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.