In 1991, Ecuador's foreign policy had to deal with the revival of its old border conflict with Peru. Nevertheless, this time the situation offered some hope — in contrast to previous occasions, the most recent being the Paquisha incident in 1982 — that the longstanding impasse between the two countries, which had hindered closer cooperation and greater integration for decades, might be nearing some sort of resolution at last.
During the first two years of his administration, President Rodrigo Borja and his Foreign Minister Diego Cordovez were primarily concerned with incorporating Ecuador into some of the Latin American efforts at international cooperation — political, economic, and commercial — which had emerged during the 1980s, such as the Rio Group, or which had been redefined and advanced in new, more creative forms, such as those exemplified by the Cartagena Group, the Asociación Latinoamericana de Integratión (ALADI), the proposed Andean Free Trade Zone, and the like.