721.23/1530
The Peruvian Embassy to the Department of State
Memorandum
The Peruvian Government, replying to the dispatch from H. E. the Secretary of State, dated February 27,46 wherein he urged the Peruvian Government to accept the proposals of the League of Nations in the Leticia conflict between Peru and Colombia, has stated that the said proposals had been accepted, but that it had been found necessary to demand the substitution of Colombian forces, as proposed by the League for the occupation of the territory pending negotiations, by troops of another nationality.
A very brief survey of the situation may serve to explain the Peruvian Government’s contention.
The main difficulty the Peruvian Government has had to face in this question has been its desire to respect the validity of the treaty with Colombia, whatever its original defects, and its equally firm purpose to respect the right of self-determination invoked by Peruvian Nationals.
The Treaty of 1922 between Peru and Colombia, source of the present trouble, was negotiated secretly; and when made public encountered strong opposition, not only among the inhabitants of the territory affected by the treaty, but also in the country at large.
By the treaty Peru transferred to Colombia a vast tract of land between the rivers Caquetá and Putumayo, as well as a small trapezoid of land on the Brazilian frontier between the Putumayo and the Amazon rivers, which for brevity sake will be called Leticia. Colombia agreed to transfer to Peru a small tract of land on the Ecuadorean frontier, referred to hereafter as Sucumbios.
The population, thus affected in their feelings and interests by the transfer, declared, upon knowing the terms of the treaty, that it was Peruvian and that it did not wish to change its nationality; that all that region had been Peruvian for over a century, ever since its first development, and that ethnical, geographical, historical and commercial ties had bound and should continue to bind this their homeland to Peru. The country at large could not understand why Colombia had been given much more than she had lately claimed, nor could it admit that Peruvians should be forced to become Colombians against their will.
The Peruvian Government of those days, the very same one that had signed the treaty, confronted by these signs of discontent, hesitated and approached the Colombian Government in a late effort to have the treaty modified, so as to ensure its approval by the recalcitrant [Page 502] Peruvian Congress. Brazil protested, when she became acquainted with the treaty, and so did Ecuador. In fact, in a Memorandum to the Peruvian Government, the Brazilian Government said: “Brazil never would have supposed that Peruvian frontiers would be discontinued at this point and that Peru would cede to Colombia such a territory inhabited secularly by Peruvians”. Nor had Colombia had [sic] ever expected before to secure this same territory, and once having signed the treaty, she refused to accede to the Peruvian Government’s request for modifications, preferring to compose her difficulties with Brazil and even to sever her diplomatic relations with Ecuador. Finally, with the assistance of Secretary of State Mr. Hughes, whose efforts were greatly instrumental in bringing the matter to a conclusion, Colombia succeeded in overcoming the tardy scruples of the then Government of Peru, and the treaty was literally forced through the Peruvian Congress, approved and executed in August, 1930.
On September 1st, 1932, Peruvian citizens spontaneously, without any knowledge of and much less assistance from the present Government of Peru, rose and peacefully expelled from the town of Leticia the few Colombian officials who represented the sole vestige of Colombia’s occupation and possession of the territory she had obtained from Peru.
Although well aware of the discontent of the inhabitants of that territory, the news of the rebellion took the Peruvian Government by surprise. At first it disowned the movement, attributing this revolt to discontented elements who wished to make trouble for the Government. But later, when it realized the true nature of the uprising and found that all the surrounding districts supported the Peruvians at Leticia, the Government did not hesitate to intervene with the desire of composing the difficulty amicably, giving due weight, on one hand, to Colombia’s treaty rights and, on the other, to the just claims of Peruvian nationals.
The Peruvian Government called upon Colombia to submit the whole incident to the Commission on Conciliation established by a previous Convention. This Colombia refused to do, alleging a technical irregularity, the non-deposit of the ratification. Colombia moreover insisted that the matter was one of internal police and had no international significance. Despite this very academic view-point, Colombia launched a national loan with the name of “Victory Loan” and began preparing an armed expedition wholly out of proportion with her own resources and with the alleged purpose of re-establishing order in that small territory and subduing the insurgents. In reality Colombia understood that behind these so-called rebels stood Peru, desirous, nay anxious, of settling peacefully the controversy.
[Page 503]When it became evident that Colombia wished to evade the Commission on Conciliation, the Brazilian Government offered its mediation on the following bases. Occupation of the disputed zone by Brazil for a fixed term pending negotiations; and delivery to Colombia of the zone, should the negotiations fail before the end of the term. Peru accepted the mediation, with the modification that, should the negotiations fail, the controversy be submitted to arbitration.
In so doing Peru was guided by the wish to settle definitively, in fair and lasting conditions, the territorial dispute with Colombia which the treaty of 1922 had so conspicuously been unsuccessful in doing. Should Peru have accepted the proposal of Brazil to deliver Leticia to Colombia if the negotiations did not reach a satisfactory result within a given time, Colombia would have needed only to prolong the negotiations beyond that period in order to enter for good in possession of the disputed zone. The local population would not have consented thus to be delivered again to the country whose yoke they had overthrown, and the problem would have subsisted, more complicated probably than ever and further away from a solution.
The Brazilian mediation was still in existence when the General in command of the Colombian military expedition issued an order to the Peruvian population at Leticia to surrender. Skirmishes ensued, tending thereby to prove that the Peruvian population was decided to resist the forcible efforts of Colombia to reestablish her sovereignty over a land the inhabitants considered to be their own and therefore Peruvian and which had never been willingly ceded to Colombia.
One reaches thus the latest stage of this unfortunate episode. Colombia appeals to the League of Nations at Geneva, to obtain its support in maintaining her treaty rights in Leticia.
The League proposes the withdrawal of Peruvian forces from the disputed zone, which would be occupied by a Commission of the League, and Colombia would place troops at the disposal of the Commission, these troops becoming, during the period of negotiations, international troops. Peru has accepted this proposal with the demurrer that the international troops be composed of any other nationality except Colombian.
Here again it is not difficult to understand Peru’s suggested modification.
The consent of the Peruvian population in the disputed territory is evidently a requisite to reach a satisfactory solution. If this consent were not forthcoming, force would have to be used, and it is precisely to avoid the use of Peruvian forces against Peruvian citizens for the purpose of obliging them to become Colombian residents, as well as the use of Colombian forces against Peruvian citizens to impose upon them a rule they repudiate, that the internationalization of the zone, [Page 504] pending negotiations, had been conceived. The Peruvian population would reject a fictitious internationalization, by which Colombian troops, under the guise of international troops, would occupy again their home-land. No stress of imagination is needed to visualize how in practice, with the animosity now smouldering between both countries, clashes would easily occur, were Colombian forces, even under foreign command, to police a territory where the inhabitants had risen against Colombia’s authority and freed themselves from Colombian control.
An international force should be truly international and not merely so in name. If the principle of internationalization is admitted as a fair means of neutralizing a zone, of which the ultimate fate is under discussion, then the internationalization should be genuine.
Reviewing the situation in its entirety one clearly perceives that Colombia’s claim is purely legalistic. She bases her rights to Leticia on a treaty, which the people of Leticia never approved, and today, as before, reject. Had Peru proceeded likewise in a spirit of formulism she could have alleged the nullity of the 1922 treaty on the ground that Colombia has failed to deliver to Peru the small tract of land named Sucumbios, which the treaty adjudicated to Peru. But Peru has preferred to place the problem on a broader basis.
If the boundary controversy between Peru and Colombia is to be settled satisfactorily, it must establish in the disputed region a regime lasting and peaceful. This can only be obtained through the consent of the inhabitants. Coercion is useless; it breeds reaction. Even were Colombia able to overcome the resistance of the local population, the problem would not be solved. Leticia would be for Colombia a remote outpost, where she would have to maintain her authority by sheer weight of force, surrounded as she would be by an hostile population. For Peru Leticia would become a source of continuous friction with Colombia; and a new center of international trouble would arise in South America.
The native population, Peruvian in every sense and deeply rooted to the soil, is by no means composed of filibusters intent on raiding foreign lands. It defends its own nationality, its home, its property. Duly consulted and given proper participation in any negotiation, it is bound to be reasonable. Coerced, it would revolt.
The Peruvian Government, therefore, has all along demanded that the controversy be the subject of negotiations. The Peruvian Government does not pretend to impose its own views or interests. It hopes by mutual concessions to reach an understanding. Should these negotiations fail, it would submit the whole dispute to arbitration, disposed as ever to abide by the decision of an impartial judge. And while the negotiations proceed ordinary prudence advises that [Page 505] the subject of the dispute be held in trust, so as to facilitate and not envenom the discussion. Internationalization true and effective would accomplish this end.
For this reason Peru proposes an internationalization with international forces not pertaining to either of the contending parties; and the Peruvian Government ventures to hope that friendly powers, interested only in the maintenance of peace, will see fit to support Peru’s demand, recalling that the rights of the Peruvian population at Leticia, the right of self-determination, should be given due consideration and not discarded, only to lay stress on the treaty rights of Colombia, which flow from a treaty lacking the essential requisite of having obtained the approval of those whom the treaty so closely concerns.
Among these friendly powers Peru wishes to count the United States, whose moral influence in all matters on this continent is so great, and to whom peoples fighting for their liberty have always instinctively looked.