Hernán Velarde

Hernán Velarde Diez-Canseco combined law and literature with diplomacy. Born in Lima in 1863, he served in the War of the Pacific before completing studies at San Marcos. He wrote for literary periodicals and worked in the courts and government administration. Carlos Wiesse’s contemporary profile in Prisma emphasized both his literary formation and his willingness to negotiate difficult compromises over Peru’s frontiers. ^{1, 2}

As minister in Brazil and Colombia, Velarde worked on provisional arrangements for disputed Amazonian territories. His agreement, signed with the Baron of Rio Branco on 8 September 1909, settled the remaining Peru–Brazil boundary and provided for navigation and commerce. Between diplomatic assignments he also served as minister of Government and Police in 1906–1907. In 1905 Wiesse described the domestic criticism faced by diplomats who accepted provisional settlements. ^{2, 1, 3}

Washington became another venue for his boundary diplomacy. On 4 March 1925 he joined Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes, Colombian minister Enrique Olaya, and Brazilian chargé Samuel de Souza Leão Gracie in a recorded agreement intended to clear Brazil’s objections to the Peru–Colombia treaty. Velarde accepted the proposed arrangement and undertook to communicate it to Peru’s Congress, renewing the government’s recommendation for ratification. ⁴

He also represented Peru in the inter-American arbitration conference, which produced the general treaty signed in Washington in January 1929. After his American ambassadorship ended in 1930, he lived in Europe and died in Switzerland in 1935. ^{5, 1}