During the night of the 31st, a group of armed Peruvians took control of Leticia, these were backed by several influential Loretanos ( province of Loreto ) principally Julio C. Araña and Enrique A. Vigil. The expedition to capture Leticia was said to have been led by Vigil's ranch foreman, Jorge Giles, with other employees and local volunteers, also some Peruvians still living in Leticia were reported to have assisted. In a letter by Vigil he states " I was the propitiatory victim of the Lozano-Salomón treaty….We have not taken an inch of Colombian territory, not one Colombian, but Colombia took advantage of an insane dictator and a shameful government of Peru, to jump from the Caquetá to the doors of Iquitos, without firing a shot, but by manoeuvres of her obscure diplomacy and megalomaniac audacity." Leticia was only stationed by a prefect, four clerks and a half-dozen "guards" while the initial passivity of the Peruvian army officers in Iquitos, which changed literally overnight into support for the expedition, with the despatch to Leticia on September 2 of the gunboat "América", carrying supplies for Vigil's adventurous band. The day after news of the taking of Leticia was received American Ambassador Dearing was instructed to call on the Peruvian President Sánchez Cerro and say "very discreetly", that it was hoped the situation would not become serious and that it was "highly important for the Peruvian Government immediately to disavow the attack on Leticia and to take energetic measures to see that no arms or other assistance are sent from Peru to those occupying the town." Dearing reported back to Washington D.C. that he had been informed that, "At the very first mention of our friendly hope, the President become stubborn, defiant and uncommunicative and but little information was to be got out of him. He insisted that the matter was purely domestic although he had stated the moment before that the Government knew but little about it and was investigating." He was also informed that "Apristas captured an intendente, four employees and only one gendarme". The Peruvian Government issued a statement that Dearing quoted as saying that the incident was "a political plot intended to embarrass the Government, distract attention and prepare the way for an Apri-Communist outbreak in Lima", while during the same period President Sánchez, had also convinced the Colombian Minister in Lima that "He would co-operate with him in every possible way to prevent the incident from becoming serious." The Peruvian Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Solon Polo told Dearing on the 4th September 1932 that the President and Cabinet had met and decided "to maintain the boundary treaty with Colombia….to dominate the present situation in Iquitos….to put no obstacle whatever in the way of the Colombian Government's expelling the Peruvians who had seized Leticia." Six weeks later and Ambassador Dearing reported that "the capture of Leticia is now believed by many to have been due to the desire of the Administration to secure support from the various sections of Peru and from the armed forces, and thereby stave off the waning of its influence…….the President has conjured up the first stage of this new situation with Colombia." An immediate request after the taking of Leticia by the Colombian President Olaya for the sale of two hydroplanes to the U.S. Department of State, they replied that the U.S. Navy could not sell the planes, although it referred Olaya to manufacturers in the United States who might provide them. To the U.S. Ambassador in Colombia, Jefferson Caffery, the Department stated that, even if amphibians were under construction for the Navy, "the possible international aspects of the situation might make the diversion of such planes to Colombia somewhat embarrassing." In February 1933, Caffery, in a report to Washington D.C. from Bogotá quoted a British source that said " a Junta Patriótica had been organized in Iquitos and that troops and arms were shipped to Leticia from that city on September 2. The Junta had ousted the prefect, and at its request Lima had flown in his successor, Oswaldo Hoyos Osores, who arrived in Iquitos on September 6 with word that Lima was fully backing the Loretanas." ( Loretanas = populace of the Peruvian province of Loreto ) Source: Various pages from The United States and Latin American Wars 1932-1942, Bryce Wood, U.S.A. 1966. Back to Table of Contents: Booklet No. 7, Leticia Conflict Back to El Dorado List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 1998 by The South and Central Military Historians Society This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com