García Calderón, Francisco, 1834-1905

Peruvian lawyer, civil servant, and author of several studies of Peru and Latin America. Calderon was commissioned in 1892 to arbitrate the boundary dispute between Peru and Ecuador. He figured later in another international dispute between Peru and Nicolas Barbier and Tranquille Fenestre.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Francisco Garcia Calderon was born in Arequipa, Peru, in 1834. After finishing a degree in law, he pursued a career in public service and worked in the Ministerio de Hacienda, served as president of Arequipa's constitutional congress, and was a key figure in the final peace accords between Peru and Chile.

Commissioned in 1892 to arbitrate the land disputes between Peru and Ecuador, Francisco Garcia Calderon compiled a history of the contested provinces of Mainas, Jaen and Tumbes. According to Garcia Calderon, the King of Spain decreed in 1802 that the territory of Mainas be transferred from the Viceroyalty of Nueva Granada to that of Peru. This event marked the beginning of a legal tug-of-war over the territories involving the archdiocese of Lima, the presidency of Ecuador and the viceroyalties of Peru and Nueva Granada. The first time these lands were publicly disputed was shortly after independence in 1822, when half of the Peruvian territory gained its sovereignty and the other half remained subject to the king's rule. Ecuador alleged that the Royal Decree of 1802 did not modify the demarcation between Peru and Ecuador, while Peru's position was that the royal decree effectively divided the territory.

Basing its argument on the assumption that colonial divisions were no longer valid, Ecuador claimed that the Peruvian state lost possession of the lands with independence. In spite of this claim, Peru centered its defense on the Royal Decree of 1802, arguing that royal decrees concerning land division transcended the territorial division of the nineteenth century. Discrediting or validating the royal decree of 1802 became the point of contention for both countries.

The argumentation was reduced to the rubrics of semantics and filology when the words chosen by the magistrate in charge of these divisions, Don Francisco Requena, left an opening for both countries to interpret the document to their advantage. Furthermore, both countries conjured up the memory and goals of Simon Bolivar as patriotic justifications to support their claims. The situation was further complicated by the Herrera-Garcia Treaty, in which Ecuador recognized that the provinces of Tumbes and Jaen did effectively belong to Peru. Ecuador later renounced the treaty.

In another international dispute, Garcia Calderon served as the guarantor of the contract between the Peruvian government and Nicolas Barbier and Tranquille Fenestre, French citizens residing in France, to build French-designed lighthouses along the Peruvian coast. The contract was made through L.V. de Champeux, a French citizen residing in Lima, and stipulated that the firm of Barbier and Fenestre would be in charge of all lighting along the Peruvian coast. Garcia Calderon became involved when disputes over payment for services and other disagreements were brought up in 1895. In the early 1900s, Garcia Calderon's heirs claimed an amount of money connected with the initial contract.