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Ecuador and the Eleventh Inter-American Conference*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Mary Jeanne Reid Martz*
Affiliation:
Duke University

Extract

Amid the aura of urgency in which many today view hemispheric affairs, criticisms of the Organization of American States are legion. In both Latin America and the United States, there are growing numbers who believe that the only viable alternative to complete systemic collapse is a radical organizational transformation. For critics of the inter-American organization, there has been a sharp predilection to place the burden of their argument on either a cataloguing of bureaucratic ills or a polemic attack upon the problems and inconsistencies of United States involvement. And certainly various North American actions and policies have helped contribute to the present precarious position of the OAS.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © University of Miami 1968

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Footnotes

*

The writer is indebted to her husband, John D. Martz (professor of political science, University of North Carolina), who made the field research for this study feasible. She accompanied him in 1966-67 during an extended stay in Ecuador through his fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation.

References

1 See Connell-Smith, Gordon, The Inter-American System (London: Oxford University Press, 1966)Google Scholar; Stoetzer, O. C., The Organization of American States (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1965)Google Scholar; Dreier, John C., The Organization of American States and the Hemispheric Crisis (New York: Harper and Row, 1962)Google Scholar for analyses of these problems.

2 This is a narrative study based primarily on official Ecuadorian documents and upon newspaper reports and reproductions of speeches, many of which can only be found in Quito and Guayaquil periodicals. Due to the turbulence in Ecuador since the overthrow of President José María Velasco Ibarra in 1961, the Foreign Ministry has not printed reports beyond that date. Neither has the customary collection of presidential speeches been extended to include Velasco's multitudinous speeches during his most recent term in office.

3 Operation Pan America, put forward by President Kubitschek of Brazil, was first discussed in September, 1958 at an Informal Meeting of American Foreign Ministers. It was not until May, 1959 that the Committee of Twenty-One established a subcommittee that would submit its studies of Operation Pan America to the Eleventh Inter-American Conference. See Connell-Smith, The Inter-American System, pp. 269-72.

4 Dreier, The Organization of American States and the Hemispheric Crisis, pp. 121-22, points out that the “elaborate and time-consuming procedure required to develop the agenda of the conference further obstructed the inclusion in the program of the really urgent matters facing the inter-American community.”

5 During 1959 the trouble in the Caribbean had gradually become more serious: Castro had come to power in Cuba in January and there had been a threatened fidelista invasion of the Dominican Republic. Feuds between democratic and dictatorial regimes further contributed to a generally tense situation.

6 Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores (Luis Antonio Peñaherrera), Informe a la Nación, 11 Junio de 1955 (Quito: Editorial la Salle, 1955), p. 95.

7 Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores (Jorge Villagómez Yépez), Informe a la Nación, IV Junio de 1956 (Quito: Talleres Gráficos Nacionales, 1956), pp. 345-46.

8 In a multi-candidate race, Dr. Ponce narrowly won with a bare 29 per cent of the vote.

9 Camilo Ponce Henríquez, Programa y Realización de Gobierno, Tomo 1, 1956-57 (Quito: Talleres Gráficos Nacionales, 1957), pp. 173-74.

10 Major works included: construction of the Legislative Palace, the Quito and Guayaquil airport terminals, residences at Central and Catholic universities, the Hotel Quito, and an addition to the Foreign Ministry; remodeling of the Government Palace; extension of international radio equipment; and public works whose execution was charged to the Quito municipality. For details see ibid.

11 See El Comercio (Quito), September 13, 1959; December 2, 1959; February 21, 1960; March 24, 1960; August 6 and 7, 1960; and December 18, 1960,

12 El Comercio, December 13, 1959.

13 An inordinate amount of material has been written in Spanish on the problem. See Tobar Donoso, La Invasión Peruana y el Protocolo de Río (Quito: Ed. Ecuatoriana, 1945) and Alvarado Garaico, Sinopsis del Derecho Territorial Ecuatoriana (Guayaquil: Editorial Cervantes, 1952) for the Ecuadorian case. For that of Peru see Ulloa, Posición Internacional del Perú (Lima: Imp. Torres Aguirre, 1941). In English, a basically military and geographical history of the dispute is David H. Zook, Jr., ZaramillaMarañon; The Ecuador-Peru Dispute (New York: Bookman Associates, Inc., 1964).

14 The New York Times, February 18, 1945.

15 The difficulty generally pertains to a forty-eight mile strip. The Protocol denned the border as the watershed between the Zamora and Santiago rivers. When a U.S. Army aerial survey in 1945 discovered the Cenepa River where the watershed was supposed to be, Ecuador seized the opportunity to declare the border in doubt and the Protocol “inexecutable.”

16 Zook, ZaramillaMarañon, p. 214.

17 El Comercio, March 11, 1945; The New York Times, March 11, 1954.

18 El Comercio, January 1, 1955.

19 Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance. Applications, i., pp. 231- 41.

20 The New York Times, January 2, 1959.

21 El Comercio, September 6, 1959. Ponce's reluctance to discuss the border problem at the meeting may have resulted from fear that Peru might try to persuade other hemispheric nations to recognize the validity of the 1942 Protocol.

22 El Comercio, September 13, 1959.

23 El Comercio, September 12, 1959, and The New York Times, December 19, 1959.

24 The Central Committee of the Ecuadorian Communist Party reportedly had prepared a “secret” directive to discredit and if possible disrupt the Conference (The New York Times, May 15, 1959). OAS Secretary-General José A. Mora in an interview in Quito agreed that there was a Communist effort to undermine the meeting, but he appeared basically unconcerned. (El Comercio, May 22, 1959.)

25 El Comercio, November 19, 1959.

26 La Calle (Quito), December 3, 1959, # 143, p. 5.

27 El Comercio, December 24, 29, and 31, 1959.

28 Date of the XIth Inter-American Conference, March 30, 1960, OEA/Ser. G/III, c-5a-365 (3).

29 El Tiempo (Bogotá), March 6, 1960, and El Comercio, March 10, 1960.

30 El Comercio, August 18, 1960.

31 He took advantage of ceremonies inaugurating the bust of a naval captain who had died in the 1941 conflict to deliver the speech.

32 El Comercio, September 1, 1960.

33 El Comercio, September 4, 1960.

34 El Comercio, September 18, 1960.

38 El Comercio, September 30, 1960.

36 When Lincoln White of the U.S. State Department declared that the United States as a party to the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance “would fulfill exactly its obligations” in case of an aggression as defined in the Treaty, many Ecuadorians seized upon this as a sign of U.S. belligerence toward Ecuador. (El Comercio, December 14, 1960.)

37 El Comercio, December 10, 1960. The government position was that violence was created by Peruvian agents desirous of besmirching the Ecuadorian cause and by Communist agitators. The violence obviously had a wider base. At the same time that Ecuador was assuring OAS members that she had control over the Communists, she also had to guard against conveying the impression that the Communist threat was not serious. This might have dropped Ecuador from any priority for economic aid among the nations being considered by the United States in its concern over the Communist threat.

38 El Comercio, September 25, 1960.

39 El Comercio, September 29, 1960.

40 El Comercio, October 11, 1960.

41 El Comercio, December 9, 1960.

42 The New York Times, December 15, 1960.

43 Without including the bulk of his public presidential papers, a selective bibliography of Velasco's writings would include: Cuestiones americanas (Quito: Escuela Tipográfica Salesiana, 1930); Conciencia o barbarie (Medellín: Editorial Atlántida, 1936); Experiencias jurídicas de América (Buenos Aires: Editorial Americalee, 1943); Expresión político hispanoamericana (Santiago: Empresa Editora Zig-Zag, 1943); Caos politico en el mundo contemporánea (Guayaquil: Editorial Royan Print, 1964); Servidumbre y liberación (Buenos Aires: Editorial Americalee, 1965); and for a volume including speeches and public statements on the border dispute, Democracia jurídica interamericana (Quito: Publicaciones U.I.P., 1961).

44 El Comercio, December 16, 1960. Araujo further advocated that Ecuador break with the inter-American system.

45 The author of a biographical study now in progress told this writer that an intensive examination of presidential correspondence revealed only a cautious and proper exchange of diplomatic pleasantries with Fidel Castro, while avoiding any commitment, either tacit or explicit.

46 Meanwhile it was even rumored, especially in Lima, that Velasco's 1960 campaign had been financed by Castro. There were also suggestions that he might have entered into some secret agreement with the Cuban leader, when unsubstantiated accounts were circulated by anii-velasquistas alleging the presence of Ecuadorian guerrilla forces in the Andean sierra.

47 El Comercio, November 15, 1960.

48 El Comercio, January 17, 1961.

49 Aside from these reasons there was no accord over two important matters— representative democracy and respect for human rights—that were to be discussed at the Conference with a view to the eventual signing of conventions. Also considered was the fact that Brazil and the United States would have new administrations.

50 Twelfth Report of Committee on Preparations of the XIth Inter-American Conference, December 30, 1960, OEA/Ser. G/III, C-i-499.

51 El Comercio, December 31, 1960.

52 By February there were reports that Chiriboga was resigning, and there was at least one demonstration against him at the Central University in Quito.

53 Hispanic American Report, XIV (March, 1961), p. 56.

54 Thirteenth Report of Committee on Preparations for the Xlth Inter- American Conference, January 11, 1961, OEA/Ser. G/III, C-i-506.

55 El Comercio, January 10, 1961.

56 El Comercio, January 16, 1961.

57 El Comercio, March 9, 1961.

58 El Comercio, March 21, 1961.

59 El Comercio, April 9, 1961.

60 El Comerclo, April 14, 1961.

61 El Comercio, April 14, 1961.

62 Interview of ex-President Ponce with “Primicia” in El Comercio, May 20, 1961.

63 El Comercio, April 17, 1961.

A few weeks later Chiriboga resigned from the Foreign Ministry on the basis of what he termed unfortunate discrepancies between himself and Velasco over the Cuban situation. He also alluded to a division over the handling of the Peru-Ecuador dispute but did not particularize. (El Comercio, May 11, 1961.)

64 See Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores (Wilson Vela H.), Informe a la Nación, 1960-1961, vol. II (Quito: Editorial “Minerva,” 1961), pp. 56-69, for the complete text of the letters along with Velasco's replies.

65 Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores (Wilson Vela H.), Informe a la Nación, 1960-1961, vol. II (Quito: Editorial “Minerva,” 1961), pp. 69-71. Also see Postponement of the Xhh Inter-American Conference, May 2, 1961, OEA/Ser. G/III, C-sa-404 (2).

66 Among those examined were El Comercio (Quito), El Telégrafo (Guayaquil), El Mercurio (Cuenca), and the official Diario del Ecuador.

67 El Comercio, November 21, 1963.

68 Twentieth Report of the Committee on Preparations over the Date of the Xlth Inter-American Conference, December 4, 1963, OEA/Ser. G/IV, C-i-652 (Eng.), Rev.

69 Venezuela's Betancourt government was wholly preoccupied with the holding of elections in the face of major Communist urban terrorism on December 1. With the election of Raúl Leoni to the presidency, however, the outgoing administration preferred to leave the decision to those who would be attending any April meeting. Consultation with the President-elect and his advisors presumably led to the later change from abstention to nonparticipation.

70 The New York Times, December 22, 1963.

71 El Comercio, January 3, 4, and 5, 1964.

72 Twenty-First Report of the Committee on Preparation of the XIth Inter-American Conference over the Date of the Conference, February 20, 1964. OEA/ Ser. G/IV, c-i-657 (Eng.), rev. 2.

73 Strengthening the Inter-American System: Statement by the Secretary-General Dr. José A. Mora, OEA/Ser. G/V:C-d-1258 (Eng.).

74 The Act of Rio de Janeiro: Amendments of the Charter of Bogotá, OEA/Ser. E/XIII, 1 (Doc. 150 Rev. Corr.).

75 “Special Conference: Protocol of Buenos Aires,” The OAS Chronicle, Vol. 2, pp. 30-31, April, 1967.

76 Stoetzer, The Organization of American States, p. 18.

77 The New York Times, November 17, 1965.

78 El Comercio, November 23, 1966.

79 El Comercio, December 24, 1966.