Hello and welcome to the witness podcast from the BBC World Service history as told by the people who were there.

I'm Mike Lanchin and today we're going back to the beginning of 1995

and the last time that two Latin American countries fought a war against each other.

It was a short but bitter conflict between Peru and Ecuador, over a strip of land in the jungle

that both had been claiming as theirs for more than 200 years.

I've been speaking to a former officer from the Peruvian army.

In early January 1995, Lieutenant Colonel Juan Alberto Pinto Rosas was stationed at an army barracks deep in the jungle on the

Peruvian side of the disputed borderline with Ecuador.

The personal of the potential of the vision posts were on high alert, were on high alert,

the troops at the frontier posts were on high alert, with their weapons ready and in good condition, waiting for orders.

And did you feel tense?

Yes, of course.

We were getting ready to go to war.

Anyone would be tense with all that responsibility.

Lieutenant Colonel Pinto had some 500 men at his command at different army posts along the

border. He'd been sent to the remote region accessible only by a four day boat ride or

by helicopter a few months earlier.

One of my tasks was to locate any border markers that had gone missing in my zone.

What had happened was that over the years some had disappeared and since then both sides had considered a particular tree for example to be the border divide.

It was all very confusing and potentially explosive.

In fact, since the 19th century disagreement over the location of the border between Peru and

Ecuador had been a source of conflict.

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