Peru, Purús, Brazil - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 158

TheofficialPeruvianpositionwasthatPeru'slandsextendedtothehistoricallinesestab-
lished by the 1777 Treaty of San Idelfonso, from the midpoint of the Madeira following
the river course down to its headwaters, and thus Bolivia had no legal right to transfer
to Brazil what it thought were “its” terrains. Peruvian diplomats maintained that it was
indeed unfortunate that Brazil had paid all that money to buy off the Bolivian Syndic-
ate and the Bolivian government, but the “purchase” of these lands, on its own, did not
guarantee territorial claims.
The only treaty of the modern era that addressed the boundaries between Brazil and
Peru was that of 1851, one of the usual “commerce and navigation” treaties. Article VII
of that treaty, as da Cunha was at pains to point out 17 and as John Bassett Moore would
summarize in his pamphlet on the topic, 18 stated: “In order to prevent disputes respect-
ing the frontier, the High contracting parties, The Empire of Brazil and the Republic of
Peru are regulated by the principle of uti possedetis : consequently they acknowledge the
frontieratTabatinga,thencealinenorthtotheRiverJapurá,andtothesouthtotheRiver
Javari. A mixed commission will decide the frontier according to the principle of uti
possedetis and will arrange for the exchange of territories as may seem proper for fixing
the most natural and convenient boundaries.” 19 Although Peru was adamant in its asser-
tionofthe1777IdelfonsolinesinthePurúscontroversies,in1851ithadinfactaccepted
a quite different principle.
The principle of uti possedetis , as already noted, had been recognized by several
nineteenth-century boundary treaties, including that between Brazil and Venezuela
(1852), the convention between Brazil and Paraguay (1856), and that between Brazil
and the Argentine confederation (1857), and indeed the contretemps with the French
in Amapá was also ultimately decided, as we have seen, on the basis of Brazilian oc-
cupation. Brazil and Bolivia had invoked this principle over the Acre territory in the
1903 Treaty of Petrópolis. Peru, however, hotly disputed all accords that were not in
compliance with its claims based on the Idelfonso treaty. Diplomatic telegrams crackled
betweenLimaandRio.Meanwhile,the varadouros —theforesttrails—fromtheUcayali
filled up with caucheiros , enslaved Indians, and their masters roving into the upper trib-
utaries of the Juruá and Purús. If possession was nine-tenths of the law (and indeed it
was the entire substance of uti possedetis ), then there had to be boots on the ground and
Indians hacking away at trees.
Brazil had occupied the southern banks of the Amazon and its main tributaries, es-
pecially the Purús and the Juruá, and did so well into their upper courses. Given this
physical occupation, Moore, employed by the Brazilian legation to shape the issue in
light of international jurisprudence, argued the legality of Brazil's claims on the basis
of early nineteenth-century US frontier precedents, injecting a novel set of legal prin-
ciples into Amazonian frontier politics. Moore invoked the position of President James