722.2315/1216: Telegram

The Ecuadoran Minister for Foreign Affairs (Tobar Donoso) to the Secretary of State

[Translation]

A month ago25 I had the honor to call Your Excellency’s considered attention to the proposal of total arbitration which, in its anxiousness to reach by juridical and pacific means the solution of the territorial controversy with Peru, the Ecuadoran delegation presented in the conferences in Washington. Today, I find myself in the painful situation of informing Your Excellency that Peru, instead of accepting that eminently conciliatory and fraternal proposal or of refusing frankly its assent, has resorted to an entirely anti-juridical and surprising recourse, that of suspending unilaterally the negotiations of Washington on the pretext that, by total arbitration, Ecuador has attempted to go beyond the terms of the Protocol of 1924. Such grounds lack any moral value because total arbitration was proposed precisely as a means of strengthening the efficacy of the Protocol and solely in the event that the parties should not reach a solution of the difference by the mixed method provided for in the said document, that is, a direct settlement and a partial arbitration. It was logical that in the event that these recourses should not give the hoped for result, Ecuador should seek the acceptance of a subsidiary means of such efficacy as total arbitration which until a short time ago was considered by Peru as embodied in the spirit of the said Protocol of 1924 and as the best instrument for the solution of international controversies. By the unilateral and violent suspension of the conferences Peru, in addition to violating the Protocol of 1924, has given evidence equally of a lack of confidence in its rights and of a repugnance which the arbitration inspires in it, notwithstanding that under such arbitration, as had been promised, Ecuador is resolved to proceed in a spirit of compromise and to take into account de facto situations worthy of attention. Ecuador, always respectful of its obligations and loyal to the principles of continental solidarity and justice which have converted America into the hemisphere of law, protests [Page 230] before it and addresses itself to the Foreign Offices of the friendly countries to express to them how contrary it would be to their own international policy and to the contractual bonds which unite them to Ecuador if Peru should persist in evading the obligations derived from the Protocol of 1924. My country hopes that the spirit of justice of the American Foreign Offices will support it (acompañara) in this moment of bitter test of law and of the sanctity of international agreements.

I am [etc.]

Julio Tobar Donoso
  1. See telegram of August 31 from the Ecuadoran Minister for Foreign Affairs, p. 226.