Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958–1960, Volume V, Microfiche Supplement, American Republics

EC–22. Telegram from the Secretary of State to the Ecuadoran Foreign Minister (Chiriboga)¹

Washington, December 7, 1960, 2:56 p.m.

Excellency:

I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your telegram of October 23, 1960² in which Your Excellency informs me that the government and people of Ecuador proclaim their rejection of the Protocol of Rio de Janeiro of 1942 and state the reason on which this position is based. In full agreement with the other guarantor powers to whom Your Excellency addressed yourself simultaneously in identical terms, I take the liberty of making the following response to Your Excellency’s remarks, which are a cause of concern to the powers guaranteeing the Protocol.

It is a basic principle of international law that the unilateral win of one of the parties is not sufficient to invalidate a boundary treaty nor to liberate it from the obligations imposed therein. Only mutual agreement by both parties can modify its provisions or attribute competence to an international tribunal to judge questions which may arise regarding such an instrument. For these reasons, until the sovereign and agreed will of Ecuador and Peru otherwise dispose, my country considers that the Protocol of Rio de Janeiro—signed and ratified by Ecuador and Peru and already applied in almost its entirety through practical acts of demarcation to which the parties themselves attributed definitive character—is a valid instrument and should be complied with. Moreover, my government considers that any doubts which may arise between the contracting parties in the process of practical execution of the Protocol in the as yet undemarcated part of the frontier should be amicably resolved in accordance with Article 7 of that instrument with the assistance of the guaranteeing powers. Based on this viewpoint and in its capacity as a guarantor country my Government, faithful to formal undertaking assumed under the terms of the Protocol and animated by the most sincere feeling of friendship for both contracting parties, is disposed at any moment, in concert with the other guarantors, to render them its assistance in search of a happy solution of any disagreement between them.

With regard to the preoccupation manifested by Your Excellency concerning the concentration of Peruvian troops which may have been observed on the southern frontier of Ecuador, I wish to manifest to Your Excellency my confidence that no American country could today challenge the peaceful conscience of the continent and to remind you that solidarity in the face of aggression established by the Inter-American system is a secure guarantee against any armed threat.

The United States, together with the other guarantor countries, is confident that the contracting parties will maintain between themselves the close harmony and fraternal union which should prevail between republics of the American Continent.³

Accept, Excellency, the renewed assurances of my highest consideration.⁴

Christian A. Herter

1. Source: Department of State, Central Files, 622.233/12–760. This telegram, evidently unnumbered, was drafted by Richard A. Poole, Officer in Charge of Peruvian Affairs and John T. Dreyfuss, Officer in Charge of Ecuadoran Affairs; and initialed by the Secretary of State. The Foreign Ministers of the four Guarantor States (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and the U.S.), named in Article V of the Rio Protocol of 1942 sent identical telegrams, with the necessary changes, to Ecuadoran Foreign Minister Chiriboga on December 7.
2. Not printed; 622.233/10–2760.
3. In telegram 758 from Rio de Janeiro, December 9, the Embassy quoted an appeal sent that day by the Brazilian Foreign Office to the Peruvian and Ecuadoran Foreign Ministers on behalf of the guarantor countries of the Protocol of Rio de Janeiro. They appealed to Ecuador and Peru “to remove all reasons for tension between them and establish an atmosphere of goodwill in their mutual relations which would permit them to overcome their present misunderstandings.” The guarantor powers offered “to lend every assistance toward that end.” (622.233/12–960)
4. The Spanish text of an eight-page telegram from Ecuadoran Foreign Minister Chiriboga to Secretary of State Herter, December 8, replying to the present telegram, is in ARA/EP Files, Lot 67 D 566, “Peru Relations—Peru-Ecuador Boundary.”