Peril of Peacemaking

The sky-high republic of Ecuador last week was the stage for an increasingly familiar scene. In a handful of cities, mobs dragged the U.S. flag through the streets, stoned U.S.-Ecuadorian "friendship centers," set afire a U.S. consul's car. In Quito, the American embassy was stoned, and 20,000 demonstrators, chanting "Cuba, Rusia y E-cua-dor," marched to a rabble-rousing pep rally led by President Jose Maria Velasco Ibarra and his pro-Communist Interior Minister Manuel Araujo.

"If justice is not done to Ecuador, there will be no peace," cried Velasco. "If necessary, we will become allies of Russia," shouted Araujo, and the mob roared back: "Yanqui, no; Rusia, si."

What had the U.S. done to invoke such wrath? To preserve peace in Latin America at the beginning of World War II, Washington was reluctantly involved in a centuries-old border dispute between Ecuador and Peru. At issue was a triangle of steaming upper Amazon jungle almost as big (77,000 sq. mi.) as Ecuador itself. For 400 years the tract had been claimed by both nations. Then, in 1942, the U.S. --along with Brazil, Argentina and Chile -- promoted a settlement, the Protocol of Rio de Janeiro, based on Peru's de facto control. Under the protocol, the four nations were also to serve as guarantors of the peace.

There the matter stood simmering until September of this year, when Velasco Ibarra became Ecuador's President for the fourth (nonconsecutive) time, immediately announced that he wanted the tract. When the U.S. and its three peacemaking partners held firm, the mobs began to move.

Though the U.S. was little more than a bystander, it was the obvious target of the mobs, partly because it has become the standard target of Latin leftists, partly because anti-U.S. Interior Minister Araujo was pulling some of the strings. At week's end Araujo found he had gone too far, even for Velasco Ibarra, who announced he had accepted his deputy's "resignation." Unfortunately, Araujo's work could not so easily be erased. The biggest gainers in the land squabble were Fidel Castro and Soviet Russia, who guarantee nothing but total confusion.

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