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By May Hernán Velarde, foreign minister of Peru, met with Rio Branco, and they
began to hammer out the dimensions of a possible neutralized zone, since Iquitos was
arming for war. Llamas and mules loaded with Mannlicher rifles staggered over the
AndestooffloadingpointsontheUrubambatofloatmunitionsdowntheUcayalitoIqui-
tos. The garrisons in Manaus were on high alert. Each country, in a frenzy, imagined a
majorinvasiontakingoutakeyAmazoncity(eitherIquitosorManaus),althoughneither
had the wherewithal to do it. Brazil's battleships were hardly capable of making the trip
from Rio to Manaus. Peru had purchased gunboats in Britain but could not move them
into place because of the Amazon embargo. In a letter to da Gama, da Cunha likened
thesaberrattlingtoanimpotent“Offenbachianduel—eachbrandishingtheirweaponsin
futile postures, an absurd, lethal conflict.”
31
Map 7.
Neutralized and contest zone.
In light of these tensions, the treaty ambiguities, and guerrilla war throughout the re-
gion, it was crucial to demilitarize the area while Brazil and Peru resolved the boundary
issue. There were complex machinations, since what would be the “neutralized zone”
carried within it an implicit position about the total terrains that could be negotiated.
Peru's Velarde preferred that the entire watersheds of the Purús and Juruá become neut-
ralized, taking in the Idelfonso claims. Rio Branco continuously diminished the geo-
graphic areas under discussion. In the end, a
modus vivendi
signed in July 1904 in-
cluded in a “neutralized zone” on the Purús in the area above the Manoel Urbano River.
The document stipulated joint governance in several areas with customs houses, and
providedforabinationalreconnaissancesurveyfortheJuruáandPurústosupplydataon
the nationality of the occupants and other ancillary details, since both nations had little
information about the place in contest other than that it was generating rivers of money.
In the meantime, Rio Branco had won ratification of a secret nonaggression treaty with
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