The Fake Paquisha Incident
The dispute revolved around the possession of three Ecuadorian military outposts, called Paquisha, Mayaicu, and Machinaza, these located on the eastern slopes of the Cordillera del Cóndor (Cóndor mountain range).
The Ecuadorian possession of these posts was denounced by Peruvian representatives at the foreign ministers' meeting of the OAS, on February 2, 1981. During this meeting, the Peruvian Foreign Minister, Javier Arias Stella, called the three Ecuadorian military outposts falsos ("fakes"), despite Ecuadorian sovereignty.
The Ecuadorian Foreign Minister, Alfonso Barrera Valderde, responded to this allegation stating that when Ecuador responded to the attacks on January 28, it always specified that the attacks were being made against the destacamentos (military outposts) of Paquisha, Mayaicu, and Machinaza, not against the similarly named Ecuadorian towns.
The meeting concluded with a resolution that announced a cease fire in the conflict zone, and noted that both countries had accepted a commission of representatives from the guarantor countries to safeguard the observance of the cease fire and establish conditions for peace between Peru and Ecuador.
The Fuerza Aérea del Peru (FAP) flew many sorties with A-37B, Mirage 5P and Su-22 to support these operations. The FAE flew 179 combat missions with A-37B and Mirage F-1 aircraft to counter the FAP attacks. On January 28, 1981 there was a dogfight between 2 A-37Bs of the FAE and FAP.
Ecuadorians were able to capture a Paquishan outpost which was in Peruvian territory according to the treaty in the Ecuadorian-Peruvian war of 1941. The Peruvian operation was not a success even though the Peruvian outpost of Paquisha, that was captured by the Ecuadorians, was taken on February 5, 1981 by Peruvian troops. The conflict, which occurred in a then non-demarcated area of the common border between Ecuador and Peru, ceased with the Ecuadorians being expelled from the slopes and driven back to the summit of the Cordillera del Cóndor.
As a result, the Peruvian and Ecuadorian governments, with assistance of each one of the Guarantors, agreed to separate their forces. This "gentlemen's agreement" remained in effect throughout the 1980s, with various measures taken to codify conduct of patrols encountering one another in the disputed area.
Read more about this topic: Paquisha War, Historical Background
Famous quotes containing the words fake and/or incident:
“The childless experts on child raising also bring tears of laughter to my eyes when they say, “I love children because they’re so honest.” There is not an agent in the CIA or the KGB who knows how to conceal the theft of food, how to fake being asleep, or how to forge a parent’s signature like a child.”
—Bill Cosby (20th century)
“Every incident connected with the breaking up of the rivers and ponds and the settling of the weather is particularly interesting to us who live in a climate of so great extremes. When the warmer days come, they who dwell near the river hear the ice crack at night with a startling whoop as loud as artillery, as if its icy fetters were rent from end to end, and within a few days see it rapidly going out. So the alligator comes out of the mud with quakings of the earth.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)