Felipe Benicio de la Paz Arana y Andonaegui was born in Buenos Aires on the 24th August 1786 to a prosperous Buenos Aires family.He had 15 siblings, and was later to have 9 children of his own.Felipe Arana had a typical Spanish early education, with much emphasis on religion.He later studied at the Real Universidad de San Felipe in Santiago de Chile, graduating as a lawyer.

As a 23 year-old, Arana attended the historic “Cabildo Abierto” (Open Council) of May 1810. That was the gathering of local Buenos Aires leaders provoked by the collapse of the Spanish monarchy of Carlos IV, and his son Fernando, and the French invasión of Spain - which had led to Napoleon’s brother Joseph being imposed on Spain as King.This Cabildo Abierto resulted in the famous “Revolution of May” (Veinticinco de Mayo - 25th of May), the first public move towards Argentine independence from Spain.Arana supported this.

In 1813, Arana got his first public office as “síndicoprocurador general” a sort of legal overseer to the government of the City of Buenos Aires.He went on to play a major role in drawing up the “Estatuto Provisional” of May 1815, an early attempt at a constitution.

In 1820, Arana became an elected member of the Buenos Aires provincial legislature, and went on to hold various roles.He was president of the provincial legislature during the governorship of Manuel Dorrego, and had come to support a federalist view of what Argentina should be - as opposed to the Unitarians, who rejected a federal structure with strong rights for provinces and favoured one unitary country.Arana opposed the coup in December 1828 by General Juan Lavalle – who executed Dorrego, the lawful governor of Buenos Aires, without any accusation of criminality or trial.

Minister of Foreign Affairs and Religion

In 1835, Arana was made Minister of Foreign Affairs and Religion, by Buenos Aires Governor Juan Manuel de Rosas - a post he held until just after Rosas was deposed in 1852.With Buenos Aires responsable for the foreign affairs of the whole Argentine Confederation, this involved relations with the Vatican and all foreign countries.In 1836, he had to deal with the limited warfare over Tarifa an area that Argentina disputed with Bolivia/Peru - a hangover from the breakup of the Spanish empire.

Several historians say that as foreign minister Arana was little more than a mouthpiece for Rosas, and this was certainly the case over the Parana War, the Anglo-French intervention in the River Plate in the 1840s.Britain’s involement in this ended with the Convention of Peace signed on the 24 November 1849 and ratified on 15 May 1850.Rosas himself had handled all the negotiations for this, totally ignoring Arana.Britain would have been content with a simpler treaty dealing just with the Parana War itself.But Rosas insisted on a full peace treaty to establish Argentina as a country on a par with the major powers, with belligerents rights, and not just some territory the Europeans and others could meddle with as they pleased.In so doing, he sacrificed Argentina’s claim to the Falklands, as a full peace treaty leaves all territory not referred to in the treaty in the hands of whoever holds it.And the document states that it is a Convention for re-establishing the perfect relations of Friendship between Her Britannic Majesty and the Argentine Confederation”, with “perfect friendship” being mention twice more in the text.As Foreign Minister, Arana signed it for Argentina and Henry Southern for Britain, giving rise to the name “Arana-Southern Treaty”.Quite why this name became so prevalentis not understood.At the time it was refered to as the Treaty or Convention, of Peace – “Convención de Paz” in Spanish.It is conceivable that Argentine historians wanted to play down the fact that it was a peace treaty – because of the Falklands.

The Convention of Peace came into force when it was ratified on the 15th May 1850, which led to huge celebrations in Argentina.And mention of the Falklands dispute then disappeared in Argentina until 1884 when it was revived by President Julio Roca – who by then had slaughtered the native Indians in the South and forced Chile to abandon its claim to the territory on the coast opposite the Falklands.

Rosas was defeated at the Battle of Caseros on the 2nd and 3rd of February 1852 by Justo José de Urquiza, and left for asylum in Britain.Arana then ceased to be foreign minister on the 6th of April that year and was made a member of the Consejo del Estado (State Council).Later he retired to his country estate, where he died on the 11th July 1865.

Argentine historians:

Over the following decades, Felipe Arana, Henry Southern and the Convention of Peace of 1849/50, and its effect on the Falklands dispute, were largely forgotten in Britain.But that was not the case in Latin America.The Mexican historian and diplomat Carlos Pereyra mentions it in his book: Rosas y Thiers. La Diplomacia Europea en el Río de la Plata 1838 – 1856.Pereyra’s book was first published in Madrid in 1919, and again in Buenos Aires in 1944.It states that Rosas wanted to “buy” the departure of Britain from the River Plate by abandonning Argentina’s claim to the Falklands, and that the Falklands remaining British was an unwritten article of the Convention of Peace.

Similarly, Argentina’s top historian Ernesto J Fitte says that Rosas in effect handed over the Falklands to Britain on page 272 of his book “Cronicas del Atlantico Sur”, published in 1974.

In the same vein, Argentine historian Juan José Cresto complains bitterly about the effect of the Convention of Peace on Argentina’s claim to the Falklands on page 433 of volume 1 of his huge Historia de las Islas Malvinas, which he published in 2011.Cresto was President of the National Academy of History of Argentina (Academia Nacional de la Historia de la República Argentina) that year, and Argentina’s leading historian.

There is plenty of other evidence that the Convention of Peace ended Argentina’s claim to the Falklands.So Felipe Arana, Henry Southern, and Juan Manuel de Rosas, are critically important names in the history of the Falklands.At the UN and elsewhere, Argentina has often claimed that it never agreed to Britain’s sovereignty over the Falklands.The Convention of Peace contradicts that.