721.23/907: Telegram
The Permian Minister for Foreign Affairs (Manzanilla) to the Secretary of State
[Received 10:28 p.m.]
I had the honor of receiving day before yesterday the important telegram from Your Excellency in which, after surveying the telegram addressed to me by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Colombia on the 9th [11th?] of this month and the reply which I made thereto on the 14th and referring to the telegram from the same Minister of the 11th, transmitted to this Ministry by the Secretariat of the League of Nations, Your Excellency was pleased to express frankly your disappointment at my statement that the military measures taken by the Peruvian authorities of Loreto were undertaken in consequence of the ones which the Colombian Government finds itself compelled to employ in order to reinstall in the territory of Leticia its deposed authorities. It would be regrettable to have been the involuntary cause of that disappointment, which I could never have supposed would be produced in Your Excellency’s mind. What has been done by the authorities of Loreto constitutes simply an act of elementary foresight, in view of the size of the forces that Colombia was sending to dominate Leticia; a much-talked-of expedition of seven vessels armed for war, carrying troops to be landed, to the number of more than a thousand soldiers, according to authoritative reports. Under these circumstances it was an act of unavoidable prudence for the authorities of Loreto to take measures which have been only of a purely defensive character in prevision of unexpected emergencies. Such is the significance which the slight preparations of a military nature made at Loreto had and now have. Now as to the juridical position which Peru assumes in this conflict with Colombia, I can only repeat what I have been glad to declare on various occasions: my Government, having had absolutely nothing to do with the events of September 1, 1932 at Leticia, prevented legally and politically from controlling such events, recognizing the force and validity of the Boundary Treaty of 1922 [Page 435] with Colombia63 and disposed as it is to discuss amicably the rectification of the frontier line established in that Treaty, cannot be indifferent to the lot of the Peruvians who are occupying Leticia. They manifested by their attitude the national feeling of repulsion against the Treaty that has been produced in the country. It is just for the purpose of satisfying that national aspiration represented by the events of Leticia that we wish to negotiate with Colombia directly or through the mediation of another Government, but we believe that in the meantime and since we are going to negotiate the rectification of the line of the Treaty there is neither reason nor right in using such violent means as are represented by the Colombian military expedition to subdue the occupants of Leticia, who are defending the rights of mankind. These Peruvians have not committed any crime. As a minority, they are exercising the universally recognized right to have their political significance taken into account and as Peruvians they claim the right to free choice with regard to the change of nationality which was forced upon them without their consent by the cession of the territory in which they live. We do not deny Colombia’s right to Leticia, which is based solely on the validity of the Treaty, although that Treaty elates back only two [ten?] years and has taken the place of the right representing colonial possession for three centuries and that of a hundred years more in the republican era. But the Colombian flotilla and its landing forces are not going to subjugate the neoColombian territory of Leticia, but its present inhabitants, all Peruvians, whose aspiration is received by my Government, in order to attempt to realize it by means of friendly negotiations with Colombia.
In the Treaty of 1922 Colombia undertook to surrender certain territories to Peru. That pledge has not been complied with. Nevertheless, Peru, respecting her international pacts, has not disregarded the Treaty as she could have done, for one of its stipulations was left unexecuted, which is a resolutory condition for the others. And she has not even attempted to recover by force the territories which have not been turned over to her. The true significance of my Government’s declarations is that it cannot view with indifference the aggression against the Peruvians at Leticia, gathered there to demand that their rights be respected. We have already agreed that it be turned over to Brazil as a sacred trust to be administered provisionally while Peru and Colombia decide its final destiny in direct negotiations or by means of arbitration and we object to Colombia again having under her authority the Peruvians who revolted against her, and that after forcing it upon them by the violent means represented by the cannon of seven vessels [Page 436] armed for war and the action of more than a thousand soldiers who are going to be sent forth as conquerors. We are not violating the Briand-Kellogg Pact, because Peru is the very country that is seeking a peaceful settlement of the conflict that has arisen. It is Colombia that prefers to impose her will by violence and that has mobilized considerable forces for that purpose, while on our part not a soldier nor a vessel has left our territory and we have not acquired a single vessel more.
In contrast to this moderate and peaceful attitude of Peru, it is well known that Colombia has been putting out numerous loans since September 10, among them the one called the victory loan, a revealing name which would be inexplicable if it had been intended to devote it solely to restoring order in such a small place as Leticia. She has improvised a large fleet, arming merchant vessels for war, which vessels are ascending the Amazon in a guise which in itself alone constitutes the start of an aggression. She has acquired considerable quantities of arms of every kind in various countries and in order to supply the deficiencies of her naval and military personnel has enlisted legions of adventurers in European and American ports in order to make use of the perverse inclinations of those people in the execution of its purpose of drowning in blood the patriotic aspirations of the Peruvians in Leticia, and as if all this were not enough, the Colombian authorities of the Putumayo have for more than 2 months past been taking possession, by force, of various Peruvian merchant steamers which were there under the guaranty of the Treaty in force and have kidnapped their crews, interning them in highland towns of their country and a campaign of cruel persecution has been begun against the Peruvians who were residing tranquilly in Colombia, devoted to their work. All this in order to reduce a town, like Leticia, if one can believe the Colombian accounts.
In view of these incontestable and revealing facts, these accounts which my Government has denied are worthless.
Your Excellency knows, without doubt, that my Government sought for the friendly solution of this conflict, the cooperation of the Conciliation Commission at Washington, refused by the Colombian Government, and it accepted immediately, with pleasure, and from the first moment, the mediation of Brazil; then, in the discussion of the three bases presented, it accepted without condition the first, proposed a modification in the second, to the effect of appointing a mixed Peruvian-Brazilian commission of persuasion; that, this not having been accepted, has been replaced by the initiative of general arbitration, and it has requested clarification of the third.
[Page 437]The opinion of the Brazilian Government, which deserves from us, as was to be expected, the highest consideration, has not yet been communicated to us.
In this situation, as in every other, Peru will comply strictly with the international pacts which it has signed, and particularly, those guaranteeing peace between the nations of the American continent.
She has not forgotten the Pact of Paris and will comply with it, as she will likewise comply with the Resolution approved at the Habana Conference64 to which Your Excellency refers, and she will be consistent with the declaration, of which she has been reminded, of August 3, 1932.65 There exists, for this, not only the motive of the public faith which has been pledged, but also the circumstance that all those international undertakings were perfected with the enthusiastic and decided cooperation of the Government of Peru: it is therefore logical that I should declare in its name that at no time, and for no reason have we contemplated, even as a remote possibility, the acquisition, whether on a large or small scale, of any territory whatever, by means of occupation or conquest by force of arms.
What my Government does desire, with serenity but with firmness, is the rectification of the Colombian-Peruvian boundary, consisting of the revision of the Salomon-Lozano Treaty, both because the Treaty is impracticable and because the Treaty has not been carried out on the part of Colombia.
- Signed March 24, 1922, League of Nations Treaty Series, vol. lxxiv, p. 9; see also Foreign Relations, 1923, vol. i, pp. 351 ff., and ibid., 1925, vol. i, pp. 461 ff.↩
- See Resolution on Aggression (February 18, 1933), Sixth International Conference of American States, Final Act, Motions, Agreements, Resolutions and Conventions (Habana, 1928), p. 179.↩
- Foreign Relations, 1932, vol. v, p. 159.↩