Ecuadoran-Colombian War 1863

For years Ecuador and New Granada (Colombia) hotly disputed their common border, each wanting more territory. In 1861, Conservative Gabriel Garcia Moreno became Ecuadoran president and soon attempted to unify his country, which was sharply divided by class, regional, and language differences. He considered religion to be the principal social tie necessary to achieving a sense of nationalism. In 1863 Garcia Moreno promulgated the first Ecuadoran concordat with the Vatican, bestowing vast powers on the Ecuadorian Roman Catholic Church, especially with respect to education. Many Ecuadorans opposed his autocratic regime, which gave control of education and welfare to clerics and suppressed leading liberal and other opponents.

The liberal president of United States of Colombia, Tomas Cipriano de Mosquera, backed rebellious Ecuadorans in an effort to topple Garcia Moreno. The highly anticlerical Liberals were, of course, livid about the concordat. While the Ecuadoran liberal Jose Maria Urbina organized an invasion from New Granada, Ecuador responded by sending a 6,000-man army under General Juan Jose Flores (the elderly father-in-law of Garcia Moreno) to invade New Granada on November 22, 1863. Conquering the Cauca Valley territory (belonging to Colombia) for Ecuador likely motivated the invasion too. On December 6, 1863, at the Battle of Cuaspad, some 4,000 Colombians under Mosquera utterly defeated the invaders, about 1,500 of whom were slain or wounded and 2,000 taken captive. Mosquera may have subsequently advanced his army into Ecuadorian territory, reaching the town of Ibarra without encountering any resistance, but the two sides then agreed to an armistice. Subsequent negotiations led to the Treaty of Pinsaqui, signed December 30, 1863, in which the two sides agreed to a return to the prewar status quo as well as both states promising to cease supporting political opposition forces in the respective countries.

References

British and Foreign State Papers 1872-1873, 260-3; Clodfelter, 563; COW43; Kohn, 157-58.

Region

South America

Belligerents

Colombia, Ecuador

Dispute

Governance, Territory

Initiation Date

November 22, 1863

Termination Date

December 6, 1863

Duration

15 days

Outcome

Negotiated Settlement
(Colombian victory)

Fatalities

Total: 1,000
Colombia: 300
Ecuador: 700

Magnitude

3.0

Armed Conflict Events Data