During the latter half of 1932, deep in the jungles of the Upper Amazon, a little-known military confrontation occurred between Colombia and Peru. Somewhat less than a full-scale war but more than a mere Frontier incident, the Leticia conflict was overshadowed by the contemporary Chaco War between Bolivia and Paraguay. It was however seminal in the subsequent development of the armed forces of both participants, Colombia establishing a blue-water navy for the first time since the Wars of Independence and the Peruvian armed forces undergoing an expansion and modernization which made the outcome of their confrontation with Ecuador, nine years later, a foregone conclusion.
At the end of August 1932, a band of 300 Peruvian civilian ultra-nationalists attacked and captured the small Colombian colony of Leticia, situated in a strip of territory en the Upper Amazon, ceded by Peru to Colombia under the Salomon-Lozano Treaty, ten years earlier. Although the invasion was apparently mounted without the knowledge of the Peruvian authorities, the matter was complicated when the invading force was supplied by a Peruvian river boat. Shortly afterwards matters took an even more serious turn when reinforcements of regular troops of the Peruvian Army were landed at Leticia. Relations between the two countries rapidly degenerated into a state of open if undeclared war.
At this time, the total effectives of the Peruvian and Colombian Armies were nominally equal, each numbering approximately 9,000. The Colombian Army was organized in 5 Brigades comprising 15 Infantry Battalions, a Presidential Guard Battalion, 3 Groups of Cavalry, a single Artillery Group and 1 Engineer Battalion, equipped with largely obsolete material. The Peruvian Army consisted of 5 Divisions comprising a total of 22 Infantry Battalions, 5 Cavalry Regiments, 5 Artillery Regiments, an Anti-Aircraft company and 4 Battalions of Engineers and had more up-to-date infantry equipment than that of Colombia in addition to an enormous advantage in artillery.
Most importantly of all, Peru had approximately 1,000 troops in the theatre of operations, including a Battalion of Infantry at Iquitos and another at Gueppi, with the immediate possibility of reinforcing them directly, if tortuously, through Peruvian controlled territory.
Aircraft
When hostilities between Colombia and Peru developed, Colombia could muster a total of only 16 aircraft, divided evenly between the Army and Navy. The Peruvians, who had amalgamated their Military and Naval air arms in a single unified force three years earlier, had approximately 60 relatively up-to-date aircraft and had both an operational seaplane squadron and a training unit at Iquitos. Sixteen additional aircraft were also delivered at about the time of the outbreak of hostilities.
The acquisition of combat aircraft figured highly in Colombia's frantic search for war material and 26 fighters were acquired in the United States within a matter of weeks, to be followed a year later by 30 bombers and 26 trainers, most of these aircraft being flown by foreign mercenary pilots.
Pursuing their initial advantage, the Peruvian ground forces pushed northwards to occupy the settlement of Tarapaca, on the south bank of the Putumayo, beyond which all territory was both indisputably Colombian and largely composed of impassable jungle.
The only means by which the Colombians could mount a counter offensive was via the Amazon. For a country lacking any significant naval force, the problem was a daunting one, especially against an adversary possessing a relatively powerful fleet.
The Colombian Navy consisted of only a single ancient gunboat, 3 small coast-guard vessels, 3 river gunboats and half-a-dozen motor launches, with three additional river gunboats under construction in Britain, These were opposed by quite a formidable Peruvian force which included 2 Cruisers, a Destroyer and 4 Submarines, in addition to a respectable river fleet.
When hostilities broke out the Peruvian Navy had three river gunboats and a number of minor vessels in the theatre of operations. Colombia had neither military nor naval forces in the area, although an old stern-wheel gunboat. was maintained on the Putumayo.
The Peruvians immediately sent their sole destroyer and a gunboat to reinforce their Upper Amazon flotilla whilst a Cruiser and 2 Submarines patrolled the mouth of the Amazon. A small river steamer was also pressed into service and armed as a gunboat during this period and Peru hastily purchased two 15-year-old Russian built destroyers from Estonia and rushed them across the Atlantic to the mouth of the Amazon, subsequently carrying out a rather ineffectual blockade of the Colombian Caribbean coast.
The three new Colombian gunboats, the completion of which had been accelerated after the outbreak of hostilities, crossed the Atlantic in 24 days and having evaded the Peruvian blockading force, ascended the Amazon and later the Putumayo to make a rendezvous with the ancient gunboat "Presidente Mosquera" and two transports with a mixed force of 1,000 infantry and armed naval personnel embarked.
Following a naval bombardment and with the support of the Navy's seaplanes, the Colombians re-took Tarapaca on February 15th, 1933, also capturing the Peruvian stronghold of Gueppi on March 27th, thus ending the military phase of the Leticia conflict which had cost the lives of approximately 800 Peruvians and 30 Colombians. Somewhat surprisingly, no encounter appears to have taken place between the naval units of the two countries.
Despite the favourable outcome of the amphibious expedition to the Upper Amazon and perhaps to some extent because the conditions in which it had been conducted emphasised the country's naval weakness, the Colombians began to make frantic attempts to expand their own Navy.
In 1933 two mine-sweepers were acquired from Germany, together with four motor launches, and a fast steam yacht was acquired in the United States and armed as an auxiliary gunboat. A tanker and three cargo vessels were acquired in Great Britain, the latter becoming naval transports and finally, in 1934, the Portuguese were persuaded to part with two brand-new destroyers. Additional seaplanes were also acquired and the nucleus of a Marine Corps created. Additional quantities of aviation equipment were also acquired for the Colombian Army's Aviation Battalion.
As Peru's existing military establishment was so vastly superior to that of Colombia, the expansion of the Peruvian Armed Forces was less dramatic. As a counter-balance to the three new Colombian river gunboats the Peruvians ordered two larger vessels in the United States. These were not delivered however until after the end of hostilities.
Other vessels acquired by Peru at about this time and as a direct result of the hostilities against Colombia, included a transport and an oiler. Additional material for the Peruvian Air Force was also purchased during this period, including half-a-dozen examples each of the British-built Fairey Fox and Seal reconnaissance aircraft. These however were not delivered until after the cessation of hostilities.
Tension between Colombia and Peru continued for almost another 2 years, political manoeuvring, supported by the dispatch of major units of the Peruvian Navy, including the ex-Estonian destroyers and of 1,700 additional Colombian troops to the Amazon, continuing until the final and effective solution of the dispute, in favour of Colombia, by the Protocol of Rio de Janeiro, of September 27th, 1935.
Foreign Pilots
It was told to me a few years ago that in the above mentioned war [Leticia] some of the foreign pilots knew the other side's pilots, having flown with them in other mercenary ventures in the past, this being the case they would act out aerial combat stunts to simulate actual combat, waving to each other as they returned to base.
This was told to me by an ex-mercenary pilot while I was still living in London and working at Tradition, it would appear that this practice was more common than most people knew about, although once the need for foreign pilots waned and newly trained Peruvian and Colombian pilots arrived so this practice also stopped. T.D.H.
I have also received the book "Pro Patria; la Expedicion Militar al Amazonas en el Conclicto de Leticia", by General Alfredo Vazquez Cobo, published by the Banco de la Republica, Departamento Editorial 1985. Its 450 pages long and mainly on the political goings on, but it also has some details on the military side one of which is this:
Copia No.4.
GENERAL A. VASQUEZ COBO
MINISTERIO DE GUERRA DEPARTAMENTO No.8
DIRECCION GENERAL DE AVIACION
| No. AIRCRAFT | PILOT | OBSERVER | BASE |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 WAL 601 | Von Engel | Abadia-Von Graeve | CURIPLAYA |
| 2 WAL 602 | Von Oertzen | Von Knull | BUENAVENTURA |
| 3 WAL 603 | Grautoff | Garcia | CURIPLAYA |
| 4 WAL 604 | - | - | CURIPLAYA |
| 5 HAWK 802 | Von Heydebreck | - | GIRARDOT |
| 6 HAWK 803 | Boy-Von Engel | - | CAUCAYA |
| 7 HAWK 804 | Behrend | - | GIRARDOT |
| 8 HAWK 805 | - | - | BARRANQUILLA |
| 9 HAWK 806 | - | - | BARRANQUILLA |
| 10 Do K 811 | Von Oertzen | Meyer Schaefer | BUENAVENTURA |
| 11 Do K 812 | en reserva | - | BUENAVENTURA |
| 12 OSPREY III | Mendez Rey | - | CURIPLAYA |
| 13 CURTISS 109 | Diaz | - | CURIPLAYA |
| 14 K-43 401 | Gomez Nino | Kutscha | CAUCAYA |
| 15 K-43 402 | Schaesberg | Mutter | GIRARDOT-CURIPLAYA |
| 16 K-43 403 | Von Donop | Himpe | GIRARDOT-CURIPLAYA |
| 17 JUNKERS 201 | - | - | RIO MAGDELENA |
| 18 JUNKERS 202 | Poesel | - | CURIPLAYA-GIRARDOT |
| 19 JUNKERS 203 | Butz | - | CAUCAYA |
| 20 HAMILTON 205 | Wuelfert | - | CURIPLAYA |
| 21 COMMODORE 611 | J.Mendez Calvo | Rozo | BUENAVENTURA |
| 22 OSPREY 112 | - | - | MADRID |
| 23 OSPREY 113 | - | - | MADRID |
5 de Enero de 1933,
[ Sello del Ministerio de Guerra Aviacion Jefatura ]
[ Fdo.] Luis Acevedo
The above article and notes where first published in El Dorado No. 2,Vol.IV. 1991.
Additional Notes on the Leticia Conflict
Compiled by Terry D. Hooker
Since the publication of the above article and notes in 1991, I have obtained a few books that are either on this conflict or have sections/chapters which relate to this war, as one can guess most of these are in Spanish. Hopefully the following notes will be of some help in understanding some of the aspects of this conflict, which was overshadowed by the Chaco War and the Spanish Civil War, while events in the late 30's through to the present day have helped to make it easy for European and North American military historians to be ignorant of these events in Latin America. Hopefully this small effort may rekindle some interest?
ADDITIONAL NOTES ON THE BEGINNING
After many years of controversy over the boundary, Alberto Salomón Osorio and Fabio Lozano Torrijos signed for the governments of Peru and Colombia, respectively, the Salomón-Lozano treaty on March 24, 1922. One feature of the treaty was Peruvian agreement to Colombian sovereignty over some 4,000 square miles in the Leticia Quadrilateral, which, at its southernmost side, gave to Colombia about sixty-five miles of river frontage on the northern bank of the Amazon.
Leticia, at the south-eastern corner of the quadrilateral, was a small village on a low plateau in the midst of a vast marshy jungle. It had no communication by road with any other town in Colombia; it was occasionally visited from the Southwestern Colombia by the river launches motoring eastward on the Putumayo to the Amazon, about 150 miles below Leticia, and thence westward.
It might be considered, like Bahía Negra to Bolivia, a psychological port, since, although it opened no route for the export or import of goods to Colombia, it provided to that state a cartographical point on the continent's greatest river and so gave to Colombia, however tenuously, the coveted status of an Amazonian power. Bahía Negra had nether a hinterland nor a navigable channel in the Paraguay River, but Leticia was reached by ocean-going vessels, which could continue some two hundred miles farther upriver to Iquitos, Peru'' chief city in the province of Loreto.
Another feature of the treaty was the fixing of the boundary between Colombia and Peru at the Putumayo River westward from the north-western corner of the Leticia trapezium to Gúepi. This meant that Colombia ceded to Peru territory north of the watershed between the Napo and Putumayo rivers, although that watershed had been established as the Colombian-Ecuador boundary in the Muñoz Vernaza-Suárez treaty of 1916 between those two countries. Thus the boundary agreed upon in 1916 between Colombia and Ecuador became in 1922 the southern limit of territory recognized as Peruvian by Colombia in the secretly negotiated Salomón-Lozano treaty. Furthermore, cession to Peru of this strip of territory more than three hundred miles long and about forty miles wide removed Colombia from direct contact with any possible Ecuadoran Oriente and so not only withdrew any support the 1916 treaty gave to Ecuadoran territorial claims but made illusory any Ecuadoran hopes for Colombian military or other backing in its dispute with Peru.
This outstanding advantage gained by Peru from the Salomón-Lozano treaty has been largely neglected by the treaty's critics in Peru, who have concentrated attention almost exclusively on the loss of Leticia to Colombia. To the Colombian government the cession of the strip south of the Putumayo was the price for Leticia, and a reasonable one, in its view, for the coveted Amazonian port.
The Ecuadoran government regarded the Salomón-Lozano treaty as a violation by Colombia of the terms of the treaty of 1916, and Quito broke off diplomatic relations with Bogotá when the former treaty's terms became known in 1925. The Ecuadorans were brusquely confronted by a three hundred mile boundary with their enemy, Peru, instead of the same line with Colombia, a country they had formerly regarded as a friend.
Source: The United States and Latin American Wars, 1932-1942, by Bryce Wood, U.S.A. 1966.
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