Ecuador vs. Peru: Peacemaking Amid Rivalry

Latin American Politics and Society, Spring 2003 by Hey, Jeanne A K

Chapters 3 and 4 form the heart of the book, focusing on the 1995 Cenepa War and the mediation effort it spawned. Here we find the most detailed chronology and analysis of the 1995-98 period available to date. Students and practitioners of mediation and conflict resolution will find this account invaluable because it reveals the painful and often tiny steps the actors took to reach a final settlement. The intervention of the four "Rio Protocol guarantors," Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and the United States, proved crucial to the mediation's success. The talks could have fallen apart at many points during the three-year process, occurring as they did amid massive political turmoil in Ecuador and international condemnation of Peruvian autocrat-president Alberto Fujimori. The authors make the noteworthy point that Ecuador maintained a more consistent negotiating position, despite frequent and extraconstitutional regime change, than did Peru, which was under the Fujimori presidency the entire time.

This section of the book draws two general conclusions. The first is that the political will and negotiating skills of the guarantors was critical to success in this case. The second is that a multilevel model is required for understanding why Ecuador and Peru were able to achieve peace in this instance whereas they had failed so many times before. Chapter 4 concludes with a careful and largely convincing analysis of factors at the individual, domestic, and international levels that operated in conjunction to provide a favorable climate for peace. There is no discussion of which factors were both necessary and sufficient; and to that extent this analysis fails to rank the variables in a way that would help to identify those that might be replicated in similar cases. Given the protracted nature of this conflict, however, it is very likely that nearly all the factors discussed, from individual proclivities to the global balance of power, came together to provide that rare opportunity for resolution. The authors are careful to note that we cannot yet conclude that the conflict has been fully resolved, although the peace has held quite firm to date.

Chapters 3 and 4 offer the newest contribution to the literature on this dispute. Yet it, too, is flawed. Some might argue that the authors' failure to investigate the internal dynamics of the guarantors' strategies and operations leaves too large a gap in any analysis of this mediation. The reader certainly wishes for such inside information, yet understands that such a task was beyond the scope of the authors' research. A more glaring error concerns what the authors did with the interviews they did conduct. After noting that they were able to conduct extensive research, including interviews in both Quito and Lima, they do a relatively poor job of integrating them into the narrative.

Their 1995-98 story also moves around in a way that makes it difficult to follow. This is partly because the mediation was conducted through different commissions, and the authors trace each commission's work separately. Yet one gets the sense that these authors are simply not the best of storytellers, a sad conclusion given that the story they take on is such an important and fascinating one. These problems are all related to the authors' vast use of the passive voice. This is more than just stylistic nitpicking. Again and again, the authors write phrases such as "this group was given a mandate" (p. 55) or "the mission was organized" (p. 61). The reader yearns to know who gave the mandate and organized the mission.