724.3415/3978
The Bolivian Minister for Foreign Affairs (Alvesteguí) to the Bolivian Minister in Argentina (Rojas)10
La Paz, July 24, 1934. Please inform that Chancery that we have received its new suggestion for the pacific arrangement of the Chaco with equal deference to its previous ones and that we are disposed to consider it with the same sincere spirit as in the other occasions. We would have desired, however, that before it was concretely made into an official formula that we had been consulted previously and confidentially. Thus was the procedure in the case of the Antokoletz plan which we accepted deferentially and which Paraguay rejected, without there having remained of that rejection any other proof than the confidential information which you received from the Argentine Chancery. In such a situation we are pleased to propose: [Page 157]
- First: That the Argentine Chancery kindly incorporate in the proposed mediation the four limitrophe republics and the five which constituted the commission of neutrals. We understand that in this manner greater authority and efficacy would be given to the mediation, which would manage to harmonize all the efforts generously realized by those republics in various opportunities and which finally would be the best means to realize the accord of August 6, 1932,11 as well as to give real life to the doctrine of August 3 of the same year.
- Second: That the Argentine Chancery kindly charge itself to explore before the Paraguayan Government more concrete bases of conciliation, having on our part as a confidential basis sine qua non the recognition in our favor of a littoral zone on the Paraguay River, extending south from Bahía Negra. We wish equally to establish that we maintain our criterion regarding the cessation of hostilities only if it can be simultaneous with the arrangement of the basic question. We declare also that we ratify with the greatest pleasure our adhesion to the doctrine that neither conquest nor occupation constitute juridical titles.
- Copy transmitted to the Department by the Minister in Bolivia in his despatch No. 120, July 25; received August 2.↩
- Foreign Relations, 1932, vol. v, p. 168.↩