A river that crosses Argentina and Chile is causing a diplomatic embarrassment between the two countries. At the end of April, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Gabriel Boric government sent a statement to the Argentines asking for explanations about the flow of the Vizcachas River, which in recent months has been reduced on the Chilean side.
The Argentine Foreign Ministry confirmed last week that it had asked the Undersecretary for Management and Planning of Water Projects of the Ministry of Public Works to provide the requested information.
The controversy began in February, when rural producers and businessmen from Torres del Paine, in the Chilean region of Magalhães and Chilean Antarctica, denounced that the flow of the river, which originates in southeastern Argentina, in Santa Cruz, and flows to the territory of Chile, had dried completely on the Chilean side. The reason would be a series of works on the Argentine side.
Technicians from the State’s National Board of Borders and Limits (Difrol) visited a farm in the region and noted that the drying up of the river “does not occur due to natural causes” and could only be attributed to some “intervention” in Argentine territory.
Sergio Rodríguez Oro, a lawyer for the owners of a local farm, told El Mercurio newspaper that “for the first time in history the canal [do rio Vizcachas] dried out”. “Concretely, there are at least six works that conduct and completely divert the water dozens of kilometers from the canal”, he highlighted.
Chilean rural producers and businessmen argue that changing the river’s flow would represent a violation of an environmental treaty, which includes a protocol on shared water resources and was signed between the two countries in 1991.
The undersecretary of Foreign Affairs of Chile, Gloria de la Fuente, said in an interview with Rádio Pauta that the Chilean response, in sending the statement to Argentina, followed “the parameters of institutionality”. “No more than that, there is no note of protest. What we are doing is building the proper background,” she said.
However, the opposition to Boric called for a tougher stance from the Chilean government. Deputy Christian Matheson, representative of the Magellan region and Chilean Antarctica, suggested taking the matter to the Hague Court.
“This cannot be left alone in a document that has little or no effect. What the State of Chile should demand is that any intervention on the Vizcachas River be stopped and the natural flow of this international channel be restored, as it affects not only rural producers in the Magallanes region, but also the flora and fauna around Torres del Paine. Therefore, one should not rule out going to the International Court in The Hague to restore international law, which today is affected”, declared Matheson.
“I ask myself, what would Argentina say if we intervened in the Rubens River and the Penitente River, which form part of the beginning of the Gallegos River in the Argentine Republic?” he added.
The Defense Commission of the Chilean Chamber of Deputies reported that it would send a letter to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to question the portfolio about what happened and about the actions it intends to take next.
Exposed deficiencies
In an article for the El Mostrador website, Jorge Guzmán, a professor and researcher at the Autonomous University of Chile, said that the controversy over the Vizcachas River should not lead to a bilateral crisis between the two countries, but, in the context of the protocol on shared water resources of 1991, makes clear “two structural deficiencies” of Chilean foreign policy.
The first, according to the researcher, is that no State body in Chile maintains up-to-date monitoring or monitoring of the application of this and other obligations agreed with Argentina, with which the country has about 5,300 kilometers of common border.
“With worrying regularity, this deficiency ends up becoming a circumstance that threatens the country’s interests,” said Guzmán, citing the 1998 Agreement on the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, considered harmful to Chile and which concerns one of the largest reservoirs of fresh water on the planet.
The second point, highlighted the researcher, is that the protocol on shared water resources gave Argentina the power to manage Chilean hydrographic basins that add up to about 27% of the country’s land territory.
“On the other hand, most of Argentina’s water resources are concentrated on the borders with Paraguay, Brazil and Uruguay; less than 3% of Argentine water can be co-managed with Chile”, he compared.
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