Midnight Cure

PERU-CHILE

To cure the 46-year-old Tacna-Tacna pain in the left side of South America, statesmen of Chile and Peru met late one night last week in rustic, thatch-roofed Tacna City. At midnight they began to sign 138 peace-potent documents.

Midnight was the hour at which there came automatically into effect the new Tacna-Arica Treaty (TIME, May 27) by which the disputed province of Tacna-Arica is partitioned, Chile keeping Arica and ceding Tacna to Peru. To make this transfer doubly binding, doubly impressive, Government property in Tacna Province was divided into 138 parcels, each to be signed over separately. As midnight tolled, the pen-scratching tournament began.

Senor Gonzalo Robles, who has been Mayor of Tacna City under the Chilean regime, gloomily signed away the municipal buildings, the civic water works, the provincial railways, everything. Across the table Peru's beaming, complacent Foreign Minister Rada y Gamio in effect signed receipts. Both statesmen worked cautiously, inspecting each document minutely ere they autographed it irrevocably. Dawn broke. Presently it was high noon. Still the pen-scratching continued.

Not until 2:15 p. m. did Foreign Minister Rada y Gamio scrawl his signature for the 138th time onto the final document giving the very last parcel of Tacna to Peru.

One hour and 45 minutes later the new Peruvian municipal government was installed in Tacna City, at exactly 4 p. m. The local Peruvian Superior Court was proclaimed to be functioning at 5 p. m. Trucks and vans piled high with Chilean furniture rumbled out all afternoon from Peruvian Tacna City, sped to the still Chilean seaport of Arica City, 39 miles distant and 1,800 feet below.

In Santiago, Chile, there was no celebration-naturally. But in Lima, Peru, fireworks popped, cheering citizens snake-danced. Regiments smartly parading with blaring bands were reviewed by small, snapping-eyed President Augusto B. Leguia, indomitable dictator, famed "Bantam Roosevelt."

By presidential decree the holiday was Peru's "Day of Joy." Just 46 years prior she had lost the so-called "War of the Pacific" (1879-83), and victorious Chile then seized Tacna-Arica as war spoil. Negotiations begun with President Harding as arbiter, carried virtually to conclusion under President Coolidge, and topped off in the first few months of the Hoover regime, resulted in the present 50-50 compromise of giving Tacna back to Peru. Last week in Lima, maids and matrons deliriously dancing on "Joy Day" brought a crown of solid gold laurel leaves to bantam President Leguia, ecstatically crowned him "The Hero of Tacna's Delivery."