Echandi-Fernandez Treaty

Memorial, Parque Morazán.

The Echandi-Fernández Treaty (also known as the Arias-Calderón Guardia Treaty) was a land boundary agreement signed on May 1, 1941 in the city of San José between the Costa Rican Foreign Minister Alberto Echandi Montero and the Panamanian Ambassador to Costa Rica Ezequiel Fernández Jaén, during the government of Rafael Ángel Calderón Guardia in Costa Rica and Arnulfo Arias Madrid in Panama.

Background

The boundary dispute between Costa Rica and Panama began in the XIX century, when the latter country belonged to the Republic of New Granada, which claimed as its own the entire territory of Mosquitia from the Sixaola River to Cape Gracias a Dios; For its part, Costa Rica claimed as its limit a line that started from the Escudo de Veraguas island in the Atlantic, and ended at the mouth of the Chiriquí Viejo river in the Pacific. After the occupation of the Bocas del Toro region in 1836 by part of New Granada, both countries signed various agreements to try to resolve the border problem, but none was ratified by both parties: the Carrillo-Obarrio treaty with the State of the Isthmus of 1841, which was annulled in 1842, the Calvo-Obarrio treaty Herrán of 1856, the Castro-Valenzuela treaty of 1865 and the Montúfar-Correoso treaty of 1873. By means of the Castro-Quijano (1880), Fernández-Holguín (1886) and Esquivel-Holguín (1896) conventions it was agreed to submit the controversy to the arbitration of the President of France, who issued the Loubet Judgment in 1900.

After the separation of Panama from Colombia in 1903, an attempt was made to establish a road map to define the territorial demarcation, thus signing the Pacheco-de la Guardia treaty in 1905 that was not ratified by Costa Rica, due to pressure from American banana companies. With the Anderson-Porras convention of 1910, it was agreed to accept the line of the Loubet Ruling on the Pacific slope (Anderson-Porras line) and to submit the interpretation of the line in the Atlantic to arbitration by the president of the Supreme Court of Justice of the United States, who issued the White Judgment in 1914. As this sentence did not satisfy any of the parties, the Castro-Guizado protocol was signed in 1928 and the Zúñiga-de la Espriella treaty in 1938, without solution. Finally, in 1941 both governments reached a definitive agreement that put an end to a dispute of more than 100 years.

Boundary drawing

Map of Costa Rica of 1951, with the line Echandi-Fernández as a limit with Panama.

The treaty follows, on the slope of the Pacific Ocean from Punta Burica to Cerro Pando, the border defined by the Loubet Ruling of 1900 (Anderson-Porras line), and on the Caribbean slope, from Cerro Pando to the mouth of the Sixaola River, part of the line established in the White Ruling of 1914. The agreement also establishes a regime of free navigation for both countries on the Sixaola and Yorkín rivers, in the part where they serve as the border. The limit is defined in article 1 as follows:

The border line between the Republic of Costa Rica and the Republic of Panama is agreed, agreed and fixed in the following terms: From the current mouth of the Sixaola River, in the Caribbean Sea, follow the thalweg of those waters up to its confluence with the river Yorkin; from there follows the thalweg of the river Yorkin up to the parallel of latitude 9 degrees 30 minutes north of the equator; from there it continues with geographical direction south 76 degrees, 37 minutes west to the meridian of 82 degrees, 56 minutes