721.23/773
Memorandum by the Assistant Secretary of State (White)
The Peruvian Ambassador today, after discussing the Chaco matter, took up a discussion of the Leticia matter. He said that it is of course now water over the dam and too late to be rectified but it was too bad that the Colombian Government had not bought Vigil’s land in the Leticia area. He said that Vigil25 had invested all his money in sugar grinding machinery and had taken it up to Leticia [Page 402] to establish the sugar industry there. He said that the only place Vigil could sell the sugar he manufactured was in Iquitos. When Leticia was given to Colombia the export duties from Colombia and the import duties into Peru ruined his business. He then offered to sell out—the only way of saving himself—but the Colombian Government refused to consider the matter. He undoubtedly asked an exorbitant sum but if some arrangement had been arrived at with him it would have been very much better. Vigil then moved to Iquitos, started a newspaper there and inflamed the Loretanos, and that was the cause of the trouble. I told the Ambassador that I was particularly interested to hear him say that as my information from perfectly neutral sources had indicated the same thing and that when in a conversation with Maúrtua I had mentioned this, Maúrtua, with great passion and vehemence, had accused me of being pro-Colombian and of advancing Colombian arguments.
The Ambassador went on to say that he had just recently been told by Bello Codesido, who had gotten the information direct from President Alessandri of Chile, that when Vasquez Cobo, who is head of the Colombian expedition to Leticia, was Minister in Paris, he was having a conversation one day with Sanchez Cerro, then in exile, and Alessandri, and that Sanchez Cerro had said that Leguía used the Tacna-Arica matter for purely internal political purposes and finally settled it when he thought he had gotten all the personal benefit he could out of it but that Leguía had not hesitated, while defending the Tacna-Arica settlement, to give away thousands and thousands of square kilometers to Colombia on the upper Amazon. Vasquez Cobo had immediately challenged this statement and a long argument ensued. Finally Vasquez Cobo inquired who Sanchez Cerro was anyhow. Sanchez Cerro made a movement to his hip pocket to pull out his card case for a card to show Vasquez Cobo his name. Vasquez Cobo took this to mean that he was going to pull out a pistol and threw back his arms, saying “if you want to shoot me, shoot me”. Finally Sanchez Cerro persuaded him that he did not have a pistol and was merely getting a card out so that the gentleman would know his name in the future.
The Ambassador said that little personal animosities like these have so complicated the situation—first, there was Vigil’s resentment which stirred up the trouble in Loreto, and then the appointment by Colombia of Vasquez Cobo to head the Colombian expedition which angered Sanchez Cerro, who had not been very friendly with Vasquez Cobo since the incident cited above, and also the appointment by Peru of Maúrtua as Peru’s representative on the Conciliation Commission he said had stirred up Olaya and made him absolutely firm in his intention not to go to a Conciliation Commission because Maúrtua [Page 403] would represent Peru. He said that Olaya and Maúrtua have not been on speaking terms since the Conference on Arbitration and Conciliation in Washington. When in a committee meeting one day they were discussing some point, Maúrtua had replied in a very brusque and sharp manner to Olaya and this had so offended Olaya that the next time he saw Maúrtua he looked the other way and did not speak to him and they have not spoken since.
- Enrique Vigil, large property owner (La Victoria), Leticia area.↩