'Trump-style' border wall between Ecuador and Peru causes fierce dispute

Dan Collyns in Aguas Verdes
Updated

A mile-long wall Ecuador is building on one side of the busiest crossing point on the two countries’ border is the source of a growing diplomatic row

Construction of a wall along the border between Peru and Ecuador in Aguas Verdes, Peru on 8 June 8 2017.
Construction of a wall along the border between Peru and Ecuador. The governor of the Tumbes region on Peru’s side said the wall is ‘dividing two cultures’. Photograph: Reuters

It is just over a mile long and only a few feet tall, but a wall which Ecuador is building along its frontier with Peru has prompted a fierce diplomatic row between the two South American countries.

Peru’s top diplomat for the Americas, Hugo de Zela, has demanded an urgent bilateral meeting over the structure, warning that it could create a flood risk for the Peruvian border town of Aguas Verdes.

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Ecuadorean officials say the structure is a concrete embankment shoring up the construction of a $4.4m park, part of an urban regeneration plan for Huaquillas, the border town on Ecuador’s side.

But Ricardo Flores, governor of Tumbes, the tiny region on Peru’s side, said: “This is more like Trump’s wall, which is dividing two cultures.”

Stretching for 2.2km and measuring between 1.5 and 4 metres in height, the wall runs along one side of the busiest crossing point on the two countries’ 1,500km border, which extends from the Pacific ocean to the Putumayo river in the Amazon.

Ecuador and Peru were the last two Latin American countries to go to war, in a 1995 conflict which left several hundred dead. A peace agreement was signed in October 1998 after mediation efforts by Argentina, Brazil, Chile and the United States.

Peru says the new wall infringes on the 1998 deal which prohibits construction within ten metres of the frontier.

Local people, meanwhile, warned that it will disrupt the local fish trade: fresh catch used to be carted over the canal which delineates the border across bamboo footbridges. Now Ecuadorean workers must take a lengthy detour to unload in Peru, and Manuel López, president of the Aguas Verdes Workers Union warned that the construction could put an end to the trade.

“We’ve got 5,000 workers on each side who are going to be jobless because of this wall.

Ecuadorean workers build a wall along the border between Peru and Ecuador in Aguas Verdes, Peru on 8 June 2017.
Ecuadorean workers build a wall along the border between Peru and Ecuador in Aguas Verdes, Peru on 8 June 2017. Photograph: Reuters

Abel Jimenez, an Ecuadorean fish trader, said: “This place survives on commerce and this wall is killing it. Aguas Verdes and Huaquillas are like one town – you don’t know if you’re in one place or the other.”

Ronald Farfán, the mayor of Huaquillas, suggested that the wall could help cut down on contraband trade which didn’t benefit Ecuador. Peruvians buy subsidised Ecuadorean diesel, gas and medicine while Ecuadoreans find cheaper clothes and electric home appliances on the Peruvian side.

But Flores scoffed at the suggestion. “If this was the way to deal with contraband then the whole frontier would be full of walls,” Flores responded.

“If there isn’t the right response on the diplomatic front,” he added. “The people might take this into their own hands and tear it down, just as was done with the Berlin wall.”