Fate of war loot
It was only in 2007 that the Chilean government returned almost 4,000 books to Peru's national library, more than a century after they were taken by Chilean soldiers, in the hope of improving the two nations' relations. [3]
The consequences of the War of the Pacific were profound and numerous in the countries involved.
After the war, Chile had obtained military hegemony at the Pacific Coast of South America. Chile's expansion was seen with concern across the continent, and Chilean diplomats responded by fomenting rivalries between Chile's neighbors and other South American countries and promoting friendly relationships between countries with disputes with Chile's neighbors. Examples are the Chilean attempts to establish friendly relationships between Ecuador and Colombia, both countries with serious territorial disputes with Peru in the Amazon.
Military co-operation with Ecuador grew considerably, and Chile sent instructors to the military academy in Quito and sold superfluous arms and munitions to Ecuador. [1] Despite Chile's overall good relations with Ecuador, both countries had a minor diplomatic crisis resulting from the capture of the Peruvian torpedo boat Alay in Ecuadorian territorial waters during the war. [2]
Argentina, the only country not at war with Chile despite a common border, had tensions with Chile since but, unlike Peru and Bolivia, successfully maintained peace with Chile but almost fought a war over the border in 1978.
It was only in 2007 that the Chilean government returned almost 4,000 books to Peru's national library, more than a century after they were taken by Chilean soldiers, in the hope of improving the two nations' relations. [3]
As the victor and possessor of a new coastal territory following the War of the Pacific, Chile benefited by gaining a lucrative territory with significant mineral income. The national treasury grew by 900% between 1879 and 1902 because of taxes coming from the newly-acquired lands. [4] British involvement and control of the nitrate industry rose significantly, [5] but from 1901 to 1921, Chilean ownership increased from 15% to 51%. [6] The growth of Chilean economy sustained in its saltpetre monopoly [7] and meant that compared to the previous growth cycle (1832–1873), the economy became less diversified and overly dependent on a single natural resource. [8] In addition, Chilean nitrate, used worldwide as fertilizer, was sensitive to economic downturns, as farmers made cuts on fertilizer use one of their earliest economic measures in the face of economic decline. [7] It has been questioned whether or not the nitrate wealth conquered in the War of the Pacific was a resource curse. [9] During the Nitrate Epoch, the government increased public spending but was accused of squandering money. [8]
![Eduardo Abaroa's statue pointing to the sea. The mural reads: "What once was ours, will be ours once again" and "Hold on rotos [Chileans], because here come the Colorados of Bolivia." BoliviaChile.jpg](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f7/BoliviaChile.jpg/220px-BoliviaChile.jpg)
Historical and current anti-Chilean resentiment in Bolivia, Peru, and Argentina was caused by the 19th-century Chilean expansionism. The War of the Pacific contributed decisively in the first two of those countries.
In Bolivia, a common political discourse attributes that country's underdevelopment to its loss of seaports in the War of the Pacific becoming a landlocked country. [10] Bolivia lost its Litoral Department and its outlet to the Pacific Ocean, following that war. Currently Chile's huge copper vein in the Atacama Desert, which makes Chile the largest copper exporter in the world, is held in the lands claimed by Bolivia; the same lands lost during the war.
In Peru, a strong anti-Chilean sentiment exists because it lost "a large chunk of its southern territory to Chile" in the War of the Pacific. [11] Peru lost its provinces of Tarapaca and Arica and then suffered the indignity of having its capital, Lima, occupied by Chile at the end of the war and even essentially ransacked.
For Argentina, since they failed to get involved in the conflict and were also colonizing the less inhabited South, mainly in fear of Brazil's possible support for Chile in the war, Chile's victory in the conflict stemmed tensions that Chile was trying to take land from the Argentines. Although that never happened and both finalized their border, both countries remained belligerent and came close to war in 1982. On the other side, Argentina's unsupportive action for Bolivia and Peru also made their relationships very tense, and there is a sense of distrust towards Argentina among many Peruvians and Bolivians.[ citation needed ]
During and after the war there was a rise of racial and national superiority ideas among the Chilean ruling class. [12] Chilean historian Gonzalo Bulnes (son of president Manuel Bulnes) once wrote, "What defeated Peru was the superiority of a race and of a history". [13] During the occupation of Tacna and Arica (1884–1929) the Peruvian people and nation were treated in racist and denigrating terms by the Chilean press. [14] During the war Peruvians were disrespectfully referred to as "cholos" (a slur for persons of mixed European and non-European ancestry) by Chilean officers. [15]
After the occupation of Lima, Chile diverted part of its war efforts to crush Mapuche resistance in the south. [16] Chilean troops coming from Peru entered Araucanía where they in 1881 defeated the last major Mapuche uprising. [17] [18] Chile's newly-acquired Aymara population was seen after the war as a "foreign element" contrasting with the also newly-conquered Mapuches who were seen as "primordial" Chileans. [15] Following the occupation of Lima, Chilean newspapers published extremely patriotic, chauvinist, and expansionistic material. [17] An extreme example of such journalism is Revista del Sur , which stated that firearms obtained in Peru, while useless in the hands of Peruvian "fags" (Spanish: maricas), would be useful by Chileans to "kill indians" (Mapuches). [17]
After the war, the indigenous peoples in Peru became scapegoats in the narratives of Peruvian criollo elites, exemplified in the writing of Ricardo Palma:
The principal cause of the great defeat is that the majority of Peru is composed of that wretched and degraded race that we once attempted to dignify and ennoble. The Indian lacks patriotic sense; he is born enemy of the white and of the man of the coast. It makes no difference to him whether he is a Chilean or a Turk. To educate the Indian and to inspire him a feeling for patriotism will not be the task of our institutions, but of the ages. [19]
Because the Chinese supported Chile in the conflict, it had stemmed a sense of Sinophobia in Peru, the first of its kind ever existed in Latin America. Armed indigenous peasants sacked and occupied haciendas of landed elite criollo "collaborationists" in the central Sierra, most of whom were of ethnic Chinese descent, and indigenous and mestizo Peruvians murdered Chinese shopkeepers in Lima. In response, the Chinese coolies revolted and even joined the Chilean Army. [20] [21] In one 1881 pogrom in the Cañete Valley it is estimated that 500 to 1,500 Chinese were killed. [22] Even in the 20th century, the memory of Chinese support for Chile was so deep that Manuel A. Odría, a dictator of Peru, banned Chinese immigration as a punishment for their betrayal, and Chinese were barred from immigrating to the country until the 1970s. [23] Today, however, Sinophobia has been less relevant, and the Chinese are widely accepted as Peruvian citizens, but distrust of China and the Chinese still remains.
The War of the Pacific also sparked an indigenous peasant guerrilla movement throughout the central Sierra against Chileans and collaborationist landlords. In 1884, Cáceres turned against his former guerrilla allies to defend the old order. In 1886 and 1888, the Cáceres sent troops to the central Sierra to disarm the peasants. The lack of rule of law in central sierra was such that in one particular case, a landowner was able to recover his occupied estate only in 1902 after a massive mobilization of military, police, and gunmen. [20]
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Miguel Grau became an important figure in Peru because of his alleged gallantry during the conflict, especially his treatment of Prat's family and rescue of Chilean sailors in Iquique, [24] which gained him recognition as the Caballero de los Mares ("Gentleman of the Seas"). [25] [26]
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With the loss of sovereign access to the Pacific Ocean in mind, the 1904 Treaty of Peace and Friendship granted Bolivia the right to tax-free transport of goods and duty-free access to northern Chilean ports. It also obliged the Chilean government to build two rail-lines linking La Paz to Antofagasta and Arica.
Despite the concessions, the loss of the litoral (the coast) remains a deeply-emotional and political issue for Bolivians, [10] as was particularly evident during the 2003 natural gas riots. Undeterred by the seaport concessions granted to Bolivia via the 1904 treaty, Bolivian popular opinion still attributes problems to the landlocked condition, and getting a sovereign piece of the seacoast via Chilean land is often seen as the solution to the problems. Numerous Bolivian presidents pressured Chile for sovereign access to the sea. Diplomatic relations with Chile were severed on March 17, 1978 in spite of considerable commercial ties. The leading Bolivian newspaper El Diario featured at least every week an editorial on the subject, and Bolivians annually celebrate a patriotic "Dia del Mar" (Day of the Sea) to remember the crippling loss. [27]
During the war, Chile dropped its claims on more than 1,000,000 km2 (390,000 sq mi) of Patagonia in the 1881 Chile-Argentina treaty to ensure Argentina's neutrality. After the war, the Puna de Atacama dispute grew until 1899 since both Chile and Argentina claimed former Bolivian territories. On August 28, 1929, Chile returned the province of Tacna to Peru. In 1999, Chile and Peru at last agreed to implement the Treaty of Lima (1929) fully by providing Peru with a port in Arica. [28]
According to Bruce W. Farcau, "in Peru, the wounds run less deep than in neighboring Bolivia". [29] After the War of the Pacific, Peru was left without saltpeter production, the Chilean controlled production decreased to 15%, and production controlled by British investors rose to 55%. [30] According to military historian Robert L. Scheina, the Chilean plunder of Peruvian national literary and art treasures contributed to "demands of revenge among Peruvians for decades." [31] Scholar Brooke Larson pointed out that the War of the Pacific was the "first time since independence wars" that "Peru was invaded, occupied and pillaged by a foreign army" and that "no other Andean republic experienced such a costly and humiliating defeat as Peru did in the hands of Chile". [32]
The war and afterward had profound political and social instability in Peru. The war shook the whole social order of Peru: armed indigenous peasants sacked and occupied haciendas of landed elite criollo "collaborationists" in the central Sierra, Chinese coolies revolted and even joined the Chilean Army, indigenous and mestizo Peruvians murdered Chinese shopkeepers in Lima, Peruvian mobs sacked Chiclayo, and different criollo elite remained deeply divided in opposing camps. [20] [21] The fear of disorder, opposing factions, and armed peasants was for many Peruvians larger than that of the Chilean invaders. [21] In some cases, the delegations of European countries and of the US provided safety during riots and persecutions. [21]
The War of the Pacific, also known as the Nitrate War and by multiple other names, was a war between Chile and a Bolivian–Peruvian alliance from 1879 to 1884. Fought over Chilean claims on coastal Bolivian territory in the Atacama Desert, the war ended with victory for Chile, which gained a significant amount of resource-rich territory from Peru and Bolivia.
The Treaty of Ancón was a peace treaty signed by Chile and Peru on 20 October 1883, in Ancón, near Lima. It was intended to settle the two nations' remaining territorial differences at the conclusion of their involvement in the War of the Pacific and to stabilise post-bellum relations between them.
Chilean-Peruvian relations are the historical and current bilateral relations between the adjoining South American countries of the Republic of Chile and the Republic of Peru. Peru and Chile have shared diplomatic relations since at least the time of the Inca Empire in the 15th century. Under the Viceroyalty of Peru, Chile and Peru had connections using their modern names for the first time. Chile aided in the Peruvian War of Independence by providing troops and naval support.
Arica was a historical province of Peru, which existed between 1823 and 1883. It was populated by pre-Hispanic peoples for a long period of time before Spanish colonization in the early 16th century saw the transformation of a small town into a thriving port. Trade in both gold and silver was facilitated through Arica after the precious metals were first extracted from the Potosí silver mines of Bolivia. Following the War of the Pacific, the province was transferred to Chile and became an official Chilean territory in 1929.
Tarapacá was a Department of Peru, which existed between 1878 and 1884, when it was unconditionally ceded to Chile after the War of the Pacific under the Treaty of Ancón.
The occupation of Lima by the Chilean Army in 1881-1883 was an event in the land campaign phase of the War of the Pacific (1879-1883).
After the naval campaign of the War of the Pacific was resolved, the Chilean terrestrial invasion began.
The Chilean occupation of Peru began on November 2, 1879, with the beginning of the Tarapacá campaign during the War of the Pacific. The Chilean Army successfully defeated the Peruvian Army and occupied the southern Peruvian territories of Tarapacá, Arica and Tacna. By January 1881, the Chilean army had reached Lima, and on January 17 of the same year, the occupation of Lima began.
The invasion of the Iberian Peninsula in 1807-08 by Napoleon Bonaparte's forces proved to be critical for the independence struggle in South America, during which the local elites of Upper Peru remained mostly loyal to Spain, supporting Junta Central, a government which ruled in the name of the overthrown king Ferdinand VII of Spain. A number of radical criollos in 1808-10 began a local power struggle. Pedro Domingo Murillo proclaimed an independent state in Upper Peru in the name of king Ferdinand VII. During the following seven years Upper Peru became the battleground between the armed forces of independent United Provinces of the Río de la Plata and royalist troops from Viceroyalty of Peru.
The Maritime history of Chile started when Chile gained independence, but traces it origin in the colonial era and has ultimately origin in the seafaring tradition of the Iberian Peninsula, Europe and the Mediterranean as well as from indigenous peoples of Chile.
The Treaty of Defensive Alliance was a secret defense pact between Bolivia and Peru. Signed in the Peruvian capital, Lima, on February 6, 1873, the document was composed of eleven central articles that outlined its necessity and stipulations and one additional article that ordered the treaty to be kept secret until both contracting parties decided otherwise. The signatory states were represented by the Peruvian Foreign Minister José de la Riva-Agüero y Looz Corswaren and the Bolivian Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary in Peru, Juan de la Cruz Benavente.
The Peruvian nitrate monopoly was a state-owned enterprise over the mining and sale of saltpeter created by the government of Peru in 1875 and operated by the Peruvian Nitrate Company. Peru intended for the monopoly to capitalize on the world market's high demand for nitrates, thereby increasing the country's fiscal revenues and supplementing the financial role that guano sales had provided for the nation during the Guano Era (1840s-1860s).
The Expulsion of Chileans from Bolivia and Peru in 1879 was an ethnic cleansing ordered by of the governments of Bolivia and Peru. The expulsion took place at the beginning of the War of the Pacific (1879-1883) between Chile and Peruvian-Bolivian alliance. Chilean citizens in both nations were ordered to leave within eight days or face internment and confiscation of their property. They were expelled on poorly-built rafts and pontoons at Peruvian ports, or forced to wander through the desert to reach the northernmost positions occupied by the Chilean Army in Antofagasta. The edict was widely popular in Peru and met with little resistance, allowing it to occur quickly.
Agriculture in Chile has a long history dating back to the Pre-Hispanic period. Indigenous peoples practised varying types of agriculture, from the oases of the Atacama Desert to as far south as the Guaitecas Archipelago. Potato was the staple food in the populous Mapuche lands. Llama and chilihueque herding was practised by various indigenous groups.
[Chile] is rich in pastures and cultivated fields, in which all kind of animals and plants can be breed or grown, there is plenty of very beautiful wood for making houses, and plenty of firewood, and rich gold mines, and all land is full of them...
The Lima campaign is the third land campaign of the War of the Pacific, carried out by Chile between December 1880 and January 1881. The campaign ended with the Chilean occupation of the Peruvian capital and the establishment of the Chilean authority in it and other surrounding territories, which would extend until 1883, with the end of the war.
The Lynch Expedition was a series of raids during the War of the Pacific on the Peruvian coast north of Lima. It was conducted by Patricio Lynch, Captain of the Navy of Chile. Beginning on 4 September 1880 and continuing for two months, Lynch sailed north from Arica, and over the course of his raids, he captured resources and destroyed 4.7 million US dollars worth of Peruvian property.
San Lorenzo de Tarapacá, also known simply as Tarapacá, is a town in the region of the same name in Chile.
The Charaña Accord, also known as the Hug of Charaña or the Act of Charaña, is the name given to an unrealized treaty that was discussed between the dictators of Bolivia and Chile, Hugo Banzer and Augusto Pinochet respectively. These discussions took place mostly on the Bolivian train station of Charaña on February 8, 1975, and included the brief reestablishment of diplomatic relations between the two nations which had been severed on 1962 because of the Atacama border dispute which was to be solved via a Chilean proposal for the exchange of territories between Bolivia and Chile, with the former receiving a corridor to the Pacific Ocean which would provide it with access to the sea and Chile receiving an equivalent amount of territory from Bolivia along its border with Chile.
Martiniano Urriola Guzmán was a Chilean colonel of the War of the Pacific. He participated across many campaigns of the war as well as being one of the primary commanders of the Chilean North Operations Army.
The Chilean–Peruvian territorial dispute is a territorial dispute between Chile and Peru that started in the aftermath of the War of the Pacific and ended significantly in 1929 with the signing of the Treaty of Lima and in 2014 with a ruling by the International Court of Justice. The dispute applies since 2014 to a 37,610 km2 territory in the Chile–Peru border, as a result of the maritime dispute between both states.
There is strong anti-Chilean sentiment in Peru because the country lost a large chunk of its southern territory to Chile in a war in 1879.