Overview
Most of the fighting of the Cenepa war was centered around the control of several outposts located on the headwaters of the Cenepa River (see map), a highland area covered with dense Amazonian jungle, inside a 78 km-long strip of territory where the process of demarcation between Ecuador and Peru remained stalled since 1948 (see History of the Ecuadorian-Peruvian territorial dispute). Both sides claimed to be fighting inside their own land.
One of the outposts causing the dispute, called Tiwintza by the Ecuadorians, and Tiwinza or Tihuintsa by the Peruvians, came to symbolize the war because of the bitter clashes that took place around it, and the emotional importance that both sides attached to its possession. The conflict continues until the signing of a ceasefire and the eventual separation of forces, supervised by the MOMEP, a multinational mission of military observers from the "guarantor" countries of the 1942 Rio Protocol: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and the USA.
The Cenepa war ended up producing far-reaching consequences for relations between Ecuador and Peru. The military outcome of the brief conflict, vindicating the Ecuadorian armed forces after the disappointing results of the war of 1941, and by calling to the attention of the Peruvians the need for a resolution of a border dispute that they had so far been adamant in refusing to acknowledge, paved the way for a definitive settlement of the border issues.
Thus, in the aftermath of the war, both nations, brokered by the "guarantors" of the Rio Protocol, entered into a long and difficult negotiation process that concluded with the signing of a Peace Treaty in 1998, and the closing of the hitherto un-demarcated stretch of common border, deep in the Amazonian rainforest.
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