By Alejandra Garcia on February 8, 2022
From February 5 until yesterday, the government of President Nayib Bukele was violating Nicaragua’s maritime space. During those days, several Salvadoran armed military vessels were seen prowling the Nicaraguan waters of the Gulf of Fonseca, a space shared by both countries and a third one, Honduras.
From Managua, the government of President Daniel Ortega accused Bukele of intending to “violently put an end” to the Pacific boundary treaty, bilaterally signed with Tegucigalpa a few months ago on October 27, 2021.
The Salvadoran military vessels entered less than 30 miles away from the Nicaraguan coasts. According to official reports, they remain claiming sovereignty over that maritime space.
Analysts believe that this is another chapter in the erratic attitude of the Salvadoran president, who’s suddenly set his sights upon waters that never before were of interest to his country.
Before the recent hostile actions, there is no document in which El Salvador claims ownership of those spaces or any record of having made incursions in that area, as it is doing now.
Reactions to this unexpected attitude were not long in coming. Nicaragua’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Denis Moncada Colindres, urged San Salvador to resume “efforts to maintain the maritime spaces in the Gulf of Fonseca and the Pacific Ocean as zones of sustainable development and security.”
According to Hill, the neighboring government’s belligerent stance is due to its “personal” conflict with the Republic of Honduras. According to the Salvadoran leader, Tegucigalpa has no right over the Gulf of Fonseca’s entrance and, therefore, no legal title to the waters in the Pacific Ocean.
Unlike Nicaragua, which has 352 km of coastline on the Pacific, and El Salvador, which has 307 km, the gulf is Honduras’ only access to the ocean.
This is why El Salvador’s intransigent position motivated Managua to sign the bilateral Treaty of Limits in the Caribbean Sea and Waters outside the Gulf of Fonseca with Honduras on October 27, 2021.
Since the signing of this treaty, Tegucigalpa has had a maritime border in the gulf. The right was previously given to this country by the International Court of Justice back in 1992, a move that El Salvador refuses to recognize to this day.
The conflict goes back decades. In 1982, when El Salvador was in the midst of a civil war, the Salvadoran military contingent was stationed on a piece of land of less than one square kilometer located in The Gulf of Fonseca’s entrance: Conejo Island.
When the soldiers returned to the mainland, Honduran army troops occupied the island for the first time, which started a diplomatic controversy between the two countries.
El Salvador argues that Honduras illegally occupied the island, and Tegucigalpa argues that the rock is theirs because of its proximity to the Honduran coast (about 600 meters).
Today, exactly two decades later, one thing is clear: El Salvador’s invasion is not motivated by any territorial dispute in an area it has never claimed before. San Salvador’s attitude reflects its rejection of the invitation made by its neighboring countries to join the treaty, which seeks, essentially, to maintain the 3,200-kilometer-square Gulf as a peace zone.
Source: Resumen Latinoamericano – English