Every year on March 23 in Bolivia we celebrate Día del Mar, the day of the sea, a bizarre anniversary considering that Bolivia does not have a view of the sea. The Día del Mar commemorates the first battle of the War of the Pacific (not to be confused with that between the United States and Japan during World War II), fought at the end of the 19th century between Chile and the alliance between Bolivia and Peru, following which Bolivia lost its landlocked sea. Even today the Bolivians accuse Chile of having “stolen” it and the subject is at the center of diplomatic tensions between the two countries.
On March 23, Bolivians remember the battle of Calama (or Topáter), which was fought in 1879 against Chilean troops. In the capital La Paz, a large military parade is held in honor of Eduardo Abaroa, one of the leaders of the Bolivian resistance, who died during the battle. Both in La Paz and in the rest of the country there are then parties and celebrations to remember the war, but above all to claim the view of the sea.
Bolivia is a country of about 12 million inhabitants: bordered to the north by Peru and Brazil and to the south by Chile, Argentina and Paraguay, the only other country in South America not to have access to the sea. It rises in a very varied territory, which includes part of the Andean plateau, part of the Amazon forest and part of the Atacama desert. Until about 150 years ago, its territory extended to the Pacific Ocean.
Bianca De Marchi Moyano, a Bolivian-Italian researcher at the Institute of International Studies at the Arturo Prat University of Chile, explains that Bolivian identity “is based on a relationship against Chile”. De Marchi, an expert in border studies (i.e. studies concerning the borders between various countries), recounts that in Bolivia “Chile is the enemy, the war enemy who stole the sea”: at school they are taught “to hate Chileans , who stole the sea,” and learn hymns and songs to reclaim the lost sea. Also due to the expansionism of Chile in the 19th century, there is widespread hostility towards the country also in Peru, and to a lesser extent in Argentina.
In Bolivia there have been bloodier wars than the one in the Pacific, such as that of the Chaco, fought between 1932 and 1935 with Paraguay over a territorial dispute linked to the resources of the Gran Chaco region. However, the war against Chile is the one that has most influenced recent history and nationalism in Bolivia, says De Marchi.
A group of people hold signs that read “sea” during the celebrations of the holiday in 2018 (AP Photo/ Juan Karita)
The War of the Pacific concerned issues related to the exploitation of the territory, in particular due to the abundance, between the coasts and the Atacama desert, of saltpetre (or potassium nitrate), used for the manufacture of gunpowder and also as a preservative and fertilizer.
In a nutshell, in 1866 Bolivia and Chile signed an agreement to regulate mining activities between the 23rd and 25th parallel south and thus share the revenues and taxes. The conflict developed when a few years later the Bolivian authorities imposed a tax of 10 cents for each quintal of goods exported by the Compañía de Salitres y Ferrocarril de Antofagasta (CSFA), a Chilean company which mainly dealt with the trade of saltpeter in the Bolivian port city of Antofagasta.
Chile found the imposition of the tax a violation of other previous agreements. After a series of disputes, the Compañía refused to pay and in response the Bolivian government revoked its license altogether, seized its assets and auctioned them off. On the day of the auction, February 14, 1879, the Chilean army occupied Antofagasta: on the following March 1, Bolivia declared war on Chile and later disclosed the secret pact of military alliance it had made years earlier with Peru , who fought alongside him.
The war continued until October 1883 and ended with the Treaty of Ancón, which sanctioned the victory of Chile and established peace between the countries involved. Peru lost its province of Tarapacá and Bolivia a portion of territory 120 thousand square kilometers wide which included its stretch of coast, approximately 400 kilometers long.
(Wikimedia Commons)
The Treaty of Peace and Friendship signed in 1904 by Bolivia and Chile stipulated that Antofagasta came under Chilean control, but granted Bolivia certain rights to trade at Chilean Pacific ports. The new borders were instead established only in 1929 with the Treaty of Lima, but with various claims by Bolivia, which claimed to have been deprived of access to the sea in an illegitimate manner and to have consequently suffered serious damage to its economy.
In the following decades, Bolivia tried to reclaim the lost lands on various occasions, sometimes starting discussions that seemed promising, but never reaching a conclusion. Relations with Chile deteriorated in the early 1960s, when the Chilean government launched a project to divert the course of the Lauca River, which also flows through Bolivia: in 1962, Bolivian President Victor Paz Estenssoro severed diplomatic ties with Chile, closing embassies in the country.
Bolivian President Evo Morales (center) holds up a sign saying “Sea for Bolivia” alongside Vice President Álvaro Garcia Linera (left) and Senate President José Alberto Gonzáles during a military parade in La Paz, March 23 2015 (AP Photo/ Juan Karita)
The two countries have not had diplomatic ties since then, but the problem is that Bolivia continues to depend on Chile for all of its seaborne exports and imports, notes De Marchi. This creates a whole series of problems for Bolivia, which even in recent decades has continued to claim its right to access the sea.
Former Bolivian president Evo Morales, in office from 2006 to 2019, insisted a lot on the issue of access to the sea, especially during his second term. Morales, a socialist who led the country into a period of spectacular economic growth and poverty reduction, founded DIREMAR (Strategic Directorate of Maritime Claims), an organization in charge of activities to reclaim Bolivia’s access to the sea, and in 2013 brought the case to the International Court of Justice in The Hague. However, five years later the court ruled that Chile had no legal obligation to enter into negotiations with Bolivia.
To date, any attempt at dialogue between the two countries continues to be complicated by this dispute.
Despite not having a seafront, Bolivia still has its own navy, the Bolivian Armada, which is a division of the armed forces. The Bolivian navy had been disbanded at the end of the Pacific War, but was reactivated in 1966 with a small naval command and about 5,000 members, who today mostly control the traffic of boats on the country’s rivers and lakes.
Naval officers sing the Bolivian anthem during the parade on March 23, 2021 in La Paz (AP Photo/ Juan Karita)
– Read also: Bolivia before and after Evo Morales
