Colombian President Gustavo Petro has accused the neighboring country of Peru of annexing a disputed island on the Amazon River, resuscitating a longstanding disagreement between the two nations. In a social media post on Tuesday, Petro said that Peru had acted to “unilaterally” assert control over the small island of Santa Rosa in a recent congressional vote.
“The Peruvian government has just appropriated it by law,” Petro wrote on the social media platform X. He added that Peru’s actions could block the Colombian city of Leticia from accessing the Amazon River. “Our government will resort to diplomacy to defend our national sovereignty.” Petro’s comments appeared to be a response to a vote in June, whereby Peru’s Congress designated the island of Santa Rosa a district in its Loreto province.
The dispute over the island of Santa Rosa has been ongoing for nearly a century. Peru has claimed ownership based on treaties from 1922 and 1929, and it has administered Santa Rosa for decades. However, Colombia maintains that the island of Santa Rosa had not emerged from the Amazon River at the time of the treaties and therefore is not subject to them. Colombia also argues that the treaties set the boundary between the two countries at the deepest point of the Amazon River, and that islands like Santa Rosa have emerged on the Colombian side of that dividing line.
“Islands have appeared north of the current deepest line, and the Peruvian government has just appropriated them by law and placed the capital of a municipality on land that, by treaty, should belong to Colombia,” Petro wrote. He warned that Peru’s claims to Santa Rosa could inhibit travel and trade to nearby Leticia, which boasts a population of nearly 60,000. “This unilateral action,” Petro wrote on Tuesday, “could make Leticia disappear as an Amazonian port, taking away its commercial life.”
The Colombian Ministry of Foreign Affairs also said in a social media post that it would push for further diplomacy in determining the nationality of newly emerged islands. “For years, Colombia has maintained the need to carry out bilateral work for the allocation of islands,” the ministry wrote. Colombia, it added, “has reiterated the position that ‘Santa Rosa Island’ has not been allocated to Peru.”
The Peruvian government has argued that making Santa Rosa a district was necessary to ensure it received federal funds and could collect taxes. “Peru is complying firmly with its obligations under international law and with valid bilateral treaties,” the Peruvian government said in a statement. The dispute over Santa Rosa highlights the complexities of border disputes in the Amazon region, where the powerful currents of the river deposit and rearrange sediment, forming and sometimes erasing islands.