This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land...

News this morning the Argentine government has called for restrictions on vessels traveling to the Falkland Islands -- which it insists on calling Las Malvinas -- has renewed fears of another military conflict over those windswept, treeless islands. The Argentine president, Christina Fernandez, stated that from now on, all vessels intending to travel to the Falklands must first obtain permission from Argentina. The British are not amused.

Why the British take seriously anything Fernandez (right) has to say is beyond me. By the way, she is the wife of the former president, Nestor Kirchner; governing Argentina, it seems, is a family affair.

Without getting into the details of the competing Anglo-Argentine sovereignty arguments, it should be pointed out it was the French who established the first settlement on the Falklands, not the British or the Spanish -- from whom Argentina derives its claim.

All this has me thinking about the mess of competing territorial claims and the number of long-simmering border disputes in South America today. We tend not to think about it too much in the United States, but the continent to our south has seen its international boundries fought over for much of the two centuries since the colonies started to break away from Spain. Practically every country in South America has had a border dispute with one or more of its neighbors. Borders there seem to change at a pace that is positively European.

To give you a sense of how tangled are those lines that look so clear on our maps, here is a quick tour of South America's simmering border issues, those that I know of, at least:

• Paraguay has claimed land held today by Brazil and Argentina but, to make up for this sore, they took land from Bolivia after the Chaco War of 1935.
• Bolivia, while upset about losing the Chaco to Peru, is still smarting from the earlier loss of its access to the sea at the hands of Chile in 1879.
• Peru, too, has claims on land taken by Chile in that same war; Chile wanted the rich nitrite and copper mines just beyond its northern border so it went to war with both Peru and Bolivia, defeating them handily.
• But Peru can play the agressor, too, as Ecuador well knows. That country still longs for its lost eastern lands -- nearly half of Ecuador's territory. These were taken by Peru in 1941 (see right) when the rest of the world was preoccupied by land grabs elsewhere. With that territory went access to the Amazon over which Ecuadorans believe they have a cultural claim dating back to 1541 when Francisco Orellana set out from Quito and explored the entire length of that river.
• Colombia also took jungle land from Ecuador but that doesn't stop Colombia from pining for her own lost territory, now called Panama. Panama won its independence from Bogota thanks to the Teddy Roosevelt -- who wanted to build a little canal there.
• Now Venezuela, under Hugo Chavez (right), has been toying around with the biggest land redistribution of them all, an idea that was the dream of his Venzuelan idol and founding father, Simon Bolivar. Under Bolivar's plan, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Colombia (including those pesky Panamanians), would have become one nation called Gran Colombia ruled, no doubt, from Caracas. Chavez thinks this is an idea whose time has come again.
  

All these disputes are shown in the crazy quilt of a map at left.

But don't think this territorial jostling is ancient history. Besides the Falklands War in 1982, Chile and Argentina almost went to war in 1978 over three frigid, uninhabited islands near Cape Horn. Troops were mobilized and on the brink of attack and only the intervention of the Pope -- that's right, the Pope -- brought the two countries back from the brink.

Where does all this territorial discord come from? Not surprisingly, the disfunction has its roots in Spain's colonial empire. During nearly 300 years of rule, Spain never worried too much if one part of its empire merged at its edges with another. After all, what might cause headaches for local magistrates in America was of little concern to the King. It was all Spain, at the end of the day. But, when that day finally did end and Spain was kicked out of America, the independent states it spawned wanted border clarity and clarity usually goes to the one with the stronger military. Latin diplomats since independence have been digging out old, often contradictory, maps to bolster their claims by showing what their former rulers had in mind regarding the Empire's internal boundries. It's interesting to note that while Argentina today bases its right to rule the Falklands on Spain's 18th Century presence there it fails to acknowledge that in those same days all of Patagonia was governed from Santiago, not Buenos Aires, meaning we should all be raving about the quality of Chilean beef, not Argentine.

This territorial angst explains why there is now an arms race in South America, an arms race the United States has inadvertently helped fuel. The US, in its efforts to assist Colombia crush the drug trade, has made Colombia the leading military power in the region. This, in turn, has caused Colombia's neighbors, Venezuela and Peru -- goaded by Chavez's fiery appeals to Andean-Bolivarean solidarity -- to increase their own defense spending. Chile, seeing Peru bulking up, has put its significant finances to work preparing against an attack from the north; and while they are at it, they might as well strengthen their border with Argentina, just for old time's sake. What does this cause Argentina to do? You got it, they start chewing over that old bone, the Falklands, and we've come full circle.

Passions over the Falklands run high in Argentina. Visitors there can't help but be astonished to see a Falklands memorial (see left) in every town. These serve not just to honor the fallen soldiers of the war but as reminders that "the Malvinas are Argentine." That slogan is repeated everywhere in Argentina, from flags and beach towels to bumper stickers and t-shirts.

I was recently made aware of how deeply ingrained is this longing for those inhospitable islands and why the belligerence won't go away any time soon. Last year I met a couple from Austria -- no stranger to the pain of lost territory. They had been living in Argentina for several years but had recently decided to take their elder son out of local kindergarten classes. "We knew we had to do something," said the mother, "when he came home from school one day singing a song about how the Malvinas were Argentine and how they were going to get them back with the blood of their sons. They teach this in kindergarten! That was enough for me."

They have since decided to move back to Europe; they are planning to settle in Spain.

In Praise of Santiago de Chile

Events of the past few days in Chile have compelled me to revisit this post I started a while ago but never finished. (I started writing this in early February and now it is the first day of March.) As I scan the news, I realize with sadness that many of the beaux-arts buildings I mention about below were damaged, some severely. But my post has nothing to do with the earthquake. Instead, it is about my impressions of a city I have recently grown to care for very much, as it appeared to me in happier times.

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If Buenos Aires is the Paris of South America, the austral City of Lights, then I like to think of Santiago as the southern hemispheric Nice or, to stretch a point, Barcelona.

To me Santiago de Chile is a like a Mediterranean city which eclipsed by the boulevards and architectural glories of the capital city in Paris (or Madrid), nevertheless possesses its own, more relaxed charm, benefiting from better weather, brighter light, and a spectacular natural setting. So, while Santiago may be overshadowed by the romance, the reputation, and the sheer size of its sister capital on the other side of the Andes it is well worth a visit by anyone thinking about a trip to South America.

To the first-time visitor, Santiago de Chile seems more European than Latin with wide, tree-lined boulevards and gently curving modernist apartment buildings. Bike-lanes crisscross the city and leafy parks are seemingly everywhere. The confident Santiagoans take ample advantage of both. At rush hour, young women race to work on bicycles, their skirts billowing behind and in the parks, the crisp Mediterranean summer sun is filtered by the leaves and lovers, oblivious to the gawking pedestrians, embrace on shade-darkened lawns.

My favorite of the parks is Bustamante, a wide strip of peace between two boulevards not far from the commercial center of town. Here I first discovered the joys of the cafe literario. A relatively new phenomenon in Santiago, these are city libraries that double as internet cafes. They are extremely popular. In Parque Bustamante, the cafe literario is an airy, two-story glass and concrete structure whose lines are mirrored and elongated by a reflecting pool (see right, in a nice night-time picture). The ground floor -- where eager cafe customers jostle for the rare unoccupied seat -- is entirely open to the breezes. From there, the vista is one of silver water reflecting blue sky and a ring of green all around. The effect is idyllic.

Santiago does not have an old colonial center like many other Latin capitals. What it does have, however, is a wealth of beaux-arts and Modernist buildings. It is as if in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the city tried to make up for its deficit of memorials to the distant past by an enthusiastic embrace of the contemporary. At the end of the 19th century it was the beaux-arts movement that held sway in the city. Chile's leading families and the capitalists, newly rich from the copper and nitrite mines in the north, poured their money into urban palaces. Today, these ornate structures, heavy with cornices and statuary and imposing arches and lintels point to a desire for bourgeois respectibility in a country attempting to show itself and its new wealth to the world.

One of my favorite neighborhoods, downtown, near the Universidad de Chile, is composed entirely of beaux-arts buildings. Narrow cobble-stone streets wind through Paris-Londres, as the neighborhood is called. It is named after the two main streets. Car traffic is rare in Paris-Londres and students and tourists generally stroll down the middle of the streets, the better to admire the stately buildings on either side.

As Modernism was sweeping Europe in the early decades of the last century Santiago, not to be outdone, abandoned the beaux-arts and rushed to embrace the new style of construction. Heavy ornamentation was left behind in favor of Modernism's clean, curving concrete forms and corner-wrapping windows. To the lover of this style of architecture, Santiago is endlessly fascinating. Entire city blocks were built in the 30s and 40s and the mechanicalinear lines of those blocks have been pleasantly softened over the years by rows of stately trees.

Today, Santiago is a bustling, contemporary city of five million people. It is also surprisingly efficient. To the traveler who arrives directly from another South American city it is this efficiency that may be the most striking sign of Santiago's difference, of its non-Latin character. Where other regional cities -- Mexico, Quito, Guatemala -- are terrifying for pedestrians, in Santiago the automobile, at least in the urban core, seems an afterthought. A web of pedestrian malls make strolling downtown a joy. Outdoor cafes fill these streets and compete with ice-cream vendors, newsstands, and shoeshines for attention. And even where there is traffic, the pedestrian reigns supreme. Unlike in many other Latin cities, drivers in Santiago strictly obey the traffic lights and are scrupulous about stopping for pedestrians.

One warm summer day, while sauntering beneath the trees along one of these walking streets I came across a large crowd. About fifty or more people were standing in a rough circle, chattering excitedly, and point their arms upwards. I immediately thought there must be a jumper on a ledge and scanned the rooftops with excitement and dread. I soon realized my gaze had gone too high, however. The crowd was looking not to the buildings, but rather to a tree just in front. There, on a branch halfway up the tree an owl was perched. It was large, tranquil, and seemingly very much in its element, oblivious to the stir it had created in the crowd below. I was amazed. Hours later I passed the spot again. The owl was still there.

Santiago has the most efficient public transit system in Latin America. Its subway is a thing of beauty and the people are justifiably very proud of it. Trains are frequent, clean and crowded. They are so crowded in fact that during rush hour you generally have to let one or two trains pass before one comes along with enough room to squeeze in. But, they come with such frequency that I can't recall ever waiting longer than two or three minutes between trains. The subway was started in the years of the military dictatorship in Chile but its expansion continues today with several new stations opening every year (see left).

Skyscrapers have sprouted up in new neighborhoods that threaten to pull business away from the central core. I met several residents who admitted to seldom visiting the old downtown anymore. Their loss, I thought, but the movement to the taller neighborhoods may, sadly, be inevitable. Paradoxically, it is these new skyscrapers, with their tendency to draw the eye upwards, that serves to remind Santiagoans of the most powerful aspect of their urban environment, the mountains.

Santiago is a city surrounded by the high Andes. And on days when the smog has lifted, the white-topped mountains look so close, so bold as to appear unreal, like a stage set built behind the city as if to remind us that no matter how high we strive, no matter how tall the skyscrapers become, nature can always do better.