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Latin American Wars

Many topics of interest to students of Latin America have been connected with boundary disputes. For the most part those disputes originated because of the vague character of the grants or delimitations of territory which were made by Spain and Portugal during the colonial regime. As in the case of early English land grants in North America, natural boundaries were inaccurately understood and limitary points were sometimes mentioned which later could not be located. Again, some laws and decrees concerning boundaries were never executed. There were cases in Which the grants presumably overlapped. With the exception of endeavors to locate the Spanish-Portuguese boundary line, scarcely any attempts were made to survey the boundaries before the Spanish and Portuguese colonies separated from their respective motherlands. Indeed, so far as the Spanish Indies were concerned, there was little need of such delimitation ; for the entire dominions of Spain in America were viewed as one vast estate which should be exploited for the benefit of the motherland.

The original basis of organization was the division of the American territories made by the Emperor Charles V in 1542, between two great Viceroyalties which he created, one in Mexico and the other in Peru. The Viceroyalties were divided into royal audiencias, considered as "major provinces." The Audiencia was a superior judicial tribunal, which, in addition under the ancient colonial regime, was a governing body exercising administrative functions and having civil jurisdiction over one or more provinces; also the name given to the territory over which its jurisdiction extended.

Under the denomination "new Spain," that is, Mexico, are included, by virtue of an ancient order, the four Royal Audiencias of Santo Domingo (1526), Mexico f 1527), Guatemala (1543) and Guadalajara (1548). Under the name of Peru, the law of Charles II, by virtue also of an ancient order, comprehends the seven Royal Audiencias of Panama (1535), Lima (1542), Santa Fe de Bogota (1549), Charcas (1559), Quito (1563), Chile (1609) and Buenos Aires (1661).

In the XVIIth century that territorial division was altered by the creation of two more Viceroyalties—those of New Granada and Buenos Aires—which were constructed out of territories taken almost wholly from the jurisdiction of the Viceroyalty of Peru. The boundaries of the Viceroyalty of Santa Fe were reduced by the institution of the Captaincy-General of Venezuela, with an independent government and its own audiencia (1742, 1777 and 1786), and the restitution to the Viceroyalty of Peru of the province of Maynas (1802) and Guayaquil (1803 and 1806), of the Audiencia of Quito.

The Viceroyalty of Buenos Aires was created July 7, 1778, from the Audiencia districts of Buenos Aires and Charcas and certain territories of Chile. The Audiencia of Charcas, later called Chuquisaca, or Upper Peru, returned to form a part of the Viceroyalty of Peru in 1810. The Captaincy-General of Chile, which already had come to enjoy a high degree of autonomy, acquired it completely by virtue of the royal decree of March 15, 1798.

On the initiation of the insurrectionary movement, Spain's dominions stood divided and organized into seven great circumscriptions: the Viceroyalty of Mexico in North America, the Captaincy-General of Guatemala in Central America, the Viceroyalty of New Granada and the Captaincy-General of Venezuela in the northern part of South America, the Viceroyalty of Peru, in the center of South America and the Captaincy-General of Chile and the Viceroyalty of Buenos Aires in the southern part. Each of those great circumscriptions embraced one or more audiencias, various provinces governed by intendents, and different inferior governmental entities (districts, lieutenantcies, corregimientos, etc.).

The disagreements of the Spaniards, owing to their doubt as to whether they should yield obedience to Ferdinand VII or to the Supreme Junta established in the Peninsula as a result of the French invasion of 1808, and the weakness of the authorities who replaced the Viceroy Iturrigaray (deposed by those who suspected him of bearing little affection for the sovereignty of that monarch), all favored the insurrectionary movement in Mexico, which began with the so-called "grito de Dolores" (war cry of Dolores) hurled forth by Hidalgo, the parish priest of the town of that name, in 1810. That attempt failing, others were launched by the Priest Morelos (1812), and Mina (1817); both uprisings were quelled by the arms of Spain. The news of the revolution in Spain in 1820 revived the insurrection, and the independence of the new republic was definitely assured by General Santana's victory over the Spanish forces at the battle of Tampico in 1829.

Except for certain isolated attempts at insurrection, the provinces of the ancient Captaincy-General of Guatemala* which comprised Central America, remained submissive until the proclamation of the independence of Mexico, when they also declared themselves independent on the 15th of September, 1821, and—peacefully, however—united with the Mexican empire of Iturbide; but, on the dissolution of the empire, in March, 1823, they met in a constituent assembly, and, in July of the same year, ratified their independence, not only with respect to Spain, but Mexico also, and from all other powers in the world. That assembly framed the constitution of the United States of Central America of November 22, 1824, thus forming a republican confederation composed of the five States of Guatemala, Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica, and having its own constitution.

The insurrection of the Viceroyalty of Buenos Aires began in the city of that name in May, 1810, with the dismissal of the Viceroy and the institution of a junta which started to govern in the name of Ferdinand VII. In 1811 that junta was replaced by a triumvirate which framed the "Ptovisional Ordinance for the Government of the United Provinces of the Rio de la Plata." On the 9th of June, 1816, after various vicissitudes, a congress, convened at Tucuman, proclaimed the independence of the "Confederate States of the Rio de la Plata," which remained definitively separated from Spain.

Paraguay, which belonged to the Viceroyalty of Buenos Aires, did not wish to respond to the call of the Junta of that town, but, acting on its own account, and by a single stroke, achieved its independence in 1811. A republic was at once instituted, which, by one congress, was organized under the leadership of two consuls (1813), and, by another, under one consul (1814), and continued an effective existence for a most extended period under continual dictatorship (of Dr. Francia and of Lopez).

The district of Uruguay, which constituted the so-called "Eastern Border" of the Viceroyalty of Buenos Aires, separated from Spain in 1814 after the Spanish general had evacuated Montevideo, declaring itself independent in a congress convoked by General Artigas. The disorders following upon the emancipation supplied the motive for the occupation of that territory by the Portuguese from Brazil (1817) and its annexation to that country (1821) under the name of the Province of Cis-Platina; but, on Brazil's separation from Portugal in 1822, Uruguay again declared herself independent.

The revolutionary movement was initiated almost simultaneously in Venezuela, New Granada and Quito and was similar, in the matter of principle involved, in the constitution of juntas recognizing Ferdinand VII and in pronouncements of a political nature, but with different aspects and result afterwards. The celebrated Simon Bolivar, afterwards called the Liberator, ratified in 1813 the declaration of independence of Venezuela, established and exercised at Caracas' (of which he was a native) a dictatorial government, and extended by his arms the insurrectionary movement, until 1819, in which year the fate of the ancient Viceroyalty was decided.

The movement in the Captaincy-General of Chile began at its capital, Santiago, in the month of September, 1810, with the formation of a governing junta, and invoked the name of Ferdinand VII, which had become the general rule at that time. The movement soon developed into revolution, the Chileans struggling against each other for power. Because of those dissensions, the Viceroy of Peru had little difficulty in suppressing the revolution in 1814; but, on General San Martin's placing himself at the head of the insurrection in 1817, with the support of Buenos Aires, and, after winning the battles of Chacabuco and Maipii, the ind-jendence of Chile was achieved in 1818 and an assembly at once proceeded to frame the constitution of the republic (1822).

Peru remained faithful to Spain until 1820. In that year an Argentine-Chilean army invaded its territory under the command of General San Martin, who in his march excited the country to revolt. After his entry into Lima on the 28th of July, 1821, he proclaimed its independence. The region called Upper Peru, composed of the Provinces of Charcas, La Paz, Cochabamba, Potosi and Santa Cruz de la Sierra, which had formed the ancient Audiencia and Gobierno of Charcas, with its capital at La Plata, rose in insurrection in 1818 (after some abortive attempts in 1810), and succeeded in emancipating itself, with the support of Bolivar and Sucre, in 1825.

Although the doctrine that the boundaries of the emancipated nations of Spanish America should ordinarily coincide with the boundaries of the corresponding colonial administrative divisions or subdivisions was not embodied in any general treaty among the new nations, yet its general acceptance as a guiding principle by LatinAmerican publicists caused it to be designated as the uti possidetis of 1810. Advocated by some statesmen partly as a defense against possible claims of territory in America by European powers upon the ground that some of it was res nullius, that doctrine became the theoretical basis for the territorial delimitation of the Spanish-American states. However, as that doctrine rested not upon actual surveys of the metes and bounds of those colonial areas, but upon the laws and orders of a government seated in Madrid, it led during the national history of Latin America to a large number of acrimonious boundary disputes. A most striking feature of those disputes has been the success with which Brazil has urged her claims against her Spanish-American neighbors. This has come about partly because Spain made concessions to Portugal in the eighteenth century and partly because the Brazilians have often reenforced their paper claims by the actual occupation of disputed territory.

In general, Latin-American boundary controversies have taken a similar course: acrimonious diplomatic correspondence—which sometimes caused a rupture of diplomatic relations or even armed" clashes between the parties—commonly each party insisting upon its extreme claim; the copying in archives of Spain or Portugal of such documents as would best support the conflict ing claims; and often the fortunate reference of the dispute to the arbitral services of a neutral power. Perhaps the most pleasing feature of those contentions about territory, which frequently neither of the contending parties vitally needed, was the development of the practice of submitting international disputes to arbitration.