On 26 October 1998, in Brasília, Presidents Jamil Mahuad Witt of Ecuador and Alberto Fujimori Fujimori of Peru signed the Brasilia Presidential Act. Foreign ministers Fernando de Trazegnies Granda and José Ayala Lasso countersigned. Witnesses were Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Carlos Menem, Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle and Thomas F. McLarty III, the personal representative of the President of the United States, as guarantors of the Rio de Janeiro Protocol of 29 January 1942.

Point 1 states that the understandings conclude the talks provided for in the Itamaraty Peace Declaration of 17 February 1995, after the Cenepa war, and end, globally and definitively, the discrepancies between the two republics. It is not a new boundary treaty in place of the Rio Protocol; it implements it.

Point 2 declares that the binding point of view of the guarantor heads of state, in their letter of 23 October 1998, forms an integral part of the Act and settles the border differences once and for all. The governments undertake to complete, as soon as possible, the fixing on the ground of the common land boundary. The letter restates the Rio Protocol and Braz Dias de Aguiar’s arbitral award: Peru retains sovereignty over Tiwintza and grants Ecuador, as private property, one square kilometre centred on the point so named, for coordinated commemorative and conservation use only.

Point 3 lists the agreements signed the same day, to be submitted to domestic approval: the Treaty of Commerce and Navigation, applying Article VI of the Rio Protocol; the Broad Ecuador–Peru Agreement on Border Integration, Development and Neighbourhood, with annexes on the neighbourhood commission, transit, the binational plan and the peace fund; and exchanges of notes on the Zarumilla Canal, navigation in the geodesic-cut sectors and on the Napo River, and the binational commission on confidence-building measures.

Point 4 reaffirms, under Article I of the Rio Protocol, the renunciation of the threat or use of force and of any act affecting peace and friendship. Point 5 thanks the guarantors and urges them to continue until demarcation is finished. The Act has no denunciation clause and does not postpone sovereignty over the Tiwintza kilometre.

The last boundary marker was placed in May 1999; the MOMEP mission ended in June 1999. Those dates are after the Act. The Iquitos protests of 24 October 1998, the Caretas article on markers and later delays to Amazon trade centres are not clauses of the five points.

Image: Itamaraty Palace, Brasília, place of signature; Sintegrity, 2023; CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. Cropped to 16:9.

Source consulted: Brasilia Presidential Act. Treaty text: Brasilia Presidential Act, 26 October 1998.