[1879–1883] War of the Pacific

It began, as so many conflicts do, over something buried in the earth. The year is 1879, and the place is the Atacama Desert, a shimmering, lifeless expanse stretching along the Pacific coast. To most, it was a wasteland. But in the mid-19th century, this barren land held a treasure more valuable than gold: guano and nitrates. Guano, the accumulated droppings of seabirds, and sodium nitrate, were the world’s most potent fertilizers and key components in explosives. Europe and North America were hungry for them, and this desolate coast was the world’s only significant source. This wealth, however, was spread across a poorly defined border between three nations: Peru, the established power to the north; Bolivia, its landlocked but coast-owning ally; and Chile, the ambitious, modernizing nation to the south. For decades, a fragile peace held. Chilean companies, backed by British capital, did most of the hard work, mining the nitrates in Bolivian and Peruvian territory. They built railways that snaked into the desert and port towns that clung to the arid cliffs. The spark that lit the flame was a tax. In 1878, Bolivia, in desperate need of revenue, imposed a new 10-cent tax per 100 kilograms of nitrate exported by a Chilean company. The company, citing an earlier treaty, refused to pay. In response, Bolivia seized the company’s assets. It was a fateful decision. Chile saw this not just as a broken contract, but as a direct threat to its economic interests and national pride. On February 14, 1879, Chilean troops landed and occupied the Bolivian port of Antofagasta, without a single shot fired. Peru was now caught in a terrible bind. It had a secret defensive alliance with Bolivia, signed in 1873. To honor it meant war with a well-prepared Chile. To ignore it meant abandoning its ally and appearing weak. After a failed attempt at mediation, Chile, discovering the secret treaty, declared war on both Peru and Bolivia on April 5, 1879. The War of the Pacific had begun. From the outset, the conflict was a story of mismatched technology and starkly different military cultures. Chile possessed a modern, professional navy, its pride being two state-of-the-art ironclad warships, the *Cochrane* and the *Blanco Encalada*, built in British shipyards. They were floating fortresses of iron and steam. Peru’s navy was smaller and aging. Its best ship was the *Huáscar*, a British-built ironclad monitor, smaller and older than its Chilean counterparts but commanded by a man who would become a legend: Miguel Grau. The first phase of the war would be decided on the water. Whoever controlled the sea lanes could move troops and supplies at will, blockading the enemy into submission. For six months, Miguel Grau and the *Huáscar* waged one of the most brilliant naval campaigns in history. He became a phantom, darting along the coast, disrupting Chilean supply lines, sinking transports, and outmaneuvering the entire Chilean fleet. He earned the name *El Caballero de los Mares*—the Gentleman of the Seas—for his chivalry, famously rescuing the surviving crew of the Chilean ship *Esmeralda* after sinking it at the Battle of Iquique, and even sending a condolence letter to the widow of its slain captain, Arturo Prat. But heroism could not defy industrial might forever. On October 8, 1879, at the Battle of Angamos, the *Huáscar* was finally cornered by the two powerful Chilean ironclads. In the deafening roar of cannon fire, a shell struck the *Huáscar*'s command tower, killing Admiral Grau instantly. His ship was captured, and with his death, Peru’s hope of winning the war at sea died with him. The Pacific now belonged to Chile. With the sea secured, the war moved to the land, a brutal slog across the punishing desert terrain. The Chilean army was a disciplined, well-equipped force armed with modern Krupp and Comblain rifles. The allied Peruvian and Bolivian armies were a different story. While they had brave officers, the rank-and-file were often poorly trained conscripts, many of them indigenous Aymara and Quechua men, pulled from their highland villages and sent to fight a war in a coastal desert they had never seen. They fought with incredible bravery, sometimes armed with little more than older rifles or even farm implements, wearing the thick wool ponchos of their Andean homes in the searing desert sun. The Chilean advance was relentless. They took the nitrate-rich province of Tarapacá, then moved on to the Peruvian cities of Tacna and Arica. It was at Arica, in June 1880, that one of the war's most iconic moments occurred. The Peruvian garrison, outnumbered seven to one, was commanded by the 64-year-old Colonel Francisco Bolognesi. When the Chilean emissary demanded his surrender to avoid a slaughter, Bolognesi gave an answer that would be immortalized in Peruvian history: "I have sacred duties to fulfill, and I will fulfill them until the last cartridge is burned." He and nearly all his men fought to the death. By 1881, the unthinkable happened. Chilean forces marched on Lima, the proud "City of Kings." The capital, with its ornate wooden balconies and grand colonial plazas, was defended by a hastily assembled army of professionals, reservists, and even civilian volunteers from every social class. In two bloody battles on the outskirts of the city, at San Juan and Miraflores, the defenders were overwhelmed. The Chilean army occupied Lima, a humiliation that seared itself into the Peruvian soul. They looted public buildings, shipping priceless volumes from the National Library and scientific equipment back to Chile. But Peru did not surrender. While the government in Lima was shattered, a new resistance emerged from the country’s rugged heartland, the Andes mountains. Led by General Andrés Avelino Cáceres, a veteran of the southern campaigns, this guerrilla war, known as the Breña Campaign, raged for two more years. Cáceres, known as the "Wizard of the Andes," armed his peasant soldiers, the *montoneros*, and used his intimate knowledge of the terrain to launch lightning raids against the Chilean occupation forces. It was a war of endurance and spirit, a people's resistance against a foreign army. Ultimately, however, the resistance could not change the outcome. Exhausted by years of war and internal division, Peru finally signed the Treaty of Ancón in October 1883. The terms were harsh. Peru ceded the province of Tarapacá to Chile in perpetuity. The provinces of Tacna and Arica were to be held by Chile for ten years, after which a plebiscite would determine their final nationality (a vote that never happened as intended; Tacna was returned to Peru in 1929, but Arica remained with Chile). For Bolivia, the result was even more catastrophic. It lost its entire coastal territory, becoming the landlocked nation it remains to this day. The War of the Pacific was over, but its shadow remains long. For Chile, it was a victory that secured its economic future and cemented its status as a regional power. For Bolivia, it is a national trauma, a source of a deep-seated grievance and a yearning for sovereign access to the sea that continues to define its foreign policy. And for Peru, it was a disaster that led to decades of economic ruin and a painful period of national reconstruction, leaving behind scars and a pantheon of tragic heroes—Grau, Bolognesi, Cáceres—whose stories are still told to remind the nation of its darkest, most valiant hour.