RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Peruvian President Pedro Castillo has asserted that he is willing to hold a citizen consultation to determine whether his country will cede part of its territory to Bolivia to give Bolivia access to the sea, a dispute that La Paz has been trying to put on the agenda for years.
The controversy sparked by Castillo was so great that Foreign Minister Oscar Maúrtu had to appear before Congress to deny that Peru was willing to cede territory to Bolivia. According to Maúrtu, “the Foreign Ministry is defending a state position that consists, among other things, of securing border treaties.”
“I want to state categorically, clearly, and unequivocally that it is not a state policy, and therefore not the policy of President Castillo’s government, to promote any cession of Peruvian territory,” he stressed.
Regarding the possibility of submitting the issue to a referendum, the minister stressed that “a referendum on the cession of territories is legally and politically impossible” and that his department “has not addressed nor will it ever address this issue.”
But the position of Pedro Castillos’ government remains diffuse. In 2018, Castillo spoke at a conference in favor of seeking access to the sea for Bolivia, then ruled by Evo Morales.
“I’m not saying I’m going to give Bolivia the sea. If the Peruvians agree, I owe it to the people. I would never do anything that the people don’t want,” Pedro Castillo said in an interview with CNN.
Bolivia lost its access to the Pacific Ocean in the War of the Pacific (1879-1883) when the Antofagasta region passed into the hands of Chile, which sued Bolivia in 2013 at the International Court of Justice in The Hague to negotiate a way out, but the court rejected Bolivia’s request.
Since that conflict, in which Bolivia and Peru were allies, Peruvian rulers have repeatedly winked at Bolivia’s maritime aspirations, such as when Alberto Fujimori ceded a five-kilometer strip of land called Bolivia Mar to the neighboring country in 1992.
