Shooting Scrape

Two thousand miles up the steaming Amazon from the Atlantic Ocean, 15,000 feet over the crusty Andes from the Pacific, lies the only undrawn boundary remaining on the American continents. The 50,000 square miles of territory in dispute between Peru and Ecuador lie mostly between the Maranon and Napo Rivers, tributaries of the Amazon (plus a picayune area along the Pacific coast). They are made up of a little fertile highland, a little more barren mountainside and much more tangled jungle, from which come a bit of rubber and some desiccated human heads for the tourist trade.

Spasmodically for a century Peru and Ecuador have tried to reach a settlement of the dispute. They have put their problem to the King of Spain and to the President of the U.S. without satisfaction, between times developing short tempers and occasionally exchanging shots. The latest effort to end the dispute, through mediation by Argentina, Brazil and the U.S., ended last month when Peru refused to discuss the sovereignty of three of the four areas, claiming they were indisputably Peruvian.

Last week tempers in Lima and Quito were shorter than usual. Each capital suspected that the other was trying to buy U.S. support with concessions. Other American capitals suspected, with more reason, that Axis and pro-Axis provocateurs had planted and watered the first suspicion. The Spanish Ambassador to Peru, Pablo de Churruca, Marques de Aycinena, who once studied the problem for Arbiter Alfonso XIII, was shrewdly suspected of having put pressure on Peru to hold out for a lion's share of the territory.

However it started, one night there was a burst of shooting along the amorphous border. Soon a grown-up battle was raging, with machine guns and artillery backing up the rifle fire, with Peruvian warplanes roaring overhead. Quito said Peruvian bombers had destroyed the military barracks and a church in the Ecuadorian town of Chacras, that frontier forces had attacked at other points on the frontier. Lima claimed that Ecuadorian troops had tried to cross into Peruvian territory, had been driven back. After two days the fighting died down.

There was no assurance that it would not flare up again. Both Governments were mad. Peru accused Ecuador of provoking an incident to force a settlement by the other American nations. Ecuador thought Peru was trying to settle the dispute by pure force. In Washington, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro and Bogota diplomats hastened to proffer their good offices, hoping that at this time, of all times, the Americas would not get to fighting among themselves. But while statesmen took counsel together, 15,000 people marched through the streets of Quito, waving flags, stood bareheaded before the statue of Simon Bolivar and sang the Ecuadorian national anthem.

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