Peaceworks 50

Boundary Disputes in Latin America

Jorge I. Domínguez
with David Mares, Manuel Orozco, David Scott Palmer, Francisco Rojas Aravena, and Andrés Serbin

Since the start of 2000, five Latin American boundary disputes between neighboring states have resulted in the use of force, and two others in its deployment. These incidents involved ten of the nineteen independent countries of South and Central America. In 1995, Ecuador and Peru went to war, resulting in more than a thousand deaths and injuries and significant economic loss. And yet, by international standards the Americas were comparatively free from interstate war during the twentieth century. Latin Americans for the most part do not fear aggression from their neighbors. They do not expect their countries to go to war with one another.

The puzzle that this paper seeks to solve is how to explain the following unusual cluster of traits in the hemisphere:

• Territorial, boundary, and other disputes endure.
• Interstate conflict over boundaries is relatively frequent.
• Disputes sometimes escalate to military conflict because states recurrently employ low levels of force to shape aspects of bilateral relations.
• Such escalation rarely reaches full-scale war.
• Interstate war is infrequent.

Solving this puzzle may help point the way toward more effective prevention and resolution of conflicts about borders and territory.

Jorge I. Domínguez is the Clarence Dillon Professor of International Relations and director of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. He is a founding member of the Inter-American Dialogue. Domínguez is the editor and coauthor of several Inter-American Dialogue books, including the first and second editions of Constructing Democratic Governance in Latin America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), as well as International Security and Democracy: Latin America and the Caribbean in the Post-Cold War Era (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998) and The Future of Inter-American Relations (Routledge, 2000).

Peaceworks reports are available in PDF format. In order to access the reports you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Download complete PDF of report (259K)