Bolivia's Boundary with Brazil

A Century of Evolution

Datos Bibliográficos

ID5289620
AutoresJ Valerie Fifer (autor de correspondencia)
Año1966
Volumen132
Número3
Páginas360
Fecha de publicación1966-09-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaGeographical Journal (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0016-7398 • E-ISSN: 1475-4959
EditorialJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/1793878
OpenAlexW2323625681
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas5

IT is almost a hundred years since the first attempt was made to define the boundary between Bolivia and Brazil, and just fifty years since P. H. Fawcett and H. A. Edwards successively completed its first systematic exploration and survey, effecting a primary demarcation on Bolivia's behalf at the request of the Royal Geographical Society. Delineated in terms of river courses for much of its 2000 miles through the South American interior, the boundary straddles the watershed between the Amazon and Paraguay drainage basins, across some of the most isolated and inaccessible parts of the continent. Indeed, only as recently as in 1958 was the central section delimited in terms of known points, thereby enabling cartographers for the first time to draw a continuous boundary between the two States (Figs. 1 and 2). These protracted nego? tiations had begun as early as 1867, when the 'unknown sources of the Verde' were selected as apparently convenient points on which to peg the middle section of the Bolivia-Brazil international line. Ten years later an expedition struggling through unexplored country in search of what was by that time interpreted as the principal source of the Verde, found instead two streams about 50 miles away to the southwest which united to form the river Tarvo. Here, in November 1877, the party erected a large pillar at what was assumed to be the Verde's source. Their error was revealed over thirty years later when, following the terms of the 1903 Treaty of Petropolis, Fawcett explored the Verde in his perilous expedition of 1908-9 (with an account of which he later regaled a rapt audience at the house of this Society), and established its source at 140 37' S, 6o? 14' W?point Fawcett-Guillobel. Further exploration in 1945, however, revealed that Fawcett's point was not in fact the principal source of the Verde, although it nevertheless remains the only one that Bolivia has been prepared to accept in the most recent negotiations. These led in 1958 to a boundary agreement between the two States which incorporates the old Tarvo post as an established, albeit mistaken, point. This delay in determining the precise course of the boundary's central section has been due primarily to lack of urgency, for neither isolation nor hazardous terrain in themselves precluded the northern and southern sections of the Bolivia-Brazil border from a prolonged history of disputed ownership and boundary conflict. Where empty, unknown, formerly negative frontiers of separation acquired sudden economic importance, any subsequent boundary changes revealed the relative abilities of States to extend their lines of communication?the only means whereby dejure claims could be supported, territorial expansion become efficiently organized and effective possession anticipate ownership. A common characteristic of the Bolivian boundary is that of a line still recording the balance of power initially revealed during a vigorous but unsustained burst of economic activity. As one observes the permanent, pillared demarcation of the Bolivia-Brazil boundary at last under way, so, many years after the events which prompted its last major delimita? tion in 1903, present conditions inevitably invite comparison with past circum? stances and with the boundary delineation they bequeathed. The boundary between Bolivia and Brazil was inherited in the first instance from

International Relations in Latin America