The Colombia-Peru War, 1932-1933
"A war without casualties. Nonsense! My friends, this war has had one great victim, it has made a singular casualty. And that casualty is Ecuador!"
Velasco Ibbara, 1933
The Columbia-Peru war comes hot on the heels of Ecuador’s Presidential crisis, and more than anything else shaped the policy and history of the triumvirate.
In 1922, Augusto Leguia, the Dictator of Peru negotiates a secret Treaty, the Salomon-Lopez Treaty. The treaty provides for, among other things, Columbia’s recognition of Peru’s territorial claims against Ecuador, and a flanking corridor of land on Ecuador’s northern side between the Putomayo and Caqueta rivers. In return, the Peruvians concede a ‘corridor to the amazon’ a thin wedge of land deep in the the interior, and the towns of Letitia and Tarapaca.
Letitia and Tarapaca had been settled by Peruvians but claimed by the Colombians. The treaty gave these interior towns to the Colombians, who established their control. But the population remained mostly Peruvian.
In August 1930, Leguia is overthrown by Lieutenant Colonel Sanchez. The treaty becomes public for the first time. The Peruvians saw this as giving away not just land, but their own people, had reacted with outrage and Sanchez had abrogated the treaty. Crying betrayal the Ecuadorians expell the Columbian ambassador and break diplomatic relations. But the weak Arroya government has neither the motivation or the ability to do much about it. Bad feelings all around, but the Colombians hang on to Letitia and Tarapaca.
There’s a lot of uncertain border territory in the Oriente, up and down the Andes. Iit’s not well demarcated, but then again, its thinly populated, inaccessible and of no particular value. So mostly the latin american governments simmer and snip and argue with each other. But really, who wants to go to war over a few acres of jungle?
For the next two years though, nothing much happens.
Until one day on September 1, 1932.
The war starts prosaically enough, with a civilian insurrection in a town called Iquitos, deep in the Peruvian rainforest. Sanchez sends troops to quell the insurrection, and then once that is done... Well, suddenly, he’s got a real force in the area, and the disputed towns of Letitia and Tarapaca are just down the river. So he sends his forces in, expelling Colombian officials and administrators, and interdicting river traffic.
Or perhaps a band of loyal Peruvians invade the town of Letitia, drive out the Colombians and then call for the support of Sanchez, who sends troops in support.
Regardless, Sanchez looks at the situation with cold, cold eyes. The treaty is defunct, the people in these towns are Peruvian by blood, Colombia has no navy and no roads to get into the interior. So why not.
The Colombian government doesn’t respond until September 17, probably because they really don’t want to. These towns are deep in the interior, they’re hard to get to, of little value, and fighting a war there, even sending an army down there, is going to be hideously expensive with little benefit.
But the news gets out. Columbian river traffic gets molested, suddenly the whole nation is up in arms and the government has no choice but to follow along. By September 19 the Columbian newspaper announces 10,000 letters calling for war. The same day thousands of students are on the march. The Colombian Senate authorizes ten million dollars for the war. The nation is seized by a fit of madness, patriotic fervour running rampant.
By the start of October both countries were gearing up for war, building up armies, stockpiling weapons and ammunition. The Colombians purchase a fleet of old river ships from Europe, and refurbish a series of passenger planes into a temporary air force.
Then they head down river. Between waiting for the fleet to arrive, provisioning it, and actually sailing an army down the inland watercourses, they finally reach the Amazon by December, 1932, and are approaching the town of Tarapaca by February of 1933. In one sense, that’s remarkably fast work in another, its slow.
By February 1933, at least three thousand Columbian troops faced off against three thousand Peruvian troops on either side of the Putomayo river. On February 14, 1933, the Peruvian air force attempts to bomb the Colombian fleet. But it misses. The next day, the town of Tarapaca falls without resistance, as the Peruvians retreat.
Then, somehow, nothing much happens, the two sides building their forces, preparing for the conflict, until April 30, 1932, when President Sanchez is assassinated while reviewing troops. His successor, within two weeks calls it all off.
The Salomon-Lopez Treaty is adopted. Everyone kisses and makes up. Medals and parades all around.
And so, we have an almost typical comic opera war. Near as I can tell, there’s a good chance that no one was unlucky enough to actually be killed. There’s lots of flag waving, angry letters, waving fists and patriotic fervour. But somehow the actual forces spend most of their time just finding their way into the theatre. Somehow they manage to avoid actually coming to blows. And then, just as suddenly as it flared up, its over.
But it didn’t have to be that way, and very nearly wasn’t.
Now, the scary thing here is that Sanchez was a genuine badass. According to Wikipedia, he was wounded in five places and lost three fingers during the overthrow of President Billinghurst in 1914. The fingers went when he grabbed a firing machine gun by the barrel with his bare hands and turned it on the enemy. That’s terrifyingly insane. In 1921 he was involved in an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow another Peruvian despot, shot, injured, captured and exiled. While in exile, he went abroad he served with the Spanish Foreign Legion in Morocco, where he was wounded yet again. The Spanish legions in Morocco produced General Franco and his bunch of hardcases.. He also served with the Royal Army of Italy in 1925, and took advanced military studies in France in 1926. As late as March 1932, he responded to an assassination attempt by pulling his own gun and trying to shoot his attacker. Here was a man who took war seriously, who studied it as a vocation, who was fearless and aggressive in battle, who had seen combat again and again and didn’t flinch.
Looking at the pictures of Sanchez, you can tell he’s one of those fearless mad bastards who’s just going to get thousands of people killed. Everything we know tells us that this man was brewing up a great big kettle of bad news, and everything we know about this guy tells us he wasn’t going to hesitate to dish it out.
Make no mistake, even if in hindsight the war is a comic opera farce, the combatants were deadly serious. By March, the Peruvians were taking delivery of a new fleet of Douglas Aircraft delivered from the United States. This was no pretend air force. On April 30, when Sanchez was shot, he was reviewing 20,000 new troops recruited for the coming war. Those are serious numbers, those are serious weapons.
So here we have a remarkable point of departure. Because sure as shooting, if Sanchez had lived, there was going to be a real four star dust up. The Columbia Peru war would not have been a months long tussle in the jungle, but a bloodbath on the order of the Chaco war, a history making, border shaking, nation shaping conflict.
But he died. So it just didn’t happen. Instead, the Colombia-Peru War is just a little footnote, in our timeline and in this one.