Peru CHANGING THREATS TO NATIONAL SECURITY
Campesinos from Pomacocha, near Ayacucho, whose mayor was
recently assassinated, meet with an agronomist.
Courtesy Inter-American Development Bank
External Threats
Historically, the major security challenges to the
country
and its military were external in nature, usually
involving
issues of borders and territorial disputes. Peru engaged
in more
foreign wars after independence than any other Latin
American
country, although most occurred in the nineteenth century
(Colombia, 1828; Argentina, 1836-37; Chile, 1836-39;
Bolivia,
1827-29, 1835, and 1841; Ecuador, 1858-59; Spain, 1863-66;
Chile,
1879-1883). Most of the nineteenth-century conflicts went
badly
for Peru. The most disastrous was the War of the Pacific
against
Chile. In many ways, this conflict could be considered
more
significant than the gaining of independence, given the
war's
impact on the development of present-day Peru.
In the twentieth century, the Peruvians, as of late
1992, had
engaged in two wars and two significant border skirmishes.
In the
Leticia War of 1932-33, named after the Amazonian city,
Peruvian
army and naval units were unable to keep Colombia from
holding
onto territory originally ceded by Peru in 1922 in the
Salomón-Lozano Treaty. The 1941 war with Ecuador, however,
was a
major success for Peruvian forces. Peru had established
the first
paratroop unit in the region and used it to good effect;
the
first combat in the hemisphere involving airborne troops
resulted
in the capture of Ecuador's Puerto Bolívar on July 27,
1941. By
the end of the month, when military actions ceased, Peru
held
Ecuador's southernmost province of El Oro and much of the
disputed eastern jungle territory that had been part of
Ecuador
since the 1830s. The Rio Protocol of February 1942 awarded
to
Peru some 205,000 square kilometers of previously disputed
Amazon
territory.
Ecuador repudiated the Rio Protocol in 1960, and border
incidents occurred periodically thereafter. None were as
serious
as the January 1981 incursion by Ecuadorian troops that
led to a
partial mobilization of forces by both countries. The
dispute was
resolved, much to Ecuador's displeasure, by the original
guarantors of the Rio Protocol--the United States,
Argentina,
Brazil, and Chile. Periodic incidents since have indicated
that
problems remain, particularly along a seventy-eight
kilometer
stretch of the border known as Cordillera del Condor,
which was
never marked off under the terms of the Rio Protocol.
Tensions
between Peru and Ecuador increased in 1992 after
Ecuadorian
troops were alleged to have crossed the border in July in
a
section that had been marked (a charge that Ecuador
denied).
However, urgent conversations between the two governments
led to
an interim agreement in October in hopes of avoiding a new
border
crisis.
This continuing border disagreement combined with the
lingering bitterness over the loss of Peruvian territory
to Chile
in the south and the coup that brought the Chilean
military to
power in September 1973. The coup was followed by major
increases
in military spending by Chile and an aborted effort to
give
Bolivia access to the Pacific through former Peruvian
territory.
Concern over these two developments contributed to Peru's
decision to continue to mass most of its military forces
near the
northern and southern borders, even as domestic insurgency
increased through the 1980s. Peru also mounted a
diplomatic
initiative with Bolivia in 1991-92 to open up a trade
corridor
for Bolivia to the Peruvian coast, with special free port
access
to the coastal city of Ilo. This was viewed as another
effort by
Peru to defuse border issues so as to be freer to pursue
the
internal security threat.
Data as of September 1992
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