724.3415/2399 ½
The Bolivian Legation to the Commission of Neutrals
Memorandum
Although the Bolivian Government cannot understand the purpose of the steps which the Honorable Commission of Neutrals has been taking in order to propose a plan of arbitration, when Paraguay is beginning a general offensive in the Chaco, with the manifest intention of settling the territorial controversy by force of arms, it wishes to yield once more to the requests of the said Commission and has instructed its confidential agent in Washington to communicate to it the explanations which are requested on the “area of the Chaco”.
The Bolivian Government presumes that what the Commission of Neutrals wishes to know is the area of the Chaco which is subject to dispute or controversy, according to the judgment of Bolivia, because the term “Chaco” is too inexact and may embrace regions belonging to the unquestioned sovereignty of Bolivia, on which Bolivia does not admit of discussions with Paraguay. Parguayan diplomacy and propaganda have for some time exaggerated the area of the Chaco, extending their claims to inconceivable limits, with the sole object that an equitable settlement may assign to Paraguay the greater part or the whole of the zone which is really controversial. Against such tactics Bolivia cannot employ the same method, both because it disdains such procedure, and because the Chaco has, on the east, a fixed natural boundary constituted by the Paraguay River.
[Page 102]To speak definitely in this respect, the maximum claims of Paraguay in the past did not go farther than Bahía Negra. This is shown by official Paraguayan maps and by their plans for the census of the Chaco. The greater claims are only recent and are due to the tactics mentioned above.
As to Bolivia, bearing in mind the fact that the Chiquitos missions, which belong to the bishopric of Santa Cruz, extended in colonial times as far as San Ignacio de Zamucos, situated on parallel 21° 30', no greater area on the north can be considered as disputable than that which is bounded by the parallel corresponding to the mouth of the Apa.
With respect to the western boundary of the controversial Chaco, the Argentine-Paraguayan Treaty of 187671 determined that the western boundary of the territory which both nations claimed from the other, was determined by the meridian which passes through the sources of the principal branch of the Pilcomayo, approximately 59° 25' (west) of Greenwich. The Bolivian territory situated to the west of the diagonal line drawn from Bahia Negra to the principal branch of the Pilcomayo was covered by that treaty, in which Bolivia did not intervene. Bolivia, therefore, could hardly consider as controversial that which Paraguay itself has recognized as being undeniably Bolivian.
Nevertheless, in spite of this favorable circumstance, Bolivia would accept, for a zone of arbitration, the limit 59° 50', to which corresponds the meridian of the source of the Verde River.
Such are the Bolivian viewpoints with relation to the area of the controversial Chaco, which the Commission of Neutrals should take into account for any proposal of settlement by arbitration which it may see fit to suggest to the parties.
- Signed at Buenos Aires, February 3, 1876, British and Foreign State Papers, vol. lxviii, p. 97.↩