ABSTRACT
Fighting between Ecuador and Peru broke out in January 1995, making this the most active border dispute in Latin America. The conflict involves Ecuador's loss of extensive Amazonian territories in 1941. This paper briefly reviews the history of the conflict, after which it examines how Ecuador's government uses maps, monuments of historical events, slogans, and other means constantly to remind citizens of its lost Amazon lands and elicit their support for its attempts to regain the lost territory. The principal conclusion of the paper is that public symbols help to shape citizens' image of the country, which, in turn, limits the government's ability to settle the border dispute without loss of face.
INTRODUCTION
On January 26, 1995 Ecuador and Peru entered the latest chapter in a more than 165-year-old border conflict when fighting erupted in a disputed frontier area. It was no coincidence that the fighting began in late January, on a date close to that of the signing of the Rio Protocol (known officially as the Protocol of Peace, Friendship, and Boundaries) on January 29, 1942. This agreement was intended to end a war and establish a permanent border between the two countries. Instead, Ecuador and Peru have continued their dispute. Thus, the anniversary of the signing of the Rio Protocol provides an excuse for patriotic demonstrations, while military sword-waving and minor skirmishes at this time of year have become almost annual events (Bonilla 1995; Brooke 1995a).
The Ecuador-Peru border conflict is of minor importance on the world scene, generally earning only a few column-inches of play in newspapers and magazines when fighting breaks out between the two countries, and rarely making the evening TV news outside of Latin America. Nevertheless, for the parties involved, the long- standing dispute represents a relatively heavy burden. Both countries are obliged to maintain large military establishments and provide them with expensive armament. Trade between the two countries suffers, border areas are left undeveloped, and mineral wealth in the disputed areas cannot be exploited. In the case of Ecuador but less so with Peru, the country's diplomacy is colored by the constant need to bolster its case and, to the extent possible, counter the arguments of its adversary. Clearly, it would be in the best interest of both countries to resolve the problem, and inconclusive discussions of the border dispute took place between the presidents of Ecuador and Peru as recently as 1993. Now, optimism has waned in the face of renewed fighting, and a timely resolution of the dispute seems unlikely. This paper briefly recounts the history of the Ecuador-Peru border conflict and examines Ecuador's long-term manipulation of nationalistic symbols and slogans to maintain domestic support for its policies. [end p. 93]
BORDER CONFLICTS AND NATIONAL MAPS IN LATIN AMERICA
Geographically aware visitors to Ecuador who wander into a book store or visit the Instituto Geográfico Militar looking for a map of the country may be surprised when they see that the available maps depict a state which is greatly different in shape and area from that which is illustrated in the atlases, encyclopedias, or world maps with which they may be familiar (Figure 1). This is because Ecuadorian law requires all maps published or sold in the country to include territories that were ceded to Peru by the Rio Protocol, which was unilaterally voided by the Ecuadorian government in 1960, after nearly 20 years of arguing over precise definition of the border.1 Ecuador's insistence on including its lost terrritories on maps is but one of many efforts by the government to assert its claims and constantly to remind its citizens of the country's loss.2 This paper holds that, collectively, these efforts comprise a national iconography which is part of a larger "imagined geography" (Radcliffe 1996, 24) that shapes Ecuadorians' perception of their country.
The case of Ecuador is not an isolated one. During the 300 years of Spanish colonial rule in the Americas little attention was paid to delimiting boundaries between different administrative divisions of the empire. As a result, virtually every Latin American country has had disputes with one or another of its neighbors. Many of these conflicts have been resolved, but others remain as objects of diplomatic wrangling and, occasionally, armed conflict. These conflicts include Venezuelan claims to the western two-thirds of Guyana and its dispute with [end p. 94] Colombia over Caribbean territorial waters, Argentina's claims to the Falkland Islands, and Ecuador's rejection of the Rio Protocol (Day 1987). In all of these cases, territorial claims have been bolstered by maps that showed the disputed areas to lie within national boundaries, in contravention of internationally accepted boundary conventions. These countries have also used nationalistic slogans to support their position.3
The inclusion of large disputed areas on maps distorts the representation of the national territory. When such maps are used in schools, when they purport to represent the actual area and geometric form of the country, and when they are accompanied by slogans and mottos, they can have a strong impact on the national self-image. Likewise, consciousness of the existence of lost territories, and of the inability of the state to reclaim them may lead to a sense of powerlessness and lack of faith in the government and its institutions. Ecuador's active and sometimes violent dispute over large territories, located mainly in the Amazon Basin, provides an interesting demonstration of some of the impacts of constant references to lost territory on the national image.
BACKGROUND TO THE DISPUTE
Ecuador claims Amazonian territories that lie between the Río Amazonas (Marañon) and the drainage divide separating the Río Napo from the Putumayo (Figure 2). The disputed territory extends along the Río Amazonas to a point well to the east of Iquitos. Ecuadorian maps also include within the national boundaries Tumbes and Jaen, along with a number of smaller settlements, although Ecuador does not press its claims to these cities and their surrrounding areas (Bustamante 1992-93, 205). If all the Ecuadorian claims were honored its territory would be increased by approximately 70,000 square miles, or about 60 percent over the present size acccording to the boundaries established by the Rio Protocol.
Ecuador's claims to the disputed territories are based on three principal historical arguments (Murphy 1990; Wood 1978). The first of these arguments originates with the expedition of Gonzalo Pizarro and Francisco de Orellana, which left Quito in 1541 to explore the eastern slopes of the Andes and the adjacent rainforests. The Spaniards eventually wandered to the Río Napo, a tributary of the Amazon, where the expedition split up. Orellana and his men then followed the Napo downstream in a small boat. Finally, after many hardships, they reached the Amazon, which they followed to its mouth. Orellana's party were the discoverers of the Amazon River and the first Europeans to travel much of its length. Ecuadorians argue that Orellana's departure from Quito establishes their historical claim to lands between the Andes and the Amazon. Peru counters by noting that Orellana was acting under orders from Gonzalo Pizarro, whose authority isssued from Lima, so the expedition was, in fact, Peruvian, not Ecuadorian. It is worth noting that the Audiencia de Quito was not formed until over 20 years after Orellana's trip, so the question of whether the expedition was ordered from Quito or Lima may be moot. Bryce Wood (1978, 9), who has written on the history of the dispute, points out that Orellana's trip has considerable symbolic importance in both Peru and Ecuador. [end p. 95]
Ecuador's claims are bolstered by assertions that missionaries from Quito were given the right, in 1563, by Philip II to evangelize among the Indians of the Amazon basin. The largest mission effort in the Americas developed from this act (Tobar García 1982, 14-15). Many of the Amazon missions survived until the Jesuit expulsion from Spanish America in 1767 (Newsom 1995). The fact that the missions were located in the area presently disputed and were administered from the Audiencia of Quito in accord with a royal edict is the second element of Ecuador's historical argument (Wood 1978, 2).
The third major component of the Ecuadorian historical claim is based on the Treaty of Guayaquil, which was drafted in 1829 by representatives of Gran Colombia, of which Quito was a province, and Peru. In this treaty, negotiated after Gran Colombia defeated Peru in the Battle of Tarqui, Peru agreed to a northern border beginning at the Río Tumbes and following the Río Amazonas from the mouth of the Río Chinchipe to where it entered Brazilian territory. This boundary came to be known as the Mosquera-Pedemonte Line (Wood 1978, 19).4 The Treaty of Guayaquil was signed and ratified but never put into effect because in 1830 Gran Colombia broke up into the independent countries of Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador. Ecuador claims that its southern limit should be the one agreed to between Peru and Gran Colombia, while Peru maintains that Ecuador did not exist as a sovereign state when the treaty was signed, and any agreement with the former Gran Colombia is invalid. Largely on the basis of this reasoning, Peru reasserted its claim to territories north of the Mosquera-Pedemonte line later in the 19th century.5 During the 1880-1913 rubber boom, Peru occupied most of the disputed territory north of the Río Amazonas (Marañon) (Tobar García, 1982). It is the Mosquera- Pedemonte Line that forms the southern boundary of territory claimed by Ecuador.
The border conflict remained largely a diplomatic matter until 1935, when Peru began military incursions into the disputed territory. In 1941, fighting broke out in the border area. Ecuadorian troops were vastly outnumbered and poorly equipped, and the Peruvians were able to advance far into Ecuadorian territory (Wright 1941). A truce was finally established and both parties agreed to allow the governments of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and the United States to mediate the dispute. In part because the United States had just entered World War II and wanted to avoid local conflicts among its South American allies, pressure was exerted on Ecuador, which was in no position to challenge Peru or the mediator states, to accede to its neighbor's demands. The result was the Rio Protocol of 1942, which awarded most of the disputed territory to Peru (Bowman 1942).
Ecuador argues that the Protocol was signed under duress. In fact, Peru continued fighting during the negotiations, despite promises to the contrary, and threatened to take Guayaquil if Ecuador did not accept the terms of the agreement. Ecuador further argues that the Protocol is unenforceable in the area that lies between the Zamora and Chinchipe rivers (Figure 2). The Protocol specifies that the border should follow the drainage divide between the two rivers. However, unknown to the negotiators, a third river, the Cenepa, a Marañon tributary, flows between the Zamora and the Chinchipe. This means that there are two divides between the Zamora and the Chinchipe. Ecuador and Peru have been unable to agree on which of these divides should mark the border (Day 1987, 424).
The Ecuadorian demand for renegotiation rests on two points: (1) that the Rio Protocol cannot be accepted because it was imposed by force and signed under duress, and (2) that the border described in the Protocol was based on incorrectly understood physical features and cannot be executed as written. Ecuador's policy insisting on renegotiation is referred to within the country as the herida abierta, or open wound (Bustamante 1992-93). The term allludes to the unsettled boundary with Peru in the Cordillera del Condor and the territorial loss of 1942. Ecuador hopes through this strategy to keep presssure on Peru to renegotiate the treaty. Peru's official response to all this is that no border problem exists, since the frontier was established by the accords of 1942; the conflict can be resolved simply by working out the technical details of placing markers in the Cordillera del Condor sector of the border (Bustamante 1992-93, 206). Since the Rio Protocol settled the border, there is nothing to negotiate with Ecuador.
Armed conflict in the Cordillera del Condor border area has usually occurred when one or the other country places a military base within the disputed [end p. 96] area along the border. Bonilla (1995) notes that the conflict has been allowed to persist partly because there is little interdependence between Peru and Ecuador. Between 1982 and 1991, formal trade with Ecuador amounted to about 1.5 percent of Peru's total trade, while trade with Peru amounted to 2.5 percent of Ecuador's total trade (calculated from Wilkie, Contreras, and Komisaruk 1995), although it should be noted that binational trade showed a steady increase through the period and that informal (and often illegal) cross border trade is locally important, especially for Ecuadorian towns near the frontier. There is little cultural exchange between the two countries and, according to Bonilla (1995), they have a poorly developed image of each other. Also, the major powers have little stake in resolving the connflict, especially since the end of the Cold War, and the members of the regional trade bloc, the Andean Pact, likewise have little to lose by letting the situation remain unresolved.
Despite these difficulties binational relations reached a modern zenith in January 1992, when the President of Peru, Alberto Fujimori, visited Quito. Meetings were held on that occasion and later with the Ecuadorian president, Rodrigo Borja, and it appeared that a resolution might be negotiated (Bustamante 1992-93). Beginning as early as 1988, the Borja administration held out the possibility of resolving the border issue, and Borja and his Peruvian counterpart at the time, Alan García, exchanged visits (Acosta Yépez 1992; EI Comercio 1990). These initiatives were greeted with enthusiasm by Ecuadorians, and there were high hopes that a face-saving compromise might be achieved (Hey 1995). When Sixto Durán Ballen took office in August 1992, Fujimori attended the inauguration, and it appeared that negotiations would continue (EI Comercio 1992d). Meetings were held between the two ministers of foreign affairs and plans were made for Durán Ballen to visit Peru (EI Comercio 1993a). However, in 1994 and 1995 Durán faced serious ecoonomic problems, which diverted his attention from relations with Peru. Meanwhile, Fujimori, facing a reelection campaign at home, hardened his position. Finally, whatever hope remained for a prompt resolution of the conflict was dashed by the renewal of open fighting in January 1995.
The 1995 conflict has been interpreted as an efffort by both countries to maintain the status quo (Bonilla 1995). Ecuador wants to keep the frontier issue open, fearing that prolonged lack of action will validate Peru's claims for the legitimacy of the Rio Protocol and reduce the likelihood of renegotiation. Peru, on the other hand, wants to maintain its position as defender of a de facto border. It is unclear who the aggressor was in the 1995 fighting, but with armed bases located as close as 50 meters from each other in the upper Río Cenepa area, it is hardly surprising that hostilities broke out. This conflict proved to be the most serious since 1942; both countries mobilized fully, and between 50 and 100 men were lost on the Ecuadorian side (Bonilla 1995). Peru suffered an estimated 100 killed or wounded during the first two weeks of fighting (Brooke 1995b). Indian communities in the area of conflict were also affected; their territories were invaded by military units, crops were lost, and animals were killed (Rivera 1995). Indians fought on both sides and there were claims that Indians were forced to serve in both armies and to fight people from related villages across the frontier. Finally, both countries have been affected financially, with an estimated war cost for each side of $10 million per day (Brooke 1995c). Ecuador, with a smaller and weaker economy, has probably suffered more, but the war cannot have helped Peru, which is just emerging from a grave economic crisis.
It must be clear, even to the most nationalistic and optimistic of Ecuadorians, that Peru will never agree to return the disputed Amazonian lands to Ecuador. The territory claimed by Ecuador includes important oil-producing regions (Murphy 1990) and Iquitos, Peru's most important Río Amazonas port and a city of 270,000 Peruvian inhabitants, also lies there. Furthermore, during the past 50 years, Peru has extended roads, oil pipelines, and settlement far into the disputed area. The Ecuadorian strategy is to use the larger demands to achieve a smaller terriitorial concession that would give it direct, sovereign access to the Amazon River and confirm its claim to be an Amazonian country (see Wood 1978, 216-18 for discussion of the status of Ecuador as an Amazon country).6 The key to this hope is the Río Cenepa, which would provide such access if it were in Ecuadorian territory; however, because its confluence with the Marañon lies up-stream from the Pongo de Manseriche, the Cenepa would be worthless from the standpoint of navigation. Ecua [end p. 97] dor hopes to be able to convince Peru to transfer land along the Río Cenepa as the price of settling the conflict, but President Fujimori has said publicly that his country will not agree to give up any territory (Hoy 1995).7
THE ICONOGRAPHY OF TERRITORIAL LOSS
It has been over 50 years since the Rio Protocol was signed and more than 35 years since it was repudiated by the Ecuadorian government. In this time Ecuador has developed a formal, and in some cases legally mandated, iconography that keeps unsatisfied territorial claims constantly in the public eye. The most obvious of these icons, especially for the geographer, is the map of Ecuador. Since all maps published in Ecuador are required by law to include its territorial claims, when silhouettes of the country are employed to designate national interests in addvertising or the press, they are based on the pre-1942 boundaries. This produces the highly distorted shape shown in the maps and silhouettes portrayed in this paper. Within Ecuador the country's post-1942 form never appears except with a secondary boundary within the country indicated as "Línea del Protocolo de Rio de Janeiro 1942." The 78 km disputed sector in the Cordillera del Condor lacks boundary indicators and always bears the legend "zona en la que el Protocolo de Rio de Janiero es inejecutable."
Ecuador's territorial loss is also represented in the selection of historical events which the Ecuadorians commemorate in public. For example, the wall of the national cathedral, facing the Plaza de la Independencia, in sight of the Palacio del Gobierno and clearly visible from Calle Venezuela, one of Quito's busiest streets, carries a plaque that annnounces "Es gloria de Quito el descubrimiento del Río Amazonas" (Figure 5). Post cards showing this plaque identify it as the "Placa histórica de Soberanía del Ecuador en el Amazonas". The prominent public display of these texts on bronze plaques leads me to classify them as icons, along with maps and other graphic materials.
Elsewhere in the city, on a steep slope facing eastward above the picturesque church of Guápulo, one finds the Camino de Orellana, which is purported to be the beginning of the route followed in the European discovery of the Amazon. Atop this slope is a bronze bust of Orellana. In another context, the naming of the street and the planting of the modest [end p. 98] monument might be taken for granted as no more than commemoration of an important historical event. But when it is recalled that Orellana's trip is a cornerstone of the country's claims to the lost terrritory, the naming of the street and the placement of the monument can be seen as a subtle expression of the same iconography as the plaque on the national cathedral. This iconography proclaims the historic role of Ecuador (Quito) in the discovery and exploration of the Amazon and supports its claim to be un país amazónico.
Several of these symbols were merged in 1992 when an expedition organized by the Explorers Club of New York and sponsored by the Office of the Vice-Presidency of Ecuador set out to retrace the Spanish explorer's trail from Guayaquil to the Amazon. Newspaper reports were careful to point out the scientific merit of the trip, which was intended to look at biodiversity, preservation of Indian cultures, and ecotourism development (El Comercio, 1992a; 1992b). Likely the most important function of the expedition for Ecuador, however, and the probable reason for its government sponsorship, was revealed by Vice President Diego Parodi, who said in an interview that the expedition would "redescubrir el río-mar que dió al Ecuador la gloria de: aha sido, es y será país amazónico" (EI Comercio 1992b). Thus, the Explorers Club of New York found itself, perhaps quite unwittingly, in the position of defending Ecuador's identity as an Amazonian country.
The representation of lost territory is especially pronounced in Ecuadorian education. Maps in textbooks, of course, reflect the Ecuadorian territorial claims (Radcliffe 1996). The ciclo básico of secondary school (the general course for the first 3 years of secondary school) includes material on Ecuador's claims as part of the social studies program. For the specialization in social sciences, a course on "History of the Limits of Ecuador" is required at the sixth-year level. Textbooks for primary schools include discusssion of the border dispute with Peru as part of the social studies curriculum, as well (República del Ecuador 1979).
The bibliography of Ecuadorian-published books on territorial rights, the conflict with Peru, and geopolitics (many written by retired military[end p. 99] officers) runs into the hundreds (Brooke 1995c, Barberis R. 1979, and Tobar Garda 1982). There is also a considerable literature on the history of Amazonian exploration from Ecuadorian bases and on the colonial-era Amazonian missions administered from Quito. One such recent publication carries the title: Crísis en las misiones y mutilación territorial, a reference to the significance of the closing of the Jesuit missions in the 1760s (Miranda Rivadeneira 1986).
The border dispute also enters the fictional literature of Ecuador. The novel Yo vendo unos ojos negros, by the popular Ecuadorian writer Alicia Yáñez Cossio, contains a reference to the 1830 "Tratado de Pedemonte-Mosquera," one of the key documents used to support Ecuador's Amazonian claims (1980, 35). Sola, a fictionalized account of the Ecuadorian Isabel de Grandmaison Godín's survival while lost in the Amazon in 1769, a best seller in Quito in 1990, discusses historical events that form a part of the basis for modern-day claims to Amazonian territory (Capriles Ayala 1988). A careful content analysis of contemporary Ecuadorian fiction would likely reveal other examples of references to Ecuador's lost territories and to its history as an Amazonian power.
The map of Ecuador is frequently used as part of a logo or in other ways to identify a business or institution with the nation. For example, the Quito daily newspaper El Comercio utilizes an outline map of Ecuador as part of the heading for its "Pulse of the Nation" news section. A number of institutions with national interests or national scope also use such symbols, including government agencies and interest groups such as the Federación de Estudiantes Universitarios del Ecuador (FEUE). The national map in various manifestations also appears frequently in advertising, as in the examples shown in Figures 6 and 7. Hard data would be difficult to acquire, but I have an impression that the country's map is used more frequently in the form of a backdrop to advertising than is typical in other Latin American countries, and one is tempted to look to the emphasis on national boundaries and maps that has developed in response to the border problem as an explanation. Whatever the reason, Ecuadorians are exposed daily to images of the national map in one form or another, and this must reinforce the messages they have received through the educational system and otherwise from the national government.
Finally, the border conflict affects policy mattters. The state of hostility with Peru requires a large military. This is especially true since a major part of the blame for the loss of the Amazonian territories in 1942 fell on the poorly manned, trained, and equipped Ecuadorian military. In the late 1980s and early 1990s Ecuador was in fourth position among 15 Latin American nations in percent of central government expenditures dedicated to defense; the government dedicated 12.95 percent of its expenditures to the military (Wilkie, Contreras, and Komisaruk 1995).8 The cost of maintaining a large military establishment has proven to be a heavy burden for the country, especially since the Ecuadorian economy [end p. 100] declined during the 1980s and 1990s.
Of course, the border conflict seriously affects relations between the two neighbors. Trade is limited, the difficulties of border crossing are increased, and Peruvians are discouraged from traveling in Ecuador. This situation contrasts strikingly with Ecuador's friendly relations with its other neighbor, Colombia. Despite some earlier problems (Bromley 1977), these two countries have embarked on cooperative development projects for their Amazon border region and there is relative freedom of cross-border trade and travel (Organización de Estados Americanos 1987).
In geopolitical terms, there was a clear need to accomplish the incorporation of Ecuador's remaining Amazonian lands into the effective national terrritory in order to avoid a repetition of the disaster of 1942 (Radcliffe 1996, 27). In the early 1950s, the Ecuadorian government's desire to occupy these poorly-defended eastern territories led to the development of a policy known as fronteras vivas or living frontiers (Gómez, et al. 1992). This policy was at least partly responsible for the promulgation of laws that stimulated colonization of the Ecuadorian Amazon. Certainly this policy also contributed to the remarkable rate and extent of development in the northern provinces of Sucumbios and Napo, but probably even more to the settlement of southern provinces which are closer to the zones of conflict. Thus, it could be argued that the border conflict is indirectly responsible for accelerating deforestation in the Ecuadorian Amaazon (see a discussion of the relationship of colonization policy with national security in Uquillas 1984, 269-72). Similar arguments could be made in the case of Peru, as well.
The discovery of oil in the Ecuadorian Amazon in 1967 further stimulated the development of the area. It would be overstating the case to assert that oil development is a response to the conflict with Peru. Nevertheless, the need to finance purchases of military hardware and the military's responsiblity for organizing Amazon development certainly have contributed to the rapid increase of Ecuadorian petroleum production.
The impact of these twin forces, colonization and oil production, has been nothing short of spectacular. Population in Ecuador's Amazon provinces grew from just under 75,000 in 1962 to nearly 375,000 in 1990, and rapid urbanization has produced boom towns such as Nueva Loja, Francisco de Orellana (Coca), Tena, and Puyo. (República del Ecuador 1964;1991; Brown et al. 1994).
Finally, the inability of Ecuador and Peru to agree on the location of the boundary between the Zamora and Chinchipe Rivers has impeded the development of that area. As long as armed forces occupy the margins of the disputed area, access by either country's civilian population is precluded. [end p. 101]
THE IMPACT OF MAPS ON NATIONAL IMAGE
The symbolic representation of lost territories in Ecuador is intended to foster a specific image of national territory. Students are indoctrinated through their entire school career to visualize Ecuador with an extensive Amazonian territory. The degree to which this strategy has succeeded is revealed in the results of a research project carried out in the summmer of 1990 by a group of students in the Centro Panamericano de Estudios e Investigaciones Geográficas summer international course held in Quito (Barros, Herrero, and Loyo 1990). They administered a questionnaire designed to elicit perceptions of the world and of Quito to a sample of 272 students in their last year of high school.9 As a part of this study, students were asked to draw a world map freehand and from memory. The students were not instructed regarding whether or not they were to draw in national boundaries, but, of the 272-person sample, over one-quarter (71 students) drew at least the boundaries of Ecuador. Of these students, 62 drew limits that were identifiable as those claimed by Ecuador (Figure 8). One student drew both the Ecuaadorian claims and the internationally accepted boundaries, and three indicated what appear to be the internationally accepted Rio Protocol limits. Five of the maps reproduced the limits so vaguely that it was impossible to determine which Ecuadorian boundaries they represented.
That Ecuadorian high school students perceive the country's boundaries as they are represented on the official maps and other symbols is hardly surprising in view of the images and slogans to which they are exposed. In fact, it would be difficult to imagine any other result since students would have to acquire books and maps published outside of the country or leave Ecuador to encounter materials that reflect only the Rio Protocol boundaries. The government's efforts seem to have had an impact on public opinion. A 1993 survey commissioned by the Quito newspaper El Comercio found that 84.6 percent of those interviewed believed that there was a border problem with Peru (the Ecuadorian government position) and only 17.1 percent agreed with the Peruvian claim that the Rio Protocol provided a permanent solution to the conflict (El Comercio 1993b). The Ecuadorian government has placed great stress on bilateral negotiation to attain its objectives, and it must have been gratifying to see that 41.6 percent of the respondents believed this to be the proper way to resolve the dispute, while fewer than 10 percent supported military solutions.
Certainly, the constant reminders in school books, maps, and slogans of Ecuador's inability to defend its lost territories in 1941, either militarily or diplomatically, and the country's continuing failure to extract concessions from Peru has an impact on how Ecuadorians visualize themselves. One is aware, especially in Ecuadorian books on the topic of the 1941 war with Peru, of a sense of having been violated. This is literally true, since Peruvian forces did, indeed, invade not only territory claimed by Ecuador, but lands that were physically occupied by Ecuadorian citizens. This event has contributed to a certain sense of outrage, frustration, and powerlessness on the part of Ecuadorians. This sense of powerlessness is manifested in the sentiment, expressed in one sixth grade textbook, that if the Rio Protocol is annulled, " ... Los ecuatorianos sabremos que existe justicia también para los paIses pequeños y amantes de la paz" (Cabezas n.d., 365).
An editor of Hoy, one of Quito's two main daily newspapers has referred to Ecuador as "a nation wounded in its dignity. It is a nation with a defeat complex." (Brooke 1995c). This view was supported at a recent Latin American Studies Association Meeting held in Washington, D.C. (September 1995), when an Ecuadorian remarked publicly that his country identifies itself by its frontiers, and that this is a [end p. 102] negative identification because the country has no frontiers. He was referring, of course, to the fact that the borders claimed by Ecuador with Peru are not accepted by other countries and that the Rio Protocol boundaries are not accepted by Ecuador. He is correct about the importance of this lack of frontiers. For Ecuadorians, every glance at a map of the country showing the dual boundaries and every exposure to a slogan proclaiming the nation's status as an Amazonian country reminds them of their powerlessness and inability to redress what they see as a great injustice.
Ecuadorian's self-perception that they occupy a small country, which seems to be manifested frequently and in various ways, may also be in part a response to the loss of territory (Ortíz Brennan 1995). The reality of the situation is that Ecuador, while smaller in area than its Andean neighbors, is not an exceptionally small country by international standards. It compares favorably with the United Kingdom, Italy, and (former) West Germany in area, although not in population or level of economic development. It is difficult to judge the impact of this self-perception of small size, but it may well influuence Ecuador's relations with its larger hemispheric neighbors.
All of these sentiments may be augmented by Ecuador's apparent lack of a well-developed sense of historical belonging. In colonial times administration of Quito and Guayaquil passed from Peru to Gran Colombia. The country does not seem to share a great affinity with either of these areas, nor is there strong internal coherence. Regional conflicts between Quito and Guayaquil have persisted for centuries, and remain strong to the present. This may be reflected in the country's decision not to retain its colonial name, Quito, when it became independent in 1830. Instead it adopted a generic locator and became known officially as La República del Ecuador. While this name may suggest the importance of the country's trans-hemispheric centrality, it seems also to be a product of regional competition between the coast and sierra and a lack of strong national identifiers that might have given rise to a name that would have been meaningful to all citizens of the country (one could imagine the country today might adopt the name República del Amazonas). This point is discussed at some length in Radcliffe (1996, 29-30).
CONCLUSION
The possibility of Ecuador ever reclaiming any of the territory lost to Peru seems, at best, remote. Yet the Ecuadorian government's refusal to accept this reality sours relations with the country's southern neighbor, inhibits foreign trade and development of the border regions, and requires the maintenance of a large military. The best interests of both countries would be served by resolution of the conflict.
This process is greatly complicated within Ecuador by the long standing policy of emphasizing its historic rights to the lost territory. Since generations of school children have been brought up to believe in Ecuador's right to the lost territories, and since all citizens are reminded constantly of the loss through visual images and slogans, it would be politically risky, perhaps even suicidal, for a governnment to normalize relations with Peru without receiving at least symbolic concessions in return. The desire to accomplish this through diplomatic channels rather than by force may he attributed, in part, to national perceptions of small size, powerlessness, and vulnerability. The iconography of lost territories, in this case, has succeeded very well in establishing a sense that the national honor can only be restored by regaining at least a small portion of the lost Amazonian territories. These attitudes make it very difficult to accept the reality of the Rio Protocol boundary and resolve the conflict with Peru. Thus, in the long run, the policy of public representation of loss may prove to have been successful, but counter-productive.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author acknowledges financial support for this research from the Council for International Exchange of Scholars (Fulbright Program) and the Comisión Fulbright del Ecuador. Special thanks go to the staff and students of the Décimo-Octavo Curso Internacional Aplicado, "Geografía Política" and, especially, Dr. Oswaldo Bueno Amorim Filho, Profesora Claudia Barros, Profesora María Julieta Herrero, and Licenciada Isabel Loyo. Thomas Klak of Miami University of Ohio reviewed and made very helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper, and Otto M. Nelson of Texas Tech University provided background information on Ecuadorian postage stamps.[end p. 103]
NOTES
1. The 1960 rejection of the protocol was based on the discovery in 1947 by Francisco Sampedro, a military officer and geographer, of aerial photographs which revealed that the Río Cenepa divides the Cordillera del Condor into two drainages, thus invalidating, in Ecuadorian eyes, the placement of the border in 1942. An account of this discovery along with an explanation of the rationale for rejecting the Rio Protocol appears in Francisco Sampedro V., Del Amazonas en 1830 al Condor en 1981: La realidad geográfica que la historia no investigo.
2. The literature on the use of maps to shape a particular vision of reality is developing rapidly. See for example, Harley 1988 and Wood 1993. See also Brannstrom 1995 for an example of the role of maps in unsuccessful attempts to promote construction of a Nicaraguan canal.
3. Two examples are Guatemala's use of the slogan "Belice es nuestro" on postage stamps and in public propaganda and Argentina's similar use of "Las Malvinas son argentinas."
4. The precedence of names for the Mosquera-Pedemonte Line varies in usage. Cabezas (n.d.), Wood (1978), and Yáñez Cossio (1980) use Pedemonte-Mosquera, but Day (1987) and many Ecuadorian sources refer to the Mosquera-Pedemonte Line or Treaty.
5. Peru actually extended its claims nearly to the crest of the Ecuadorian Andes. If Peru had been successful in achieving its maximum demands, Ecuador would have been stripped of all its Amazonian territory.
6. This objective was clearly enunciated by Sixto Durán Ballen during the 1992 presidential campaign when he stated: "La iniciativa de solución fronteriza sólo será duradera y justa si incluye una salida soberana: la del Amazonas." (El Comercio 1992c)
7. Ecuadorians are mindful of the example of Colombia, which obtained access to the Amazon via the Leticia strip. They see the Cenepa corridor as a similar means for Ecuador to confirm beyond the shadow of doubt its status as an Amazonian state.
8. Peru was fifth-ranked, with 12.25 percent of its expenditures devoted to the military. The average for all 15 countries was 9.12 percent. The three countries above Ecuador and Peru on the list were El Salvador (20.6 percent), Guatemala (13.25 percent) and Bolivia (13.1 percent) (Wilkie, Contreras, and Komisaruk 1995).
9. The students in the sample were members of classes in several schools that were selected to provide a cross-section of socio-economic levels in both public and private institutions.
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RESUMEN
Empezó nuevanente una guerra entre Ecuador y Peru en enero de 1995 creando conflicto más activo de América Latina. EI origen del conflicto es la pérdida de grandes territorios arnazónicos por Ecuador en 1941. Este artículo presenta una breve historia del conflicto y examina el uso de mapas, eventos y figuras históricos, lemas, y otra simbología por el gobierno ecuatoriano para construir una iconografía pública de pérdida territorial con el propósito de crear apoyo para su campaña de negociar el retorno del territorio perdido. La conclusión principal de este artículo es que la iconografía pública forma el imagen del país de los ciudadanos y que este imagen en su turno limita las opciones del gobierno para negociar una solución al conflicto. [end p. 105]