found itself obliged and had the honor to submit to the illustrious Governments of the United States of America, the Argentine Republic, and Brazil.
On the contrary, anxious to draw Peru into an armed conflict which should afford it a propitious opportunity to bring about the country’s total ruin, Chile has carried its measures of violence to an extreme, has willfully planned the commission of outrages and carried out the most unjust administrative acts, with the clear intention of wresting from us the dominion of the Provinces of Tacna and Arica in a wholly one-sided manner, which is all the more injurious, scandalous, and irritating as in consequence of these acts the sacred stipulations are ignored of the treaty of Ancon, which Chile seeks not to respect or fulfill or even bring to mind. Hardly had the vexatious acts terminated which I related in my previous memorandum when, on the 24th of October, there commenced in Antofagasta a boycott of the Peruvian business establishments and hostilities were committed on the persons or all the Peruvians residing at that port.
On the 24th of October the so-called Patriotic League, organized to the image and likeness of that in Iquique, in terrifying terms notified the most prominent and influential members of the Peruvian colony, such as Mr. Meneses Cornejo and others, of their expulsion, and they were immediately given notice to quit the place in the limited space of eight days (October 31); and all this in the presence and hearing of the authorities, who, when asked for guaranties for the lives, property, and freedom of residence of those whom it was sought to expel, pleaded the lack of sufficient forces to carry out their decisions should they be opposed to the objects of the league and its members.
On the 3d of November, General Solar, commander of the forces at Tacna, imposed upon the manager of the Bank of Tacna, the Peruvian citizen Mr. Articloro Espejo, the closing of that institution without alleging any of the reasons for so doing than “the unsuitability to Chile of the existence of a Peruvian bank in the locality”; and, on the following day (the 4th), that chief carried out his threats by sending troops to the doors of the bank and closing the entry to or exit from same by all persons who were either engaged or wished to engage in business operations. Mr. Espejo called a meeting of the directors, and, rightly presuming that the outrage committed was directed principally to the elimination of his person, resigned his position as manager; without, however, appeasing the fury of the Chilean authorities, who almost simultaneously ordered him to leave the town in a very limited space of time, together with other influential Peruvians, such as the judicial agent, Mr. Enrique Zerga; the president of the Peruvian Benevolent Society, Mr. Carlos Vives, and several, others.
On the same day (the 4th of November) the doors of the Peruvian Club were forcibly closed and on futile pretexts one or more of the houses of Peruvian families were even entered, thus violating the most sacred rights of the home.
On the 7th of November, as a result of a series of threats, which eventually overpowered the good will of Mr. Hudson, the English Consul in Iquique in charge of the Peruvian Consulate at that port, it was found necessary to order Mr. Garcia, the clerk of that Consulate, to leave the place.
[Page 1218]On the 20th the injuries and outrages against the Peruvians in the town and in the nitrate districts were renewed under the direction of the famous Patriotic League, which preached the depriving of our fellow citizens of all work and brought about a strike to carry out their desires. Their pretension was, as usual, carried to the extreme of shouts and vociferations, calling for the expulsion of the Peruvian colony, which, in spite of its being honest, hardworking, and of proverbial usefulness which makes it preferable and preferred in all kinds of hard labor and in every kind of business, finds itself to-day excluded from both one and the other through the fear of those who require its services; abandoned to misery through the want of a daily wage and, consequently, constrained to leave for kinder and more hospitable regions, where its members will be treated as rational and free beings.
In speaking of this matter it is a crying shame that such a contradictory and inhuman system should, only in the case of Peruvians, seem to prevail in Chile. On the one hand they are deprived of work and their daily bread, and their expulsion is continuously the cry, while on the other hand, under the allegation that the nitrate industry can not be deprived of labor to the detriment of both owners and the State, the authorities by armed force stationed on the landing stages forcibly prevent their departure. What qualification, rationally and calmly speaking, can be given to such an absurd and contradictory state of things?
Latterly, after securing the permission of the Argentine Government, which expressed its satisfaction at the idea to our Minister in Buenos Aires, a plan was formed for an emigration of the Peruvians from Iquique to the farm ranches of Rio de la Plata, which, for reasons well known to all, require labor in harvest time; that emigration was to have begun on the 7th of October, when it was prevented by the authorities in the forcible and violent manner I have just described.
II.
Conjointly with these measures, which we may qualify as fortutious, in spite of their exceeding gravity, Chile has set on foot other extraordinary and scandalously aggressive measures against the rights of our nation which signify the disregard of our sovereignty, the violation of solemn treaties in full effect, and the most flagrant heedlessness of the principles, practices, and laws sanctioned by international law.
On the 8th of November Senator Walker Martinez submitted to the Senate a project of law authorizing the Provinces of Tacna and Arica to hold elections for Senators and Deputies, and muncipalities; as if those Provinces were not simply occupied by Chile under the treaty of Ancon, and as if it were dealing with parts of the country already definitely incorporated in the nationality, territory, and sovereignty of Chile. Such willful extralimitary action, in which is to be discerned the secret desire to generate a new and inevitable conflict, considers the fate decided and the annexation as resolved upon of portions of territory historically Peruvian, in which the stipulated plebiscite has not yet been held that is to determine their final condition and the legitimate dominion, and places in evidence the deepest contempt for the faith pledged in treaties and the most striking violation of the duties imposed by the law of nations.
States so respectable and civilized, so just and straightforward, as those to which this memorandum is addressed require no explanations on this topic nor comments which would offend their eminent wisdom. The simple enumeration of such an international absurdity is sufficient to merit their verdict of condemnation and evoke the attitude in keeping with their greatness.
The project of Senator Walker Martiuez would in itself really matter very little to Peru; for every man has a right to think, wish, and propose according to his own opinions, aspirations, and interests; but the extremely grave and injurious point of the project is that it should be openly patronized by the Government of Chile. Indeed, the Chilean Council of State, in a session presided over by His Excellency Mr. Barrion Luco himself, the President of that country, decided on the 15th of November instant to include the project in the matters to be submitted for discussion during the present extra session of Congress; on which account it is to be feared that very soon the legislative power of our southern neighbor will sanction it .as a law, thus consummating the outrage planned by the measure and legalizing the iniquity which the project in each and every one of its clauses embodies.
A few days ago the director of the irrigation of the Valley of Tacna, Mr. V. Belaude, a Peruvian citizen, was summoned by the above-mentioned Gen. Solar [Page 1219] to appear before him, and was by him obliged peremptorily and under threats to sign his resignation, being replaced in that post, which is filled according to .Chilean law by election and by virtue of which he was elected, by a Chilean employee directly appointed by that chief. One would at first imagine that such an outrageous usurpation of functions was the result of a personal display of furious hatred of Peru, which inspires the acts of all the Chilean officials. But it is not so. There is at the bottom of it all another plan, aggressive and striking, like the rest. On that same day, the 15th of November, the Government of Chile presented to the extra session of Congress another project for the granting of gratifications to the soldiers, subofficers, and revenue officers, etc., in Tacna and Arica, which gratifications are to be expressly expended in the acquisition by the grantees of country farms in both Provinces; and it can not otherwise be presumed, given the information in possession of this office, than that the forced resignation of the director of irrigation, Mr. Belaude, and his illegal substitution by a Chilean employee, are directed to the obtaining of the administration of water at their discretion, and the cessation of the present irrigation concessions; in a word, the object being to commit hostilities on the Peruvian agricultural population, who impeded in cultivation in every way, and through the ruin of their interests, will find themselves in the dire necessity either of promising to vote for Chile in the projected one-sided plebiscite or parting with their small property holdings, selling them at infamous prices to Chilean buyers, who later will invoke their new conditions of property holders in order to claim direct participation in the holding of the plebiscite.
The same is the object of the last decree, issued on the 21st of November, which establishes that all those who were born in Tacna and Arica after 1885 are subject to the Chilean law concerning recruits and conscription of the 5th of September, 1900; that they are in consequence to be called out for military service in the Chilean Army, and are consequently obliged to matriculate in the conscription lists, which matriculation is to be effected in the first 15 days of January, 1912. To this end Gen. Solar, on the date above mentioned, has written to the offices of the civil register requesting a list of those born between 1885 and 1911; and Gen. Arancibia, according to advice received from Señor Holder Freyre, our governor at Tacaco, which is on the frontier, has been in Tarata since the beginning of November (the 9th) on a like mission in connection with the civil registers’ offices of that place.
It is natural to suppose, in the face of this decision of the Government of Chile, when strictly carried out by the subaltern authorities, that all the young Peruvians thus threatened with being made Chilean conscripts will, in their unswerving and conspicuous patriotism, have to choose voluntary expatriation rather than the possibility of entering into a service so opposed to their dignity as men and the sentiments of loyalty to the country of their birth; and then when their emigration is consummated and the two Provinces are stripped of all the Peruvian element, conscious of their rights and competent to vote, we shall see the Chilean Government mockingly invite Peru to hold the plebiscite which ought to have been held 17 years ago and which Chile has indefinitely postponed under a thousand pretexts until it finds., as a result of this series of violent and scandalous measure, the Chilean element there predominant, as if Peru—who well knows that the Peruvians of Tacna and Arica are the only ones who ought to choose their nationality in the postponed plebiscite, and not the Chileans who have nothing to decide with regard to a nationality which they possess ab origene—could accept solutions prepared in a cold-blooded manner to their detriment, the formula of which is seen to have been resolved upon beforehand, ignoring all mutual agreement, with complete disregard for our right and scorn for the most rudimentary justice.
Our agents in Germany have opportunely informed us of a very recent and large order for warlike elements, which Chile has given to that country, and have drawn our attention to the eloquent circumstances that this order was and continues to be called for with a condition of supreme urgency.
In Arica, Tacna, and Tarata there remain the 7,000 men which our gratuitous and pertinacious enemy concentrated there under the pretext of military maneuvers; and we are in possession of trustworthy information of an early, successive, and secret concentration in the same region of up to 50,000 men; all of which information, like the foregoing, go to prove without a shadow of a doubt that a plan is to be executed in the near future with the purpose of causing fresh ruin or a fresh outrage on the Republic of Peru.
[Page 1220]We are well aware as to the nature of this plan, but the Peruvian Foreign Office refrains from presenting it at present in all its nakedness and repugnancy, since its desire is that the present document shall be submitted as based, not on mere conjectures but on solid facts.
III.
As will be seen from all the foregoing, the situation between Peru and Chile appears to be daily growing in gravity, and the imminence of a contest on the coasts of the South Pacific more certain.
If the conditions of the presumptive combatants were those of approximate equality, the abstention of the great powers of the continent would be a natural event, inclined as they naturally are to a customary neutrality. But the enormous inequality of the land and naval forces of the two countries—Chile, the stronger of the two, having the further advantage of an alliance, either tacit or explicit, with all those with whom Peru has unsettled boundary questions: an alliance directed to the polonization [“polonización” in the original] and ruin of Peru—gives this interminable international contest the character of spoliation—without risk, counterpoise or danger—comparable to those murders which penal science calls qualified and which are committed in cold blood and without the possibility of defense.
Peru, with great faith in the reality and efficacy of international law, places its trust in the great nations which, exercising their noble and altruistic purposes, mediated in its conflict with Ecuador at the mere sign of a rupture; and trusts that they will now adopt like action in this case in order to prevent Peru—out of pure malevolence and pride, for the sake of the display of a might born of and supported with the spoils taken from the vanquished—from being bled and mutilated in the presence and with the knowledge of the civilized world, only because it has committed the strange and horrible crime of refusing to allow that spoliation to be amplified and extended with its own consent and in flagrant violation of the laws and obligations by which the conqueror spontaneously bound himself to abide in a solemn treaty concluded without the slightest indication of error, violence, or deceit—defects which it is impossible to suppose existed in the conqueror, who at the time the treaty was signed was not only well aware of their meaning, but was strong and powerful by reason of his victory.