Invasion Scare

A loud cry for help from Ecuador sent the Organization of American States into an evening emergency session in Washington last week. As Ecuador's Washington Ambassador Jose Chiriboga told it, it sounded alarmingly like war: Peruvian military forces, "feverishly" built up within "recent hours," were massed 20,000-30,000 strong near the Ecuadorian border, creating "an imminent danger to [Ecuador's] territorial integrity, sovereignty and political independence."

An Ecuador-Peru quarrel over boundaries has been bubbling, and occasionally boiling up into small-scale warfare, ever since Ecuador became a nation in 1830. In 1942, after the last serious gunfighting between the two countries, a six-nation committee in Rio awarded Peru some three-fourths of the null jungle territory under dispute. The Ecuadorians have been fretting about the decision ever since, and the mere approach of a Peruvian patrol to the poorly demarcated border is enough to set off invasion alarms. During the past year, nerves on both sides have tautened further as the two countries added to their military power. Last week, just before the latest Ecuadorian cry of alarm, Peru announced that it had contracted for two submarines from the U.S.'s General Dynamics Corp. and a score of jet fighters from Britain (see below).

The Peruvians scoffed at last week's Ecuadorian complaint. Headlined a Lima newspaper: ECUADORIAN CRYBABIES AT IT AGAIN. But the O.A.S. shifted its well-oiled peace-keeping machinery into high gear, called for a meeting of the U.S., Argentina, Brazil and Chile, the four "guarantors" of the 1942 Ecuador-Peru border agreement. Representatives of the four countries got together in Rio that same evening, set up two inspection teams made up of their military attaches in the Peruvian and Ecuadorian capitals. By the following afternoon, the inspectors were scanning the border regions from the air. They reported no evidence of an unusual military buildup. But even if it was just another false alarm, many Latin Americans were happy to know that the Hemisphere's fire-fighting apparatus is in such good working order.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.