Ecuador Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ===Struggle for independence=== During the [[Spanish American wars of independence|struggle for independence]], before Peru or Ecuador became independent, areas of the former Vice Royalty of New Granada declared themselves independent from Spain. A few months later, a part of the Peruvian liberation army of San Martín decided to occupy the independent cities of Tumbez and Jaén, with the intention of using them as springboards to occupy the independent city of Guayaquil and then liberate the rest of the Audiencia de Quito (Ecuador). It was common knowledge among officers of the liberation army from the south that their leader [[José de San Martín|San Martín]] wished to liberate present-day Ecuador and add it to the future republic of Peru, since it had been part of the Inca Empire before the Spaniards conquered it. However, [[Simón Bolívar|Bolívar]]'s intention was to form a new republic known as the [[Gran Colombia]], out of the liberated Spanish territory of New Granada which consisted of Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador. San Martín's plans were thwarted when Bolívar, descended from the Andes mountains and occupied Guayaquil; they also annexed the newly liberated Audiencia de Quito to the Republic of Gran Colombia. In the south, Ecuador had claims to a small piece of land beside the Pacific Ocean known as [[Tumbes Region|Tumbes]]. In Ecuador's southern Andes Mountain region where the Marañon cuts across, Ecuador had claims to an area it called [[Jaén, Peru|Jaén de Bracamoros]]. These areas were included as part of the territory of Gran Colombia by Bolivar on 17 December 1819, during the [[Congress of Angostura]] when the Republic of Gran Colombia was created. Tumbes declared itself independent from Spain on 17 January 1821, and Jaén de Bracamoros on 17 June 1821, without any outside help from revolutionary armies. However, that same year, Peruvian forces participating in the Trujillo revolution occupied both Jaén and Tumbes. Peruvian generals, without any legal titles backing them up and with Ecuador still federated with the Gran Colombia, had the desire to annex Ecuador to the Republic of Peru at the expense of the Gran Colombia, feeling that Ecuador was once part of the Inca Empire. On 28 July 1821, Peruvian independence was proclaimed in Lima by San Martín, and Tumbes and Jaén, which were included as part of the revolution of Trujillo by the Peruvian occupying force, had the whole region swear allegiance to the new Peruvian flag and incorporated itself into Peru. Gran Colombia had always protested Peru for the return of Jaén and Tumbes for almost a decade, then finally Bolivar after long and futile discussion over the return of Jaén, Tumbes, and part of Mainas, declared war. President and General [[José de La Mar]], who was born in Ecuador, believing his opportunity had come to annex the District of Ecuador to Peru, personally, with a Peruvian force, invaded and occupied Guayaquil and a few cities in the Loja region of southern Ecuador on 28 November 1828. The war ended when an outnumbered southern Gran Colombian army at [[Battle of Tarqui]] on 27 February 1829, led by [[Antonio José de Sucre]], defeated the Peruvian invasion force led by President La Mar. This defeat led to the signing of the Treaty of Guayaquil in September 1829, whereby Peru and its Congress recognized Gran Colombian rights over Tumbes, Jaén, and Maynas. Through meetings between Peru and Gran Colombia, the border was set as Tumbes river in the west, and in the east, the Maranon and Amazon rivers were to be followed toward Brazil as the most natural borders between them. According to the peace negotiations Peru agreed to return Guayaquil, Tumbez, and Jaén; despite this, Peru returned Guayaquil, but failed to return Tumbes and Jaén, alleging that it was not obligated to follow the agreements, since the Gran Colombia ceased to exist when it divided itself into three different nations – Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela. [[File:AGHRC (1890) - Carta XI - División política de Colombia, 1824.jpg|thumb|Map of the former [[Gran Colombia]] in 1824 (named in its time as Colombia), the Gran Colombia covered all the colored region.]] The Central District of the Gran Colombia, known as Cundinamarca or New Granada (modern Colombia) with its capital in Bogota, did not recognize the separation of the Southern District of the Gran Colombia, with its capital in Quito, from the Gran Colombian federation on 13 May 1830. After Ecuador's separation, the [[Department of Cauca]] voluntarily decided to unite itself with Ecuador due to instability in the central government of Bogota. The Venezuelan born President of Ecuador, the general [[Juan José Flores]], with the approval of the Ecuadorian congress annexed the Department of Cauca on 20 December 1830, since the government of Cauca had called for union with the District of the South as far back as April 1830. Moreover, the Cauca region, throughout its long history, had very strong economic and cultural ties with the people of Ecuador. Also, the Cauca region, which included such cities as [[Pasto, Colombia|Pasto]], [[Popayán]], and [[Buenaventura, Valle del Cauca|Buenaventura]], had always been dependent on the Presidencia or Audiencia of Quito. Fruitless negotiations continued between the governments of Bogotá and Quito, where the government of Bogotá did not recognize the separation of Ecuador or that of Cauca from the Gran Colombia until war broke out in May 1832. In five months, New Granada defeated Ecuador due to the fact that the majority of the Ecuadorian Armed Forces were composed of rebellious angry unpaid veterans from Venezuela and Colombia that did not want to fight against their fellow countrymen. Seeing that his officers were rebelling, mutinying, and changing sides, President Flores had no option but to reluctantly make peace with New Granada. The Treaty of Pasto of 1832 was signed by which the Department of Cauca was turned over to New Granada (modern Colombia), the government of Bogotá recognized Ecuador as an independent country and the border was to follow the Ley de División Territorial de la República de Colombia (Law of the Division of Territory of the Gran Colombia) passed on 25 June 1824. This law set the border at the river Carchi and the eastern border that stretched to Brazil at the Caquetá river. Later, Ecuador contended that the Republic of Colombia, while reorganizing its government, unlawfully made its eastern border provisional and that Colombia extended its claims south to the Napo River because it said that the Government of Popayán extended its control all the way to the Napo River. ====Struggle for possession of the Amazon Basin==== [[File:South America 1879.png|thumb|left|South America (1879): All land claims by Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Bolivia in 1879]] When Ecuador seceded from the Gran Colombia, Peru contested Ecuador's claims with the newly discovered ''Real Cedula'' of 1802, by which Peru claims the King of Spain had transferred these lands from the Viceroyalty of New Granada to the Viceroyalty of Peru. During colonial times this was to halt the ever-expanding Portuguese settlements into Spanish domains, which were left vacant and in disorder after the expulsion of Jesuit missionaries from their bases along the Amazon Basin. Ecuador countered by labeling the Cedula of 1802 an ecclesiastical instrument, which had nothing to do with political borders. Peru began its de facto occupation of disputed Amazonian territories, after it signed a secret 1851 peace treaty in favor of Brazil. This treaty disregarded Spanish rights that were confirmed during colonial times by a Spanish-Portuguese treaty over the Amazon regarding territories held by illegal Portuguese settlers. Peru began occupying the missionary villages in the Mainas or Maynas region, which it began calling Loreto, with its capital in [[Iquitos]]. During its negotiations with Brazil, Peru claimed Amazonian Basin territories up to Caqueta River in the north and toward the Andes Mountain range. Colombia protested stating that its claims extended south toward the Napo and Amazon Rivers. Ecuador protested that it claimed the Amazon Basin between the Caqueta river and the Marañon-Amazon river. Peru ignored these protests and created the Department of Loreto in 1853 with its capital in Iquitos. Peru briefly occupied Guayaquil again in 1860, since Peru thought that Ecuador was selling some of the disputed land for development to British bond holders, but returned Guayaquil after a few months. The border dispute was then submitted to Spain for arbitration from 1880 to 1910, but to no avail.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Zook |first1=David H. |title=Zarumilla-Marañón: the Ecuador-Peru dispute |date=1964 |publisher=New York, Bookman Associates |location=New York |pages=15–36 |edition=First}}</ref> In the early part of the 20th century, Ecuador made an effort to peacefully define its eastern Amazonian borders with its neighbours through negotiation. On 6 May 1904, Ecuador signed the Tobar-Rio Branco Treaty recognizing Brazil's claims to the Amazon in recognition of Ecuador's claim to be an Amazonian country to counter Peru's earlier Treaty with Brazil back on 23 October 1851. Then after a few meetings with the Colombian government's representatives an agreement was reached and the Muñoz Vernaza-Suarez Treaty was signed 15 July 1916, in which Colombian rights to the Putumayo river were recognized as well as Ecuador's rights to the Napo river and the new border was a line that ran midpoint between those two rivers. In this way, Ecuador gave up the claims it had to the Amazonian territories between the Caquetá River and Napo River to Colombia, thus cutting itself off from Brazil. Later, a brief war erupted between Colombia and Peru, over Peru's claims to the Caquetá region, which ended with Peru reluctantly signing the Salomon-Lozano Treaty on 24 March 1922. Ecuador protested this secret treaty, since Colombia gave away Ecuadorian claimed land to Peru that Ecuador had given to Colombia in 1916. On 21 July 1924, the Ponce-Castro Oyanguren Protocol was signed between Ecuador and Peru where both agreed to hold direct negotiations and to resolve the dispute in an equitable manner and to submit the differing points of the dispute to the United States for arbitration. Negotiations between the Ecuadorian and Peruvian representatives began in Washington on 30 September 1935. The negotiations turned into arguments during the next 7 months and finally on 29 September 1937, the Peruvian representatives decided to break off the negotiations.{{citation needed|date=April 2022}} In 1941, amid fast-growing tensions within disputed territories around the Zarumilla River, war broke out with Peru. Peru claimed that Ecuador's military presence in Peruvian-claimed territory was an invasion; Ecuador, for its part, claimed that Peru had recently invaded Ecuador around the Zarumilla River and that Peru since Ecuador's independence from Spain has systematically occupied Tumbez, Jaén, and most of the disputed territories in the Amazonian Basin between the Putomayo and Marañon Rivers. In July 1941, troops were mobilized in both countries. Peru had an army of 11,681 troops who faced a poorly supplied and inadequately armed Ecuadorian force of 2,300, of which only 1,300 were deployed in the southern provinces. Hostilities erupted on 5 July 1941, when Peruvian forces crossed the Zarumilla river at several locations, testing the strength and resolve of the Ecuadorian border troops. Finally, on 23 July 1941, the Peruvians launched a major invasion, crossing the Zarumilla river in force and advancing into the Ecuadorian province of [[El Oro Province|El Oro]]. [[File:Ecuador-peru-land-claims-01.png|thumb|left|Map of Ecuadorian land claims after 1916]] During the course of the [[Ecuadorian–Peruvian War]], Peru gained control over part of the disputed territory and some parts of the province of El Oro, and some parts of the [[Loja Province|province of Loja]], demanding that the Ecuadorian government give up its territorial claims. The Peruvian Navy blocked the port of [[Guayaquil]], almost cutting all supplies to the Ecuadorian troops. After a few weeks of war and under pressure by the United States and several Latin American nations, all fighting came to a stop. Ecuador and Peru came to an accord formalized in the [[Rio Protocol]], signed on 29 January 1942, in favor of hemispheric unity against the [[Axis Powers]] in [[World War II]] favoring Peru with the territory they occupied at the time the war came to an end. The 1944 [[Glorious May Revolution]] followed a military-civilian rebellion and a subsequent civic strike which successfully removed Carlos Arroyo del Río as a dictator from Ecuador's government. However, a post-Second World War recession and popular unrest led to a return to populist politics and domestic military interventions in the 1960s, while foreign companies developed oil resources in the Ecuadorian Amazon. In 1972, construction of the Andean pipeline was completed. The pipeline brought oil from the east side of the Andes to the coast, making Ecuador South America's second largest oil exporter. In 1978, the city of [[Quito]] and the [[Galápagos Islands]] were inscribed as [[UNESCO World Heritage Sites]], making the first two properties in the world to become listed sites. [[File:Relevo-ecu.JPG|thumb|Ecuadorian troops during the [[Cenepa War]]]] [[File:Mirage F.1JA.JPG|thumb|The [[Dassault Mirage F1|Mirage F.1JA]] (FAE-806) was one aircraft involved in the claimed shooting down of two Peruvian [[Sukhoi Su-22]] on 10 February 1995.]] The [[Rio Protocol]] failed to precisely resolve the border along a little river in the remote ''Cordillera del Cóndor'' region in southern Ecuador. This caused a long-simmering dispute between Ecuador and Peru, which ultimately led to fighting between the two countries; first a border skirmish in January–February 1981 known as the [[Paquisha Incident]], and ultimately full-scale warfare in January 1995 where the Ecuadorian military shot down Peruvian aircraft and helicopters and Peruvian infantry marched into southern Ecuador. Each country blamed the other for the onset of hostilities, known as the [[Cenepa War]]. [[Sixto Durán Ballén]], the Ecuadorian president, famously declared that he would not give up a single centimeter of Ecuador. Popular sentiment in Ecuador became strongly [[nationalism|nationalistic]] against Peru: graffiti could be seen on the walls of Quito referring to Peru as the "''Cain de Latinoamérica''", a reference to the murder of [[Abel]] by his brother [[Cain]] in the [[Book of Genesis]].<ref>Roos, Wilma and van Renterghem, Omer ''Ecuador'', New York, 2000, p.5.</ref> Ecuador and Peru signed the [[Brasilia Presidential Act]] peace agreement on 26 October 1998, which ended hostilities, and effectively put an end to the Western Hemisphere's longest running territorial dispute.<ref name="ucdp.uu.se">{{cite web|title=Uppsala Conflict Data Program – Conflict Encyclopedia, General Conflict Information, Conflict name: Ecuador – Peru, In depth, Background to the 1995 fighting and Ecuador and Peru engage in armed conflict|access-date=15 July 2013|url=http://www.ucdp.uu.se/gpdatabase/gpcountry.php?id=126®ionSelect=5-Southern_Americas#|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130927150723/http://www.ucdp.uu.se/gpdatabase/gpcountry.php?id=126®ionSelect=5-Southern_Americas|archive-date=27 September 2013|url-status=dead}}</ref> The Guarantors of the [[Rio Protocol]] (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and the United States of America) ruled that the border of the undelineated zone was to be set at the line of the ''Cordillera del Cóndor''. While Ecuador had to give up its decades-old territorial claims to the eastern slopes of the Cordillera, as well as to the entire western area of Cenepa headwaters, Peru was compelled to give to Ecuador, in perpetual lease but without sovereignty, {{convert|1|km2|abbr=on|sp=us}} of its territory, in the area where the Ecuadorian base of Tiwinza – focal point of the war – had been located within Peruvian soil and which the Ecuadorian Army held during the conflict. The final border demarcation came into effect on 13 May 1999, and the multi-national MOMEP (Military Observer Mission for Ecuador and Peru) troop deployment withdrew on 17 June 1999.<ref name="ucdp.uu.se"/> Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. 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