Conflict in the Southern Cone: The Argentine Military and the Boundary Dispute with Chile, 1870-1902 (review)

Conflict in the Southern Cone: The Argentine Military and the Boundary Dispute with Chile, 1870-1902. By George V. Rauch. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1999. Tables. Glossary. Bibliography. Index. xii, 229. Cloth, $69.50.

A primary purpose of this book is to correct the interpretation found in the "ample Chilean bibliography" on the boundary dispute with Argentina from the 1880s until 1902. After research in Argentine, British, and U.S. archives the author writes that "many of the leading Chilean figures involved in this process compiled their memoirs and reports according to their aspirations and according to the roles they wished to play, or those they wished they had played, rather than on the events as they actually occurred" (p. xii). With this starting point, it is safe to predict that Rauch's study won't be widely acclaimed among Chilean nationalists, military officers, and academic diplomatic historians.

The study begins with brief surveys of the frontier in Argentine history and of the origins of the boundary dispute from colonial times until the War of the Pacific. In 1879, as the Chilean fleet and army moved north to confront Peru and Bolivia, Argentine forces moved south to wrest definitive control of "the desert" from indigenous peoples. According to Rauch, "since time immemorial" Indians filtered into Argentina from Chile to raid settlements and then drive stolen cattle back across the border. Worse still, Chilean squatters on the eastern slopes of the Andes collaborated with the Indians against the Argentine settlers and ranchers, and some Indian chiefs had connections with Chilean government officials.

Remington rifles and a fierce military campaign by the Argentines killed over six thousand Indians and "the pampas were at last safe for colonization" (p. 51). From that point, Argentine economic growth accelerated: immigration, foreign capital, export agriculture--a success story. Chile's economy also expanded after the War of the Pacific, based mostly on nitrate revenue, but only small numbers of immigrants went to the west of the Andes and Chile's position relative to that of Argentina declined. In 1881 a treaty between the two countries gave Patagonia to Argentina but left Chile in possession of the Punta Arenas colony established in 1843. Nevertheless, boundary disputes persisted. Thereafter, Argentina's relatively greater economic growth permitted increased military expenditures, precipitating an arms race between the two countries (p. 81).

The longest chapter in the book next retraces the evolution of the Argentine army and navy from the colonial period to the end of the nineteenth century when "at last Argentina had developed a professional navy; in the quality of its crews it was second to none in South America, and in the strength and quality of its ships, it outstripped all others" (p. 122). In contrast, the following chapter concludes that "there is no concrete evidence to . . . sustain the claim often made by Chilean writers that their national army was better trained and equipped than the Argentine. In fact the opposite was true" (p. 141). Regarding the navy in 1899, Chile's "once-vaunted superiority over the Argentine navy, not only in the quality and number of its ships, but in training and organization, no longer prevailed" (p. 149).

Most Chileans, however, did not recognize the shift in the balance of military power. After the victory in the War of the Pacific, "Chileans came to regard themselves as a sort of Latin American master race . . . they believed they had earned the soubriquet of the Prussia of South America" (p. 175). Rauch concludes that "the growth and development of the Argentine armed forces seems a rather more likely motivation for the amicable settlement of the Argentine-Chilean boundary dispute [1898-1902]" rather than any supposed Chilean commitment to inter-American brotherhood. In case there remains any doubt about Rauch's opinion of the Chileans, he adds: "Let the...