Papal mediation in the Beagle conflict

Interests of the parties

The mediator acted to defuse the situation by negotiating an agreement that stopped the immediate military crisis. Then, the Vatican crafted a six-year process that allowed the parties to grapple with increasingly difficult issues, including navigation rights, sovereignty over other islands in the Fuegian Archipelago, delimitation of the Straits of Magellan, and maritime boundaries south to Cape Horn and beyond.

The 1978 military mobilization revealed other latent international relations issues between the two countries that had been previously overlooked or ignored.

Mediator

By the beginning of November 1978, Chile and Argentina no longer had any mechanism for working toward a peaceful settlement and the situation began to destabilize rapidly. It was at this point, with direct talks dead and a judicial settlement refused by Argentina, that Chile suggested mediation. Argentina accepted the proposal and the two foreign ministers agreed to meet in Buenos Aires on December 12 for the purpose of selecting a mediator and the terms of mediation. Possible candidates were

The ministers concurred on the issue that the Pope should mediate the dispute, but their agreement proved ephemeral. In the evening, as the Chilean delegation was studying the documents for signature, the Argentine minister called the Chilean minister Cubillos to tell him that President Videla, who had approved their choice of mediator, had been stripped of his authority by the junta.

On 22 December 1978, Argentina launched Operation Soberania to occupy the islands militarily. On the morning of December 22, Pope John Paul II, on his own initiative, contacted both governments directly to communicate that he was sending a personal envoy to Buenos Aires and Santiago.

The Act of Montevideo

In Montevideo, Uruguay, on 8 January 1979 both countries signed the Act of Montevideo. In this treaty the parties agreed to:

The treaty gave the mediator a broad framework in which to negotiate without any geographical data or temporal restrictions.

List of members of the Chilean Delegation in Rome:

List of members of the Argentine Delegation in Rome:

Cardinal Antonio Samorè's principal assistant was the Spanish priest Monsignor Faustino Sainz Muñoz.

The four phases of the mediation

Mark Laudy sees four phases during the mediation:

The papal proposal of 1980

On December 12, 1980, the Pope received both delegations and communicated to them his proposal for resolving the controversy, the terms of which had been developed entirely in secret and should be kept secret in order to avoid debilitating public debate that might diminish confidence in the proceedings and limit the freedom of action of both governments. But on 22 August 1981 the Argentine newspaper La Nación published the terms of the proposal. Chile would retain all of the islands and Argentina would be entitled to maintain certain limited facilities (common Radar and Weather stations) on some islands and would receive important navigation rights. Most important, however, was the creation of an ocean area known as the Sea of Peace. In this area, extending to the east and southeast from the disputed chain of islands, Chilean territorial waters would be limited to a narrow territorial sea, in which it would be obliged to share with Argentina equal participation in resource exploitation, scientific investigation, and environmental management. Beyond the Chilean territorial waters would be a much broader band of ocean subject to Argentine jurisdiction, but also subject to the same sharing provisions that applied in Chilean waters.

Chile accepted the papal proposal, despite some reservations. Argentina never formally replied to the proposal. However, on March 17, 1981, Argentina delivered a note to the Vatican expressing grave misgivings about the proposal, both because it failed to award any islands to Argentina and because it allowed Chile to maintain a presence so far into the Atlantic.

Argentina renounced a 1972 Arbitration treaty

On January 21, 1982 Argentina announced the withdrawal from the 1972 bilateral treaty providing for recourse to the International Court of Justice in case of disputes. In Argentina the judicial process had become an anathema, particularly in view of the adverse 1977 arbitration award. Chile reserved the right to go to the ICJ unilaterally before the treaty ended on 27 December 1982.

To the Falklands war

After the papal proposal, negotiations remained stalled and meanwhile, a sequence of incidents in Chile and Argentina strained relations between the two countries.

On 28 April 1981 General Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri, (then Argentine army chief, later, during the Falklands war, President of Argentina), closed the border to Chile without any consultation with his own president.

In March 1982, five weeks before the beginning of the Falklands war, a ship of the Argentine navy, ARA Francisco de Gurruchaga, anchored at the Deceit island, de facto under Chilean sovereignty since 1881, and refused to abandon the bay despite Chilean demands

On 2 April 1982 Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands. The Argentine plan included indeed the military occupation of the disputed islands at the Beagle channel after the invasion of the Falklands, as stated by Brigadier Basilio Lami Dozo, chief of the Argentine Air Force during the Falklands war, in an interview with the Argentine magazine Perfil: L.F. Galtieri:"[Chile] have to know that what we are doing now, because they will be the next in turn.. Also Óscar Camilión, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Argentina from 29 March 1981 to 11 December 1981, in his "Memorias Políticas", confirms the plan of Argentine military: "The military planning was, with the Falklands in Argentine hand, to invade the disputed islands in the Beagle Channel. That was the determination of the [Argentine] navy…". Pope John Paul II made an unscheduled visit to Buenos Aires on June 14, 1982 in an attempt to prevent further hostilities between Britain and Argentina.

Chile became the only major Latin American country to support Britain indirectly by providing a military and naval diversion, but "in private many [Latin American] governments were pleased with the outcome of the war".

The final phase

After the war, yet despite the renewal of the 1972 Treaty on 15 September 1982, the distension after ARA-Gurruchaga incident and the spy-exchanging, the mediation continued to move very slowly. Following the war Chile evinced a greater willingness to negotiate modifications to the papal proposal, but by then it had become clear that the Argentine junta, reeling from its defeat in the war, was too weak to achieve an agreement.

Cardinal Antonio Samorè died in Rome at age 77 in February 1983.

President Raúl Alfonsín's new government was firmly committed to resolve the conflict as quickly as possible. Based on this commitment and additional discussions, the parties were able to lay much of the groundwork for a settlement.

In April 1984, Vatican Secretary of State Agostino Casaroli asked separately the two delegations for their proposals for a final solution.

By October 1984, both countries reached a complete understanding, and the revised text of the treaty was finalized on October 18.

Chile accepted, again, the papal proposal. In Argentina, Alfonsin held a consultative referendum. The official returns showed 10,391,019 voted in favor of the proposed treaty while 2,105,663 opposed it. A margin of 82 percent to 16 percent opposed, with 2 percent casting blank or null ballots.

The Treaty of Peace and Friendship of 1984 between Chile and Argentina went a long way before enacted:

Aftermath

The Cardenal Antonio Samoré Pass crossing border was renamed to honour the special representative of Pope John Paul II.