At the end of the 1970s, the military dictatorships of Argentina and Chile were about to unleash a conflict in the Southern Cone due to a border problem at its southernmost point: the Beagle Channel. The conflict showed the difficulty of negotiating border issues between two authoritarian dictatorships, willing to unleash a war based on national pride, despite being on the same side of the Cold War and committing both extensive human rights violations against the left-wing opposition. .
Since the 19th century, both countries have been dragging a complex border conflict over an immense limit of more than 5,000 kilometers, especially in the extreme south. This was a more recent conquest and a crucial geopolitical importance, since it maritime controls Cape Horn, the only natural interoceanic passage between the Pacific and the Atlantic along with the artificial Panama Canal, as well as being key to claiming rights in Antarctica and the resources that these immense waters can contain.
In 1881 a treaty was signed in which Argentina gave up the coasts and waters of the Strait of Magellan, while Chile did the same with Patagonia. The latter for Chile was a painful renunciation of the Atlantic, only possible as it was in turn in conflict with Bolivia and Peru. The document also awarded Chile “all the islands south of the Beagle Channel up to Cape Horn and those west of Tierra del Fuego.” The ambiguity of this phrase, by not expressly mentioning exactly where the Beagle Channel passed or which islands and islets were on one side and the other, will be the origin of the new disputes. These will have their epicenter around the Picton, Nueva and Lennox islands, but also in other smaller islets and the domain of the enormous surrounding seas.
During the following decades, the dispute remained latent, with constant failed attempts to resolve it, while Chile colonized the islands in question. Diplomatic claims and minor incidents followed one another and, after multiple failures, in the early 1970s, Chile took the dispute to arbitration by the British Crown. Surprisingly, Argentina, in principle more in favor of a bilateral solution than of an a priori unfavorable legal one, accepted this arbitration. England formed a court with five magistrates from the International Court of Justice, which ruled unanimously in favor of Chile in May 1977. At that time, General Augusto Pinochet was in command on one side of the Andes and, on the other, a junta military with also General Jorge Rafael Videla at the head.
They may seem similar regimes, but decision-making was very different in each of them, which will fully affect the conflict that was to come. Power in the Chilean dictatorship was highly concentrated in the dictator and his environment. However, on the Argentine side the situation was more chaotic, since power was shared by the three branches of the armed forces, with very different interests and loyalties that undermined the presidency. This, with sectors of the army, and especially the Navy, clamoring for the “mutilated homeland” and an intransigent position, was potentially dangerous.
Thus, after knowing the arbitration, the Chilean government hastened to recognize it, installing military posts on the islands. However, the Argentine response was blunt, announcing Foreign Minister César Guzzetti that “no commitment obliges to comply with what affects the vital interests of the Nation or that harms sovereign rights that have been expressly submitted to the arbitrator’s decision.” Videla was under great pressure from the warmongering sectors of his own army, and he chose to force a negotiated solution with Chile through an extensive military mobilization by way of pressure and ultimatum. The hardliners saw the opportunity to bend a weakened Chile, with international justice on its side but very isolated internationally, since it had had the audacity to take the violation of human rights to the very capital of the United States and torture a British doctor.
This international isolation, including the difficulty of rearming itself -which caused Chile to turn to Asian markets on the black and overpriced-, made the Pinochet dictatorship opt for a defensive strategy. This consisted of intensive training of its armed forces and the conscientious fortification of the territories in contention, waiting for a possible Argentine offensive. The intention was to confront her or dissuade her, while opening up to negotiate despite having international legality on her side. Although numbers and weapons were against the Chilean side, the fortification of their positions and their morale, coupled with the myth of invincibility in various conflicts with their neighbors (Peru, Bolivia), should not be underestimated. In addition, we are in the years after the surprising Israeli victories against its numerous adversaries, a parallelism that the Chilean army studied carefully.
In the second half of 1977 and throughout 1978, attempts at bilateral negotiation took place with various meetings between the dictators (January and February 1978, in Mendoza and Puerto Montt). But the failure of the negotiations and the Argentine position heated up the hard sectors of the Chilean government, in favor of following the legal path in the International Criminal Court in The Hague, and the nationalist press of both countries, always incendiary. Although in Argentina Videla himself had doubts about him, the internal pressure and the fear of being overthrown if he contradicted the intransigents pushed him to definitively bet on military escalation.
War was definitely on the table. Both countries mobilized their troops on the border, the Argentines preparing an offensive and the Chileans a defense and subsequent counteroffensive. All this alarmed certain international actors. On one side was the US which, in a context of the Cold War, watched with horror as two military and anti-communist dictatorships in its area of influence were about to collide. On the other hand, there was the Catholic Church, worried about seeing two Catholic countries at odds, and with enormous influence and moral authority over their respective armed forces. From military sectors, especially by Videla himself, it has been said without any proof that the USSR and Cuba tried to push the negotiations to fail and the conflict to break out.
The tension also attracted other actors potentially interested in the conflict at the regional level against a common enemy, since Chile was pending the aspirations of Peru and Bolivia, while Argentina had open fronts with Brazil and the United Kingdom (Malvinas). . Apparently there were unsuccessful Argentine consultations to guarantee Peruvian support, a country that precisely a few years earlier, in 1975, had also planned to attack Chile to retake, together with Bolivia, the territory lost a century earlier in the War of the Pacific (1879-1884). The plans were frustrated since, unlike his predecessor, the Peruvian general Francisco Morales Bermúdez had no desire to invade Chile with the numerous Soviet weapons he had purchased, wasting the historical opportunity that Argentina offered him to make a deadly pincer on a country without strategic depth. His project was not the war against Chile, but to change the economic and political compass of the country, without breaking with the USSR.
In 1975 the Peruvian general Juan Velasco Alvarado planned to invade Chile in a massive offensive using the numerous and advanced Soviet material (T-55) that he had acquired. Pinochet’s coup was a reason for this plan, since the general was an ally of the USSR and Cuba, and had a good relationship with the murdered Allende. But the main reason was undoubtedly to retake Arica, the territory lost a century before. The plan was frustrated by the delicate health of the general and the decision of his successor, General Francisco Morales Bermúdez, to avoid it. This did not prevent the North of Chile from being planted with 80,000 mines and huge fortifications, threatening to take the Cold War in South America to an interstate level, beyond guerrilla and foquismo.
Picking up the thread of events in the Beagle Channel, at the end of December 1978 the war was dangerously close. Between days 21-22 the blood was about to reach the river, with the projected Operation Sovereignty by Argentina. This consisted of an Argentine land and naval invasion of the disputed areas and continental Chile, strongly protected by the Chilean navy and army. More than 100,000 Argentine soldiers were deployed on the Chilean border, while the inferior Chilean forces prepared to face the onslaught and both fleets prepared to collide.
In extremis, the Argentine presidency managed to wrest control of the negotiations from the hard wing, making it fall to civilian diplomats. In this way, the materialization of papal mediation was made possible, as Chile also accepted it. Despite having won the legal battle, the Chilean government feared an adverse international context and saw the Argentine offensive as imminent. On December 26, the papal nuncio, Cardinal Antonio Samoré, landed in the area. This began a series of contacts and negotiations that led both countries to sign the Montevideo Act on January 8, 1979, formally requesting the intervention of the Vatican and refusing to resolve the problem by force. He was the perfect mediator, since neither of the two regimes could confront the Church, given the enormous moral weight it had in their respective systems.
Vatican diplomacy began to work, delivering a solution proposal to both parties in December 1980, according to which Chile kept the islands with 12 miles of sea, while an immense marine domain of 118,000 square km would remain under Argentine jurisdiction, although Chile would enjoy 50% of its resources. The same result was repeated again, with Chile accepting the proposal and the Argentine military regime tearing itself apart internally by not being able to directly reject a proposal from the Vatican, but also not giving in to internal nationalist pressure.
For many months the stage froze, seeming to be close to shipwreck due to various events. In the first place, both countries detained citizens of the other accusing them of espionage, closing the border due to the arrest of two Argentine officials. In addition, in May 1981 John Paul II suffered an attack, reducing his negotiating capacity, at the same time that the papal nuncio Antonio Samoré died, a fundamental special envoy in resolving the initial crisis. Meanwhile, in Argentina the hawks took power from the hand of General Galtieri, withdrawing from the international agreements that allowed Chile to go to The Hague and breaking out the Malvinas War (1982) with the United Kingdom. It was a bet on patriotism to try to save the regime, with the justified Chilean fear that a victory would embolden the military of Buenos Aires…