Santa Rosa Island has achieved, by the controversial statements of the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, the attention of all Peruvians. A remote territory, which has just become district, improving its category – a true triumph, which occurred on July 3, 2025 – after having been populated since 2006. At that time, thanks to the struggle of 23 communities, the birth certificate of the now claimed Santa Rosa Island was achieved. Although the name arose in the 1970s, when an arm of the Amazon created a channel next to the Chinero island (Peruvian Island according to the Lozano Solomon Treaty, 1922), it is currently a conglomerate and there is no longer any separation, an important detail for the purposes of what the Colombian president intends.
The fact is that, in 2006, the town center laid the foundations for its growth and created the town’s cadastral planning plan with an economic item composed of two amounts: 5,000 soles by the provincial part and 2,500 soles by the District. A total of 7,500 soles, of which 780 charged as an incentive the mayor, for the general administration, support and operation of that territory occupied by 3,000 inhabitants.
Thus, Iván Yovera comments, “in Santa Rosa Island, a bank of the Nation has been achieved, providing energy 24 hours, a central water plant and the construction of a school with initial, primary and secondary education. In addition, there is a sports slab and mobile telephony for all”.
Now that they are district and if the impasse is exceeded with Colombia, the budget will be greater, although a transitory committee for representativeness must still be designated, otherwise they will stay with the person in charge – without the power to manage – which has appointed the provincial municipality, until the next elections.
You have been twice mayor of Santa Rosa Island.
Correct. In the 2014 to 2017 and now, from 2023 to July when we become district, something that has been achieved in our management and we are glad
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How did it become mayor of Santa Rosa Island?
For vocation service, I am not professional. I am 41 years old and I follow the steps to my father, José del Carmen Yovera Navarro, who was the first mayor of the town after occupying other public administration positions here.
And is the island part of Chinería?
Yes. Santa Rosa is a strategically placed community on the side of the southern part of the Chinería Island that is actually the name of the Grande Island, where five small communities with 100 to 200 houses are established, a total of 2,500 people. In other words, in the entire jurisdiction we are almost 6,000 people in what is the new district. A faction of the Amazon river divided us at some point, but over time that part has been drying and accumulating sediment. Today we are united completely.
Was Isla Santa Rosa was Peruvian birth?
Always. It was created with that name in honor of the National Police of Peru, by Santa Rosita de Lima, the patron saint of the Americas.
What year did you arrive on the island?
I came from Iquitos, from the capital of Loreto, to what was practically a farm. I arrived in 1996 when there were maximum 40 houses. It was a rural village, there were no light and there were only some institutions such as customs, migrations and the police. There was also a small school, a lieutenant governor and a municipal agent. Only those authorities. All Peruvians, logically.
Do Colombia’s claims come from a long time ago?
When I was already authority, in my first management, suspicions began to the point that, when I stopped being mayor in 2018, I took some photos of the computer of the port of the Colombian Navy of the Colombian Navy of that time. I had started working as a zonal coordinator of the Executive Directorate of Aquatic Transport and asking questions to Colombians, who did not know that I had been mayor, they showed me a document where our territory would be argued to who would be awarded. With those photos I denounced and our mayor at that time took them to Lima and achieved the law of national interest for the creation of our Isla Santa Rosa district. That was in 2021, a declarative law that we draw through Congress.
With that it was clear that this territory was from Peru and not Colombia?
Something like that. In fact, in 2021 the chancellor came, I do not remember his name, but I rebuked him in the presence of everyone putting my integrity at risk, because it was a very delicate theme here, but I could not be silent because I had that spine in me and nobody more knew the subject. I then told the Chancellor that there was a subject with our territory, that I had seen that I was in litigation and that I had to protect us. I don’t feel that they paid attention to me and the issue was settled, but when I was again mayor in 2023 I insisted.
He even had an altercation with Colombian authorities.
Yes, that was last year with the Director of Territorial Demarcation of Colombia. They invited me as mayor of Santa Rosa Island to a discussion table for the Amazon fellowship held in Leticia. There, when I introduce myself to talk about our coexistence, Mr. Felipe Cadenas Montenegro interrupts me and he tells me could not be the mayor of a territory occupied by the irregularly Peruvian government. I stared at him, quiet because I didn’t want to put myself at his level, so I decided to retire. I have the recording. With that, he burst this wound and it was there that I informed the Foreign Ministry, I made a report to Congresswoman Karol Paredes and the consul of Peru in Leticia – Colombia until the Executive declared the issue of national interest that has ended in the creation of this district.
And what does the port of Leticia have to do?
Literally, as the river has been drying they are running out of a river and the despair is that from here to 2030 they do not have access to the river and will not have how to navigate in that part. That is why they want our territory.
