Tensions spill over between South American nations
5 APRIL 1879
On 5 April 1879, the Chilean Congress approved a motion enabling the country’s president, Aníbal Pinto, to declare war on Peru and Bolivia. Within a matter of hours, the Chilean navy had imposed a blockade on the Peruvian port of Iquique, igniting a conflict that would last for more than four years and see the South American nations clash in fierce battles on both land and sea.
While the escalation may have seemed sudden to some, tensions between the nations had been simmering away for more than a decade. At the heart of the matter was a long-running dispute between Bolivia and Chile, who both laid claim to the Atacama Desert and its abundance of natural – and extraordinarily profitable – fertilisers.
Initially, in 1866, the two countries had agreed to set their mutual frontier at the 24th parallel, dividing the desert between them but agreeing to share the tax revenues generated by the export of nitrates from either side. But Bolivia soon grew frustrated with the deal, and forged a secret alliance with Chile’s rival, Peru. Meanwhile, a new agreement brokered in 1874 granted Bolivia a monopoly over the stretch of desert between the 23rd and 24th parallels, on the proviso that any Chilean companies based there would be exempt from tax increases for the next 25 years.
In 1878, however, Bolivia attempted to circumvent the deal by hiking tariffs on the Chilean-owned Antofagasta Nitrate and Railway Company, threatening to seize it if its owners refused to comply. With no hope of negotiations, the Chilean army responded in February 1879 by occupying the port city of Antofagasta itself. Then – when details of Bolivia and Peru’s secret deal became known to Chilean legislators – war was declared.
True to the conflict’s best-known name (it has also been called the Nitrate War, among
