26. ARGENTINA
AND THE MONROE DOCTRINE

Breached by the United States soon after its proclamation.

President Monroe's famous message in 1823 was in these words :
"We could not view an interposition for oppressing the South American
States or controlling in any other manner their destiny by any European
Power in any other light than as a manifestation of an unfriendly disposition
towards the United States."
thus clearly something for the United States and nothing at all for
South Americans, who have absolutely no say in the matter.

IN support of its claim to leadership in Latin American affairs, Argentina for many years has maintained a constant and belligerent refusal to recognize the Monroe Doctrine. Its persistent opposition to United States proposals at Pan-American conferences usually is framed to make the obstruction look like a noble stand against the legality of the Monroe Doctrine, taken on behalf of the other American republics to protect them from North American imperialism. Yet Argentina was the first of the South American governments to recognize the doctrine, adhere to its principles, and offer to base its foreign policy on collaboration with the United States in carrying out the doctrine. After so enthusiastically supporting President Monroe's initiative, Argentina soon found that it was to receive no help or comfort from the doctrine; and the doctrine's best friend became its most implacable enemy.

General Juan Gregorio de Las Heras, head of the Buenos Aires government, in formally receiving John Murray Forbes as United States chargé d'affaires on July 28, 1825, following the death of Rodney, said: "The Government of the United Provinces realizes the importance of the two principles which the President of the United States has expressed in his message to Congress and, convinced of the utility of their adoption by all the States of the continent, will consider it to be its duty to support them and, accordingly, will take advantage of every opportunity to do so that presents itself."

A year earlier, Las Heras had proposed to the United States that the Monroe Doctrine be broadened in scope to preclude the recognition of territorial aggression on the part of any of the American nations themselves. In his message to the Fourth Legislature on May 3, 1824, five months after the enunciation of the Monroe Doctrine, Las Heras said:

"Peace has been maintained with the nations of the continent and every true American heart has thrilled with joy at the arrival in our city of the first minister plenipotentiary of the Republic of the United States. This honor has been reciprocated by sending a minister of equal rank, who already has departed for Washington. He has been instructed to insinuate to the Government of that Republic how desirable it is that in addition to the two great principles of the abolition of privateering and the non-colonization of American territory by Europe there be established the principle that none of the new governments of this continent alter by force their frontiers as recognized at the time of their emancipation. This would destroy the seed of war which, sprouting up with the new States, would have a lamentable influence on their civilization and their customs."

General Las Heras had been one of San Martin's closest collaborators in the glorious campaigns by which the great Argentine liberator had carried independence to Chile and Peru. He had commanded that column of San Martin's Army of the Andes which had made the famous march through the Uspallata Pass with the artillery and munitions. He had then commanded the right wing at the battle of Maipo which established Chile's independence, and had been San Martin's chief-of-staff in the subsequent campaign to Lima which freed Peru from Spain. Las Heras had thus become imbued with San Martin's noble ideal of a united America in which all the new nations were to stand together and defend one another from outside aggression, rather than become nationalistic, selfish aggressors themselves.

The raising of the Monroe Doctrine to the higher, unselfish plane proposed by Las Heras might have prevented many of the regrettable things that happened in inter-American relations during the next hundred years. It almost certainly would have bound the North and South American continents together in a more effective Pan-Americanism than it ever has been possible to achieve. But it might also have prevented the establishment of several of the South American republics which exist today. For when the Monroe Doctrine was set up, there were only five independent countries in South America--the United Provinces of the River Plate, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Peru. Paraguay and Uruguay were not yet independent of Buenos Aires; Bolivia was a part of Peru; and Ecuador and Venezuela still belonged to Colombia.

The failure of the American government to accept the Argentine proposal and its action twenty years later in annexing more than half of Mexico's national territory convinced Argentina and the other Latin American countries that the doctrine was a one-sided, selfish policy of the United States and that it was not designed to extend to them the protection and support which they originally had interpreted the doctrine to guarantee. Yet there is reason to believe that President Monroe's opportune enunciation of the doctrine which bears his name played an important part in protecting Argentina and the other newly created South American States from European invasion at a moment when they were not in a position to defend themselves.

The United States had declared its neutrality in the wars of independence between the Spanish colonies and the mother country, but lost no opportunity to express its sympathy toward the new governments. The American legations in Europe had instructions not to participate in any negotiations looking toward a reconciliation between Spain and the colonies. Russia, Austria, Prussia, and France had united in the so-called Holy Alliance to defend the divine right of monarchs against governments based on the sovereignty of the people, and at the Congress of Verona in 1822 had signed a secret treaty by which they pledged themselves to use all the power and resources at their command to terminate the system of popular, representative government wherever it might exist in Europe and prevent its introduction in those countries where it was not known.

With Napoleon defeated and Ferdinand VII restored to the throne in Spain, the Holy Alliance was planning in 1823 to call a conference to draw up measures for helping Spain get back its American colonies. France and Russia, in particular, were eager to rehabilitate Spain as a world power to counter-balance the rapidly growing power of England. This could be done only by restoring Spain's empire and its colonial trade monopoly. The plan was to seize Buenos Aires and then send a fleet to the Pacific to re-establish the Spanish viceroy at Lima. France had 50,000 men in Spanish ports ready for the expedition, and Russia had promised to send troops. Buenos Aires could not possibly have resisted a force of 60,000 or 70,000 French, Spanish, and Russian troops. Spain was to cede Buenos Aires and the River Plate provinces to France in return for France's help in re-establishing Spain's dominion over all the other Spanish colonies, as far north as and including Mexico.

England had helped Spain expel Napoleon, but was opposed to restoring Spain's trade monopoly in South America; and though willing to help bring about a reconciliation between Spain and the former colonies, England was opposed to the use of force against the new governments of South America. The Duke of Wellington, hero of Waterloo, who represented England at the Congress of Verona, withdrew from the conference when the powers agreed to use force to put down the republican form of government. This was in keeping with an earlier declaration by the English minister of foreign affairs, Castlereagh, that the Holy Alliance had been created to block the French Empire but not to dominate the world. At Verona, England rejected the exclusive trade privileges in South America which were offered in exchange for the use of its fleet in crushing the new South American nations.

Shortly before the Congress of Verona, George Canning succeeded Castlereagh in the Foreign Office and immediately tried to arrange an entente with the United States to oppose the intervention of the Holy Alliance in South American affairs. In a note handed to the American minister in London on August 20, 1823, Canning proposed a joint declaration by England and the United States to the effect that the independence of the new States would be recognized whenever it should become opportune, but that in the meantime the two English-speaking countries would not oppose the idea of a reconciliation with Spain. The joint declaration was to consist of the following five points:

1. We consider that there is no hope that Spain will recover its colonies.
2. We believe that the question of the recognition of the colonies as independent States is a question of time and circumstances.
3. Nevertheless, we are by no means disposed to put any obstacles in the way of an arrangement between them and the mother country through amicable negotiations.
4. We do not aspire, on our part, to the possession of any part of the aforesaid colonies.
5. We could not view with indifference the transfer of any part of them to any other power.

Canning was vitally interested in restoring the colonial balance that had been upset by England's loss of its American colonies. It suited England as a maritime nation that the South American countries should remain free so that England could trade with them. But because of its recent alliance with Spain, England was reluctant to take any step that would openly offend it. Kasson, in his Evolution of the United States Constitution, quotes a dispatch from the American minister at London, Rush, to the State Department, dated October 10, 1823, in which Rush reported that Canning's enure effort was inspired by the interests of England, as opposed to the ambitions of France and Russia, and that his love for the independence of the South American colonies was measured by England's commercial interests rather than the ideal of liberty. Canning declared with pride in one of his later writings, "I called the New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old." His negotiations with the United States for a joint declaration of policy toward the South American colonies are widely credited with having inspired the Monroe Doctrine.

In reply to the proposal for a joint declaration, Rush informed Canning that the United States was in favor of the immediate recognition of the new South American States. On September 26, 1823, Canning asked Rush if the United States would not be satisfied with a promise of recognition at some time in the future. Rush replied in the negative and the negotiations lapsed. President Monroe had already appointed Caesar Rodney as minister to Buenos Aires in May 1823. Two and a half months after the collapse of Canning's efforts for joint action. Monroe sent to the American Congress the annual message which was to become famous as setting up the Monroe Doctrine.

Dropping his conversations with the United States Canning opened negotiations with France for a joint policy toward the South American colonies, and succeeded in obtaining from France a formal declaration that it would not help Spain recover its colonies. England declared, on its part, that it would recognize the independence of the South American countries if France should attempt to subjugate them or if Spain attempted to re-establish its former trade monopoly or refused to recognize the rights acquired by England in the new States.

The statement of foreign policy which has become known as the Monroe Doctrine was contained in the seventh, forty-eighth, and forty-ninth paragraphs of the President's message to Congress on December 2, 1823. In these paragraphs, the President stated, in part:

"The occasion has been judged proper for asserting as a principle in which the rights and interests of the United States are involved, that the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers. . . . In the wars of the European powers in matters relating to themselves we have never taken any part, nor does it comport with our policy so to do. . . . With the movements in this hemisphere we are, of necessity, more immediately connected. . . . The political system of the allied powers is essentially different in this respect from that of America. . . . We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those powers to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety. With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power we have not interfered and shall not interfere. But with the Governments who have declared their independence, and maintained it, and whose independence we have, on great consideration and on just principles, acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them or controlling in any other manner their destiny, by any European power, in other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States."

Canning immediately denied the right of the United States or any other power to proclaim such a principle of non-colonization, much less to enforce it. But Buenos Aires and the other South American governments received Monroe's declarations with rejoicing. They interpreted the doctrine as meaning that the United States would defend their territorial integrity and their political independence against European aggression. Brazil and Colombia enthusiastically offered to enter into a defensive alliance with the United States, but their offers were declined politely.

Buenos Aires received its first disillusionment in 1825 when it became involved in war with Brazil over the province of Uruguay. President Rivadavia inquired of the American chargé d'affaires, Forbes, if the United States would send help to the United Provinces in case Portugal sent help to Brazil. Emperor Pedro of Brazil was a Braganza, related to the Hapsburgs of Austria, who were very powerful in the Holy Alliance. His wife was the sister of Ferdinand VII of Spain, who wanted his River Plate colonies back. Rivadavia tried to make it appear that Portuguese aid for Brazil against the United Provinces would be an intervention of the Holy Alliance in South America. Secretary of State Henry Clay replied that there was no occasion for the intervention of the United States, since the war between Brazil and the United Provinces was strictly American both in origin and in objectives.

Argentina's next disillusionment came in 1831, when the American 18-gun sloop Lexington destroyed the Argentine settlement in the Falklands and Washington declared that the islands belonged to England, which has occupied them ever since.

The Falkland Islands were claimed for the French king in 1764 by the famous French explorer Bougainville. There are two main islands --East Falkland and West Falkland--and a hundred smaller islands and rocks. They lie approximately 250 miles off the coast of Argentina in the latitude of the Strait of Magellan. Bougainville founded a settlement on East Falkland at Fort Louis on the north shore of Berkeley Sound, which he called French Bay. Port Stanley, the present capital of the islands and site of the British naval base, is situated on the south shore of Berkeley Sound near the site of Bougainville's original settlement.

On January 23, 1765, Commodore John Byron, grandfather of the famous poet, landed at Port Egmont on Saunders's Island, off the coast of West Falkland, and claimed the islands in the name of George III. Byron did not remain, however, and it was not until the following year that an English settlement was established by Captain McBride of the frigate Jason.

When the Spanish government heard of the French settlement on the islands it protested to the French king, contending that the islands belonged to Spain as geographical dependencies of the South American continent. France recognized Spain's sovereignty over the islands and ordered Bougainville to surrender his settlement to the Spaniards. The Spanish governor at Buenos Aires appointed Felipe Ruiz Puente governor of the Falklands, and Bougainville writes in his Voyage autour du Monde that he turned the settlement over to Puente on April 1, 1767. The Spanish flag was raised and saluted by twenty-one guns. After Bougainville returned to Paris, the Spanish government paid him £618,108, the amount of the account he had rendered covering the costs of establishing the settlement at Fort Louis.

On February 25, 1768, the governor at Buenos Aires received instructions from the Spanish king to oust the English who were still at Port Egmont. The frigate Santa Catalina was sent to Port Egmont and its commander ordered the English to leave the islands. When they refused, the governor at Buenos Aires sent an expedition of five frigates and 1500 men and the English surrendered their settlement to the Spaniards from Buenos Aires on June 10, 1770. England was furious over the incident and nearly went to war with Spain, but hostilities were avoided by an apology from the Spanish king, who said he disapproved of the violent manner in which the English had been dispossessed of their settlement and promised that it should be returned with all due formalities, but with the clear provision that this was not to affect Spain's sovereignty over the islands. The English returned to Port Egmont in 1771 but abandoned the islands voluntarily in 1774. Senator [Alfredo] Palacios in a long and learned exposition before the Argentine Senate in 1934 maintained that the abandonment of the islands was in accord with a secret agreement between Spain and England and that the failure of the English government to make any reservations regarding its sovereignty when Port Egmont was returned to the English was a legal recognition of Spain's sovereignty.

At any rate, the Falkland Islands, or Malvinas, were in possession of Spain at the time that the United Provinces of the River Plate declared their independence. In 1820, Colonel Daniel Jewett, commanding the Argentine frigate Heroína, took possession of the islands in the name of the government at Buenos Aires. A witness to this ceremony was the English explorer John Weddell, for whom the Weddell Sea is named in the Antarctic. Weddell had stopped at the Falklands on his first voyage to the Antarctic and describes the incident in his Voyage towards the South Pole. When Jewett found more than fifty English and American vessels in Berkeley Sound engaged in seal-hunting and slaughtering the cattle which the Spaniards had left on the islands, he informed the commanders of all these vessels that the Falklands belonged to the government of Buenos Aires and that they could no longer fish or hunt there. In 1826 the Buenos Aires government granted exclusive fishing and colonization rights in the Falklands to Louis Vernet, an English naval officer who had been living at Buenos Aires for some time and who was married to an Argentine lady. On June 10, 1829, Rosas appointed Vernet governor of the islands with full military authority to enforce the orders of the Buenos Aires government against foreign seal-hunters. The sealers, however, paid no attention to Vernet and in August 1831 he seized the American vessels Harriet, Breakwater, and Superior. On December 7 Captain Silas Duncan of the American sloop Lexington addressed a note to the Argentine minister of government charging that Vernet had engaged in piracy in arresting the three American vessels and demanding that he be turned over to the United States authorities for trial. Duncan had already notified the government that he was taking the Lexington to the Falklands to protect American interests there. The American consul, George W. Slacum, addressed several insolent notes to the government, which finally refused to continue recognizing him as the consul of the United States. In his correspondence, the American consul had denied the sovereignty of the Buenos Aires government over the Falklands.

The Lexington proceeded to the Falklands, where Captain Duncan destroyed the artillery, blew up the powder depot, arrested six Argentine citizens, and declared the islands free of all government. Later, the United States chargé d'affaires informed the Buenos Aires government that the United States recognized British sovereignty over the Falklands, and in 1833 the British took possession of them and have occupied them ever since. Washington refused to hear Argentina's protests or claims to indemnity on the ground that the islands were occupied by Great Britain and that Argentina must first settle with the British government the question of possession. The Lexington incident led to prolonged claims on the part of Argentina, which the United States refused to accept. When Argentina appealed to the Monroe Doctrine, the State Department said the doctrine was not retroactive and that Great Britain had presented titles to sovereignty which antedated the doctrine.

One of the strong Nazi baits held out to Argentina as a reward for her neutrality during World War II was the promise that the Falklands would be returned to the Buenos Aires government when Herr Hitler dictated the terms of peace, after defeating Great Britain and her allies.

In 1885 President Cleveland, in his annual message to Congress, said that the government had refused to entertain Argentina's renewed claims for indemnity for the loss of the Falklands, since the Lexington had been fully justified in destroying "a piratical colony" in view of the "derelict condition in the islands" and their abandonment before and after the claimed occupation by Argentine colonists. The Argentine minister at Washington, Vicente Quesada, addressed a strong protest to the Secretary of State taking exception to the President's language and especially his statement that the American government considered the Argentine claims to be "wholly groundless." The Argentine minister reminded the American government that it had always refused to let Argentina present its titles to sovereignty, so was not in a position to say whether the claims were groundless or not.

Ever since the Cleveland administration Argentina has been a bitter enemy of the Monroe Doctrine.

[And yet Argentina was never a bitter enemy of the U.K. In the 1950s---even under the Perón government---school teachers would tell their pupils that "this dispute with Great Britain is not allowed to spoil our friendship with the English." The later Falklands War was an attack on ingrained tradition by an unpopular régime.]

(Source: John W. White, Argentina: The Life Story of a Nation, New York: The Viking Press, 1942, chapter 26, pages 269-277. The text in square brackets was added to the original. Chapter 25 has also been reproduced.)