Peruvian viceroyalty, Bolivia was the site of Mount Potosi, from which flowed a huge portion of the silver sloshing around the Spanish Empire. After liberation, the Bolivian elite were more than satisfied to do nothing except harvest the wealth generated by the treasure that flowed out of the ground and to fight — almost continuously — over their share of it.
The result was that Bolivia had long been plagued by a seemingly endless series of dictators pretending to be presidents. The long-suffering native populace, huddled in their ancient villages on the high Andean plain, the Altiplano, survived the holocaust that befell their North American counterparts; the devout Spanish Crown had actually felt responsible to provide some measure of protection to the masses of potential new Catholic converts while the continent was stripped of its mineral wealth. The natives were rewarded with survival but at the price of being trapped as second-tier residents in a third-tier nation, subsisting in a slavelike state of economic misery for centuries.
Mariano Malgarejo took over in 1864 and proved to be an outstanding example of the type of bad dictators cycling through the presidential office of Bolivia. Malgarejo earned his stupid stripes by handing over a chunk of valuable Bolivian guanoland to Chile. Malgarejo’s giveaway hastened his end by the inevitable coup in 1872 at the hands of a dictator named Morales, who tried to undo some of Malgarejo’s mistakes. His well-meaning attempts were frustrated when his own nephew gunned him down, but not before he completed a secret treaty in 1873 with Peru under which each side pledged to support its brother country if invaded by the annoyingly well-organized Chileans.
In 1876 Hilarion Daza seized power from Morales in a coup of his own. Daza was a dumb and fiery soldier who quickly distinguished himself by raiding the treasury to pay his fellow officers of the palace guard, who had supported him loyally, and continued to do so until the next coup.
That same year, Mariano Ignacio Prado became president of Peru, succeeding Manuel Pardo, at a time when all Peruvian presidents apparently were required to share the same letters in their last names. Each successive president unsuccessfully attempted to bail the country out of the economic mess left by his decouped predecessor.
Chile was, by contrast, a paragon of political normalcy, but by the 1870s its economy had started to slip and the country became more volatile.
Borders drawn by the former Spanish Empire were somewhat elastic. Not much thought or effort had been put into defining the actual lines separating the Spanish viceroyalties, especially in desert wastelands like the Atacama and Tarapacá. The mining of the guano proved to be so lucrative that Chile’s mining operations kept creeping farther north, to the irritation of the Bolivians. Amid this simmering squabble in 1877, a tsunami devastated the coast and wiped out Antofagasta, the main guano mining port. To rebuild it the Bolivians wanted a tax, which the Chileans duly noted was illegal under their just-inked treaty. But Bolivian President Daza, finding the treasury he had recently raided short of funds, boldly slapped a tax on every shipment of exported birdshit.
The Chileans refused to pay and, to emphasize their point, dispatched their newly purchased ironclads into the area. In response Daza canceled the Chilean mining contracts and ordered all of the Chilean mining equipment impounded and sold at auction. The Chileans showed up on the day of the auction — not with a check but with their military, and snagged a chunk of Bolivia’s coast along with the port of Antofagasta for good measure. The war was on. Chile asked Peru to abrogate its treaty with Bolivia. But Peru could not break out of its dictatorial death spiral with Bolivia and spurned the Chilean offer.
On April 5, 1879, Chile declared war on Bolivia and Peru.
WHAT HAPPENED: OPERATION “THUNDERPOOP”
The guano regions were some of the driest and harshest areas on earth. Because no one lived there permanently, the region possessed virtually no roads, and those that did exist ran from the mines straight to the coast. Without any north– south routes, whoever controlled the sea-lanes would have the ability to move troops at will and could easily win the war.
Even though Chile had about half the combined population of Peru and Bolivia, its military was stronger. Its regular army had 3,000 men armed with sixteen new artillery pieces, some machine guns, and repeating rifles. It also had an 18,000-man national guard outfitted with U.S. Civil War–era muskets. The navy boasted precisely two ironclads, the
Chile’s President Pinto faced an even bigger problem, however. His top generals also happened to be the leaders of the opposing political party; a resounding victory in the field could catapult any one of them into his office. A defeat, however, would fall on Pinto’s head, also turning him from office. It was a classic no-win situation. Pinto cleverly solved the problem by appointing Rafael Sotomayor as the war “coordinator” to oversee the potentially victorious service chiefs, stealing their glory or handing them the blame.
Reflecting their economies, the armies of Peru and Bolivia stank. Peru’s standing army of 5,000 men was haphazardly equipped with a hodgepodge of guns. As befitting a dictatorship more concerned with infighting than defending its borders, the regiments were stationed close to the main cities, to lend a hand during any coup action.
Peru’s navy sported two English-made ironclads. While solid ships, they paled in comparison to the two Chilean ships. Even more problematic for the Peruvians, their ships had been manned mostly by Chileans. When the war started these sailors got kicked out, leaving the ships thinly staffed by the poorly trained Peruvians.
Bolivia’s state-of-war preparedness stank even worse. Despite having a coastline at this point in their history, it had no navy. Their army was just one step better, with slightly more than 2,000 men, principally skilled in overthrowing yesterday’s dictators as opposed to facing well-armed soldiers in the field. The best troops were probably the “Colorados” regiment of the palace guard (from which President Daza had ascended), numbering 600 seasoned coupmakers armed with modern repeating rifles. The army was also so top heavy it was a miracle it didn’t topple over. Of the 2,000 troops more than 600 were officers, almost all of whom had been promoted for political loyalty. Establishing a pattern of ridiculous missteps, at the war’s outset Bolivia promised its Peruvian allies it would field an army of 12,000 soldiers, a figure even casual observers knew was impossible. Still, in Bolivia’s capital, La Paz, war fever ran as high as the Andes. Four thousand or so volunteers, some from Bolivia’s best families, raised lavishly funded new regiments, wearing white trousers and jackets of various colors signifying their dandily organized regiment. The paucity of weapons didn’t dampen their enthusiasm for what everyone predicted to be a short and victorious war, filled with glory. The feeling seemed to be a cocktail-party war for the La Paz jet set.
To start the land part of the war, a force of Chileans had moved against the tiny Bolivian town of Calama. The town was defended by about 135 citizens with a smattering of soldiers, all armed with a jumble of old and barely functioning guns. On March 22 the Chileans marched across a river into town and scattered the defenders. One holdout remained, a civilian named Eduardo Abaroa. Surrounded, he poured fire from two rifles at the enemy. The Chileans asked for his surrender. He rejected the offer, declaring, “Let your grandmother surrender, dammit,” and the Chileans shot him down. For his defiance, generations of Bolivian children would repeat his stout declaration of honor, and a bronze statue of him stands prominently in La Paz. Bolivia had established its approach for the war; defeat followed by martyrdom.
By mid April, Daza gazed upon his poorly equipped, untrained, and untested army and declared them ready to whip the Chileans. He paraded his force before the gushing citizens of La Paz, turned left out of town, and headed to the coast, 250 miles away.
Chilean leaders quickly realized that any large-scale movement of troops in the region must go by sea. The desert was too harsh, few roads existed, and supplying an army was a daunting challenge entirely dependent on control of the coastline. Sotomayor ordered naval commander Rear Admiral Juan Williams Rebolledo to move against the Peruvian navy. But the admiral proved irresolute and refused to attack, despite knowing the Peruvian fleet was a sitting duck, its two ironclads in dry dock in Callao, hundreds of miles to the north, with their boilers dismantled.
