War of the Pacific
The War of the Pacific was a war between Peru, Bolivia and Chile (the first two allied) in which Chile won. Chile gained the provinces of Tarapacá, Antofagasta, Arica and Tacna (this last one was given back to Peru in 1929) in where Chile obtained numerous reserves of Saltpeter, Copper and Lithium that sustain the Chilean Economy.
Bolivia lost all of its coastal territory but maintains sea access via Chilean and Peruvian ports in the Pacific as well as Uruguayan in the Atlantic with economic royalties.
Contents
Causes
During the viceroyalty, the borders of Chile were located in the Atacama Desert to the north, from where Peru began. After the independence of the corresponding countries was achieved, the maps maintained their previous configuration.
The Atacama Desert had acquired a great economic value due to the discovery of valuable deposits of guano first, and saltpeter (sodium nitrate) later. These territories belonged to Chile, and Bolivians and Chileans lived here, the vast majority of them Chileans (approximately 90%). However, the Bolivian government, in view of the country's Mediterranean nature, Peru's refusal to give it access to the sea through Arica and the commercial value of these territories to be exploited, began to claim them.
On October 13, 1842, Chile enacted a law declaring all the guano fishing grounds as far as the Mejillones peninsula as its own, with the intention of stopping illegal extraction by foreign ships. Bolivia immediately complained against this law, claiming that the territory belonged to them. Since 1831, they had been formally established in the Cobija cove, north of Mejillones.
The discussions went on for more than 20 years, during which, in spite of the certainty that Bolivia tried to demonstrate about its titles, it was several times intimidated by the notes of Minister Tocornal and the works of Amunátegui in favor of Chile, published in 1863, and refused to continue with the negotiations. That same year, the Bolivian Congress empowered the President to declare war on Chile.
Between 1865 and 1866, the Pacific countries allied in favor of Peru, whose guano islands Chinchas had been taken by Spain. This fueled a series of feverish Americanist sentiments in this continent. Chile decided to reach an agreement with Bolivia to put an end to the problem that divided them, where Bolivia would create the basis for such an agreement. To alleviate the tension, Chile and Bolivia agreed on a limit at the 24th parallel and established a shared economic zone between the 23rd and 25th parallels, with the 1866 Treaty of Limits, as agreed by Presidents J. J. Perez of Chile and M. Melgarejo of Bolivia.
In this way, in order to generate an atmosphere of neighborly Americanism, fueled by the conflict between the Pacific countries and Spain, a strip of territory is configured to exploit it economically, not sovereign of the Altiplanic country and whose benefits would be shared equally between Bolivia and Chile.
At the end of the war against Spain, Chile was left in a bad position due to the bombardment of Valparaiso, the main Chilean port, and the hasty creation of the treaty with Bolivia, which far from being a solution to the conflict and satisfying the needs of the Bolivian government, would feed even more the illusion of having sovereign rights over all of Atacama. But the saltpeter boom and the appearance of rich mineral deposits such as Caracoles within the shared zone made it impossible to maintain the agreements and Bolivia insisted on disregarding the 1866 Treaty.
At the same time, around 1872, Bolivia began talks with President Manuel Pardo of Peru which, the following year, culminated in the signing of the Secret Pact against Chile, to which Argentina was also invited. In 1873 the three countries were preparing to attack Chile, when there was a delay in the processing of the war decree in the Argentine Congress. This gave time for Chile, ignorant of the pact, to convince Bolivia to sign the Treaty of 1874, by which the boundary was fixed at the 23rd parallel, asking for this enormous surrender only to temporarily freeze taxes on its investments in the territory.
Also in 1873, Peru initiated a plan of monopolization of saltpeter in order to pay enormous debts for excessive extraction credits that were exhausting its guaneras. Bolivia had expressed its willingness to sell the saltpetre exploitation rights in Atacama to Peru, but the investments were mainly Chilean. Peru then began a policy of mutual support with Bolivia.
Repeated abuses on the part of the Altiplanic and Peruvian authorities in Atacama and Tarapacá aroused great resentment and almost ended in an armed uprising of the Chilean population in Antofagasta, a city in which more than 90% of the population was made up of Chilean citizens.
During the viceroyalty, the borders of Chile were located in the Atacama Desert to the north, from where Peru began. After the independence of the corresponding countries was achieved, the maps maintained their previous configuration.
The Atacama Desert had acquired a great economic value due to the discovery of valuable deposits of guano first, and saltpeter (sodium nitrate) later. These territories belonged to Chile, and Bolivians and Chileans lived here, the vast majority of them Chileans (approximately 90%). However, the Bolivian government, in view of the country's Mediterranean nature, Peru's refusal to give it access to the sea through Arica and the commercial value of these territories to be exploited, began to claim them.
On October 13, 1842, Chile enacted a law declaring all the guano fishing grounds as far as the Mejillones peninsula as its own, with the intention of stopping illegal extraction by foreign ships. Bolivia immediately complained against this law, claiming that the territory belonged to them. Since 1831, they had been formally established in the Cobija cove, north of Mejillones.
The discussions went on for more than 20 years, during which, in spite of the certainty that Bolivia tried to demonstrate about its titles, it was several times intimidated by the notes of Minister Tocornal and the works of Amunátegui in favor of Chile, published in 1863, and refused to continue with the negotiations. That same year, the Bolivian Congress empowered the President to declare war on Chile.
Between 1865 and 1866, the Pacific countries allied in favor of Peru, whose guano islands Chinchas had been taken by Spain. This fueled a series of feverish Americanist sentiments in this continent. Chile decided to reach an agreement with Bolivia to put an end to the problem that divided them, where Bolivia would create the basis for such an agreement. To alleviate the tension, Chile and Bolivia agreed on a limit at the 24th parallel and established a shared economic zone between the 23rd and 25th parallels, with the 1866 Treaty of Limits, as agreed by Presidents J. J. Perez of Chile and M. Melgarejo of Bolivia.
In this way, in order to generate an atmosphere of neighborly Americanism, fueled by the conflict between the Pacific countries and Spain, a strip of territory is configured to exploit it economically, not sovereign of the Altiplanic country and whose benefits would be shared equally between Bolivia and Chile.
At the end of the war against Spain, Chile was left in a bad position due to the bombardment of Valparaiso, the main Chilean port, and the hasty creation of the treaty with Bolivia, which far from being a solution to the conflict and satisfying the needs of the Bolivian government, would feed even more the illusion of having sovereign rights over all of Atacama. But the saltpeter boom and the appearance of rich mineral deposits such as Caracoles within the shared zone made it impossible to maintain the agreements and Bolivia insisted on disregarding the 1866 Treaty.
At the same time, around 1872, Bolivia began talks with President Manuel Pardo of Peru which, the following year, culminated in the signing of the Secret Pact against Chile, to which Argentina was also invited. In 1873 the three countries were preparing to attack Chile, when there was a delay in the processing of the war decree in the Argentine Congress. This gave time for Chile, ignorant of the pact, to convince Bolivia to sign the Treaty of 1874, by which the boundary was fixed at the 23rd parallel, asking for this enormous surrender only to temporarily freeze taxes on its investments in the territory.
Also in 1873, Peru initiated a plan of monopolization of saltpeter in order to pay enormous debts for excessive extraction credits that were exhausting its guaneras. Bolivia had expressed its willingness to sell the saltpetre exploitation rights in Atacama to Peru, but the investments were mainly Chilean. Peru then began a policy of mutual support with Bolivia.
Repeated abuses on the part of the Altiplanic and Peruvian authorities in Atacama and Tarapacá aroused great resentment and almost ended in an armed uprising of the Chilean population in Antofagasta, a city in which more than 90% of the population was made up of Chilean citizens.
After a new military coup, the caudillo Hilarión Daza comes to power in Bolivia. He considers that treaties signed by a previous ruler are not valid. In February 1878 he decreed a tax increase on Chilean and English companies in Antofagasta, completely violating the Treaty of 1874, by raising taxes by 10 cents for each quintal of nitrate, thinking that these would be unprotected by the Chilean Government. He threatened to confiscate the totality of the infrastructure of the companies if they did not cancel their debt.
In February 1879, the Government of Chile saw the attempts to avoid the confrontation exhausted. Peru publicly admitted the existence of the Secret Pact and its commitment to make it effective. Daza, meanwhile, expelled the Chileans from Antofagasta and called for an auction of the company's assets, to which Chile reacted by declaring all previous agreements null and void and occupying the city militarily. Thus began the War of the Pacific.
The War
At the beginning of the war it was evident that before any military operation in such difficult terrain as the desert, control of the seas had to be gained. The Bolis obviously had no squadron, while the Peruvian and Chilean squadrons were balanced and were the most powerful in South America together with the Brazilian.
There are controversies about whether Chile would have armed or not due to the knowledge of the formation of the Peru-Bolivia coalition and their invitation to Argentina. Argentina was on the verge of entering the conflict. The riches of the Atacama and the possibility of a confrontation with Chile were a strong temptation for Argentina to join forces with Bolivia and Peru. After the episode of May 21 where the naval battles of Iquique and Punta Gruesa took place, the scales were tipped towards Chile in the maritime sphere, which was of great importance due to the inhospitable nature of the disputed territory.
Due to this, the Argentine Congress stopped the processing of the law and after the Chilean triumph of Angamos, where the Huascar fell, it withdrew the processing definitively, foreseeing the difficulties of this war.
In such episode of May 21, in the naval combat of Punta Gruesa, Captain Carlos Condell, in command of the Covadonga, a wooden ship of little weight, managed to deceive the Peruvian taking them to lower waters, with which he managed to run aground the Independencia, which was the most powerful armored ship after the Monitor Huáscar. In the naval battle of Iquique, with the death of Arturo Prat, captain of the Esmeralda, wooden ship that blocked Iquique while the rest of the Chilean squadron was looking for the Peruvian one, when facing the Huascar, a martyr was created around which the Chilean people got excited, marching to recruit massively for the war.
The Huascar, the only battleship that Peru had left, had great relevance after the combat, since through diverse raids it attacked smaller Chilean ships, without being able to be caught by the Chilean ships of greater power, which created a general uneasiness in the Chilean people. Finally the Blanco Encalada and the Lord Cochrane managed to enclose, torpedo and capture the monitor Huáscar, in the naval battle of Angamos, which was used in the rest of the maritime campaign by Chile and then preserved to this day as a museum.
At the end of 1879, having obtained naval superiority, the Chileans began a series of military maneuvers against Bolivians and Peruvians in the Atacama Desert, which led to the occupation of the Morro de Arica in 1880. The Bolivians withdrew from the war, and the Chileans continued fighting against Peru.
Against all the forecasts made in the continent and outside it, Chile achieved a succession of victories and notable advances on the way to Peru and generated serious fears among the countries that claimed to be creditors of the Peruvian saltpeter business, such as the United States and France.
After a series of clashes, on May 27, 1880 the Chileans triumphed in Tacna by materially destroying the Peruvian-Bolivian alliance and on the following June 7 they managed to take the top of the Morro de Arica, thus dealing a formidable blow to the allies and to the forecasts that saw the Chilean victory in this strategic place as practically impossible.
After the capture of Chorrillos, Miraflores and Lima, in 1881, a campaign of pressure against Peru began to force its surrender, but a series of internal political fractures in Peru, the North American interference in the Government and the appearance of guerrillas in the mountainous zone, forced the Chileans to face a series of complex diplomatic tangles and to contain the montoneros and guerrillas of the highlands.
In the Peruvian sierras, the sacrifice of Ignacio Carrera Pinto and his 76 men in the La Concepción Combat, who died in combat against thousands of montoneros, between 9 and 10 July 1882 renewed energies to achieve the Peruvian surrender.
Once the withdrawal and isolation of the montonero groups had been achieved, efforts were again concentrated on the lowlands, in 1882, which were under Peruvian administration. The North American influence and its interests in establishing a territory-enclave in Chimbote greatly hindered the solution to the conflict, a situation that was taken advantage of by Cáceres and his montoneros to restart rebel offensives.
Surrender of Peru
Finally, the last offensive of Caceres in Huamachuco, on July 10, 1883, ends in failure when being overcome by the Chileans in numerical minority, commanded by Alejandro Gorostiaga Orrego. The violent journey puts an end to the war and obtains the submission of the Peruvian army. Peru surrenders and thus formalizes this capitulation on October 20, with the Treaty of Ancon.
On April 4, 1884, Bolivia agrees to sign the Pact of Truce with Chile.
As a consequence of the War of the Pacific, Chile secured the saltpeter deposits. However, these were handed over to British capitals, who helped Chile to favor their own interests, which would be at the root of the Revolution of 1891. Nitrate would be Chile's main source of wealth until the discovery of synthetic nitrate by the Germans during the First World War.
