In the Times of Scrambles in the Land of the Amazons - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 80

This exercise indiplomacy initially seemed tohave navigational rather than territorial
consequence, but by the 1880s Acre was becoming one of the most commercially de-
sirable areas on earth, and Bolivians, Peruvians, and Brazilians were dusting off their
treaties and reviewing their maps. A key question on which the Scramble would hinge
involved historical jurisdiction over this increasingly contested region and whether in
fact Bolivia actually had the territorial rights over the realms below the Idelfonso line.
Peru contested Bolivia's claim by arguing that the extinct Viceroyalty of Peru had juris-
dictionoverallSouthAmerican audiencias ,whileBoliviahadasserteditsrightsthrough
the authority of the vanished audiencia of Charcas. *2 Bolivia rejected the extension of
Spanish rights over territories after the end of the Spanish empire. Since Charcas had
dissolved into several states including Bolivia, Bolivia's territories were, in this line of
reasoning, immune from Peruvian territorial assertions derived from its earlier imperial
administrativeposition.Decipheringandrecastingtherightsofphantomadministrations
becomeyetanotherelementofdaCunha'sideologicaltask,sincethecomplexitiesofthe
Peru-Bolivia claims would fall into adjudication in 1902, with Brazil as a highly inter-
ested party, since Brazil had bought out Bolivia's land claims as part of a later boundary
agreement that I discuss in more detail in chapters 9 and 10 . The conflict was to be me-
diated by the president of Argentina. 25
It was in this context of increasing ambiguity of borders that Rio Branco managed his
first boundary “conflagration.” It wasn't in the Amazon but rather in the Misiones, con-
tested between Brazil and Argentina. The frontier had a festering set of treaty disagree-
ments,manyofwhichwouldbeechoedinhislaterdiplomaticandmilitaryskirmishesin
Amazonia, and where the intellectual, international and political connections developed
in this conflict would serve him well in the Scramble.
The Misiones Apprenticeship
In 1893, Rio Branco first displayed his flair for diplomacy as the chief of party as Brazil
presseditscaseagainstArgentinaforthecontroloftheMisionesarea,some33,669km 2 .
InitiallyoccupiedbyJesuitsandthusoutsidethejurisdictionofthecrownofeitherSpain
and Portugal until the end of the eighteenth century, this terrain had become highly con-
tested once the Jesuits were expelled from Brazil in 1781. Vulnerable to ceaseless slav-
ing raids by Brazilians, the former mission Indians rose up in rebellion, but were ulti-
mately chased across La Plata River, functionally ceding the lands, among the richest of
theentiremissionsystem,totheBraziliannationals,whohappilysettledonthewell-ten-
dedranchesandfarms.TheParaguayanWarofthe1860sfurthercomplicatedtheclaims
as Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil disputed each other's territorial authority, ultimately
to be resolved through mediation. 26