It’s war! Or maybe not

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As you may have heard, the governments of Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela may or may not be on the brink of war following a Colombian incursion into Ecuadorean territory. ‘Tensions haven’t been this high since 1987, when Colombia sent a naval vessel to Venezuela’s Gulf of Maracaibo to stake a short-lived claim to an offshore island,’ writes The Times’ Chris Kraul from Bogota. Ambassadors have been recalled, borders closed. And, in yet another display of the political theater for which he is famous, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez ordered military mobilizations during his ‘Hello, Mr. President’ talk show on Sunday. ‘Mister Minister of Defense, send me 10 battalions to the Colombian border. Immediately,’ the president commands. Said minister, a uniformed general sitting in the audience, rises to his feet and acknowledges the order — just like in the movies!

All of this war fever reminds this writer of many wars and non-wars of Latin America’s recent past. There was the famous 1969 ‘Soccer War’ between El Salvador (which really wasn’t about soccer at all), and the 1982 Falklands-Malvinas war: I visited the battlefields of the latter conflict in December 2001 and January 2002 and wrote about it here. My journey through the Falklands (still littered then with mines and rusting armaments) and discussions with Argentine veterans brought home the human cost behind the seemingly trivial and farcical roots of that war.

But sometimes all the bluster is just bluster. I remember being about 14 and taking a train ride with my father in London during our first European vacation circa 1977. We entered a station where one of the British tabloids had a headline that screamed in mock horror ‘It’s war!’ Guatemala had just sent a tank or two to the border with British Honduras. My father, a Guatemalan immigrant, gave me the quick rundown of Guatemala’s claim to the British territory and concluded: ‘We’re not going to war with the British. That would be a disaster. It’s all just a joke.’

The Venezuela-Colombia-Ecuador dispute is no joke. But perhaps it will end just as inconsequentially as Guatemala’s claim to the now independent country of Belize.

-- Héctor Tobar in Mexico City