bout de papier, Vol. 4, No. 3 (1986) — Fall 1986 // Automne 1986, pp. 35–36
by Alfred Pick
A century ago, the story goes, a British diplomatic minister, who had somehow offended the ruler of Bolivia, probably a usurping general, was mounted on a donkey facing backward and driven out of La Paz, or was it Sucre, then as now the legal capital? When this was reported to Queen Victoria, she ordered a map of Bolivia to be rolled up and taken away.
I was reminded of this cautionary tale when I was to present credentials as Canada’s first ambassador to Bolivia.
In 1960 the Secretary of State for External Affairs, Howard Green, decided, as part of an initiative to be more positive about relations with Latin America, to complete the establishment of formal diplomatic relations with all the countries of Latin America. In South America the two gaps were, at the time, Bolivia and Paraguay; I was to be accredited to La Paz from Lima, and Dick Bower to Asuncion from Buenos Aires.
Time passed in receiving the formal documents and I was aware that the Minister was impatient to announce in Ottawa that the program had been completed. In those days, up to about 1970,
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Nonoon Antarin the letters of credence were signed by Her Majesty, not as now by the Governor- General. I noted that the Queen was travelling abroad, including visits to Italy and the Vatican.
At last the papers arrived in Lima; I glanced at them and passed them over the desk to a local administrative clerk whom I had called in to make the speediest possible travel arrangements. He was intrigued by the archaic language and the profuse use of capital letters; I said both no doubt dated from Elizabeth the First.
It must be visualized that the credentials consist of one sheet of paper in the form of two legal-sized pages folded together. On the first page there were greetings to Our Good Friend the President of the Republic of Bolivia and kind remarks about the Trusty and Well-beloved Alfred John Pick.
The clerk examined every word, turned the page and read of the “lively interest which We (the Queen) take in everything that affects the welfare and prosperity of the Republic of Paraguay”. Unbelievably, there it was in typescript! But for the circumstances, I could easily have arrived in La Paz with an appointment to present a flawed document. Like Victoria, the President would not have been amused.
Once, in Washington, arrangements had been made for the credentials ceremony but the document did not arrive from London in time; so it was agreed that Arnold Heeney would present to, I think, President Eisenhower an empty envelope, with the document to follow later. This is possible among close friends. I was to be the first ambassador to Bolivia from a Commonwealth monarchy other than the United Kingdom and the Bolivians would naturally be curious about the language to be used.
In theory, my credentials had been through important hands: the Chief of Protocol, the Under-Secretary, Government House and Buckingham Palace staff, before being signed “Elizabeth R”. Ottawa refused to allow me even to attempt to correct the document, not an easy thing to do in any case. “Paraguay” did end a paragraph but “Bolivia” has one letter less. Also, there are problems of alignment, typeface and the shading of the typewriter ink. I never did learn whether the letters for Asuncion had, as I suspected, the similar error in reverse.
Eventually, after a couple of months of further delay, I did get to the high post of La Paz (altitude 12,500 feet), armed with an impeccable document from the Queen, and I went through the formal ceremony with President Victor Paz Estenssoro, after a careful rehearsal with palace aides. Incidentally, this is the same Paz Estenssoro who returned in August 1985 as elected president of Bolivia after many typically Bolivian political vicissitudes extending over a quarter of a century.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 4, No. 3 (1986) — Fall 1986 // Automne 1986, pp. 35–36. Read the rest of this issue →
