In a recent congressional vote, Petro claimed that Peru had “unilaterally” asserted control over the small island of Santa Rosa in a social media post on Tuesday.
On the social media platform X, Petro wrote, “The Peruvian government has just taken it by law.”
He added that Peru’s actions could prevent Leticia, a city in Colombia, from gaining access to the Amazon River. To defend our nation’s sovereignty, our government will use diplomatic means.
Petro’s remarks appeared to be in response to a vote in June that gave the island of Santa Rosa , a district in its Loreto province, its name.
Peru and Colombia have debated who controls the island for almost a century.
Treaties from 1922 and 1929, which Peru signed, have affirmed ownership of Santa Rosa for decades.
However, Colombia maintains that the Santa Rosa island was not a part of the Amazon River at the time the treaties were signed and is therefore unaffected by them.
Additionally, it has been claimed that the treaties established a border between Colombia and the two nations at the deepest point along the Amazon River and that islands like Santa Rosa have grown up along the same dividing line.
The Peruvian government has simply taken the land that has appeared north of the current deepest line and placed Colombia’s capital on the land that, according to Petro, should have owned by the treaty.
He warned that the claims made by Peru to Santa Rosa could stifle trade and travel to nearby Leticia, which has a population of nearly 60 000.
Leticia could disappear as an Amazonian port, according to Petro’s statement on Tuesday, “which could lead to this unilateral action.”
On Thursday, Petro announced that he would hold celebrations in Leticia to mark Colombia’s declaration of its independence from Spain.
In a social media post, the Colombian Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that it would push for more diplomatic means of determining the islands’ nationality.
Colombia has argued for years that bilateral work is necessary to be done in order to allocate islands, according to the ministry. The statement continued that Colombia “has reiterated the fact that Santa Rosa Island has not been given to Peru.”
The Amazon River has the most water discharged of any river, making it one of the longest in the world.
However, the river basin’s powerful currents deposit and rearrange sediment, creating islands and occasionally erasing them.
One of those younger islands is Santa Rosa. The village of Santa Rosa de Yavari, as well as the forest and farmland that surround the property, are now there.
According to Peru’s most recent census, the town has fewer than 1, 000 residents, and is largely dependent on tourism because of its close proximity to the Amazon.
Santa Rosa was designated as a district by the Peruvian government to ensure that it received federal funding and authority to collect taxes.
Source: Aljazeera
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