AUTONOMOUS JUAN MISAEL SARACHO

UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY LANGUAGE INSTITUTE

U.L.I.

“THE PACIFIC WAR”

FINAL PROJECT

Name: Ariel Arnaldo Wayer Rojas

Teacher Guide: Maribel Ancasi

TARIJA – BOLIVIA
2022

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DEDICATORY

It is a dedicatory for my parents for support me day by day and to my

nephew who finished his english classes and he helped me in a lot of
things

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To all my family and my nephew who always supported me and were

with me in this difficult progress to be a good English speaker and to
my teachers who learned me this language
INDEX

1
INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................
...

2
OBJECTIVES..............................................................................................
....

2.1 General
Objective........................................................................................

2.2 Specific
Objectives......................................................................................

3
RATIONALE................................................................................................
...

4 THEORETICAL
FRAMEWORK.....................................................................

4.1
Antecedents ...............................................................................................

4.2 What was the pacific

war? .........................................................................

4.3.Litoral ...................................................................................................
.

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4.3.1. The
Territory ..........................................................................................

4.3.2.Guano,Saltpeter and
Silver................................................................

4.3.3.The invasion of
Antofagasta .............................................................

4.4.Avaroa,Cabrera and the heroic defense of Calama

............................

4.5. Perú enters the

war .................................................................................

4.5.1
Chilean”bases” ......................................................................................

4.6.The War at Sea

.........................................................................................

4.7. Shrimp
Withdrawal ..................................................................................

4.8 The fall of Hilarion

Daza............................................................................

4.9 The Wandering

Divide................................................................................

4.10 Battle of White

Courts ..........................................................................

4.11 The End of the War. The Battle of the Alto de la

Alianza(Tacna)............

4.12 Consequences of the Pacific

War…………………………………………..

4.13 The 1904

treaty……………………………………………………………..

5
CONCLUSIONS .........................................................................................

6
RECOMMENDATIONS.............................................................................

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WEBGRAPHY............................................................................................

1 INTRODUCTION
I was always a huge fan of Bolivian history, it could be because my
history teacher always talk to me and to my classmates about how
Bolivia was made or how Bolivia lost a lot of territory for example how
we lost Chaco Boreal versus Paraguay or how we lost The Acre
versus Brazil and the more interesting for me , how we lost the Litoral
specifically the pacific ocean .

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I am going to tell you about a lot of things so you can understand why
or how we lost Litoral and how we are left without access to the
sea,with that we can analyze if we were to blame.

2 OBJECTIVES

2.1 General Objective

∙ To Show about how important The Pacific war was for Bolivia and to
know how it happened

2.2 Specific Objectives

∙ To talk about the antecedents of this war
∙ To understand what the bolivian president did
∙ To know who were the most important people in this war
∙To make aware to people about Litoral
∙ To learn what important was Litoral

3 RATIONALE

The most of the people in Bolivia don’t know a lot about what the Pacific War
was and for that reason I want to teach them about this important success in
Bolivia because it was very bad for our country economically and socially
because that territories had a lot of resources which were a lot of important to
Bolivia and we actually don’t have .

We can too recognize the importance of men like Eduardo Abaroa who gave
us his life to try to fight for Bolivia and it could be that he didn’t do it only for
his patriotism ,but he did it and we have to admire that.

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4 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

4.1 Antecedents
In the 19th century Bolivia wasn’t in a good moment because before that
there were a lot of hits from the States.

In parallel in Litoral there were more Chilean people than Bolivian people
and Chilean people didn’t pay taxes because in Melgarejo's State ,he
signed a treaty in favor of Chile so they didn’t pay taxes.

But when Hilarion Daza arrived to be President he with the National

Assembly decreed the tax of 10 cents in the Litoral for Chilean companies
that were there that was a very important point for Chile to declare war on
Bolivia.
The characters were:

▪ Hilarion Daza
▪ Aniceto Arce
▪ Narciso Campero
▪ Eduardo Abaroa
▪ Ladislao Cabrera
▪ Severino Zapata
▪ Juan Patiño
When Bolivia was born to independence, Litoral was one of the six
parts of Potosi.

4.2. What was the pacific war?

The Pacific War was a battle where

the protagonists were Chile versus

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Bolivia and Peru. It started with the Antofagasta invasion in 1879 where the
Chilean army entered Bolivia and attacked Antofagasta.
It ended in 1904 when Bolivia and Chile signed a treaty in which Bolivia ceded
the Litoral to Chile.

4.3 Litoral

On January 1, 1867, the government of Mariano Melgarejo created the coastal

department.
Politically the Litoral was divided into 2 provinces; The sea, capital Cobija,
which was also the capital of the entire district and Atacama, whose capital
was San Pedro of Atacama. At the time of the war the population was around
15,000 souls. The most dramatic fact is that the great most of that population
was of Chilean origin.

4.3.1 The Territory

The area of the Litoral department was approximately 120,000 km2. Two
rivers marked its limits, to the north the Loa (with Peru) and to the south the
Salty (with Chile).
Atacama is the driest land in the world). Water scarcity is one of its most
serious problems, the rivers have little water and absolutely insufficient to
supply the land. There is not green in the landscape and the coast is rocky
and frequently cut by cliffs. The Pacific has cold waters and is very bravas. It is
a region prone to earthquakes and tidal waves that
They have been a constant throughout history.

4.3.2 Guano,Saltpeter and Silver

The reason why a region as inhospitable as Atacama is became a
source of conflict was the evidence of his wealth which was reflected
above all in two products, guano and saltpeter.

In Bolivia, the largest guano nucleus was the Morro of the Mejillones
peninsula.

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4.3.3 The Invasion of Antofagasta

On February 14th, 1879, the invasion took place. The inhabitants of
Antofagasta saw on the horizon the smoke from the armored
Cochrane and the corvette O'Higgins that were added to the armored
car Blanco Encalada, which arrived in the port for several days before.
Two days later, on February 16th, theChileans took the mining center
of Caracoles.
On the 26th, the government made a proclamation to the nation
informing of the aggression and establishing preparations for defense

4.4 Avaroa,Cabrera and the heroic defense of Calama

On March 21st , the Chilean offensive continued, supported by the
strength of its maritime squadron and the taking of Cobija and
Tocopilla took place.
In Calama inside defense of the
Atacameño territory was organized
under the command of Ladislao
Cabrera supported by the prefect of
Antofagasta Severino Zapata and a
contingent of 135 men. The Chilean
attackers who came from Tocopilla
were 544.
After repel a couple of volleys from
the group that included Eduardo Abaroa, Juan Patiño and Saturnino
Burgos tried a counterattack, but the superiority
The Chilean numerical swept through the defenders, but Eduardo
Abaroa wounded in the throat refused to withdraw and faced a
contingent of more than 100 Chilean soldiers.
The Chilean officers ordered him to surrender and the man, turned
into an emblem of the nation responded with the phrase that led to
immortality: “Give up your damn grandmother! two shots mowed him
down life”.

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4.5 Perú enters the war

Bolivia sent Serapio Reyes Ortiz to Lima with the objective of putting
the treaty into operation secret of 1873.
He was president of Peru Mariano Ignacio Prado. The Chilean
authorities, aware of that pact before, realized that the entrance of
Peru was imminent and just as they attacked militarily to Bolivia, the
president of Chile Aníbal Pinto requested authorization from his
congress to declare war and officially declared it on April 6th, 1879.
Peru charged the war costs to Bolivia with the argument that he was
joining our country to defend the Bolivian territories taken by Chile and
not his own inheritance. After one arduous negotiation he agreed to
receive as payment 50% of Bolivian customs revenues up to a
maximum of 400,000 pesos

4.6 The Wandering Divide

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Daza ordered General Campero, whose prestige in the army was

indisputable, to organization of a division, La Quinta, to support desert
operations.
Campero took time to form it, but finally on October 11 he had it ready
in Cotagaita (Potosí) and made her leave.
The journey of the Fifth Division is one of the most absurd in our
military history.
Between October 1879 and January 1880 he traveled more than
1,000 kilometers in the precarious conditions, rolling aimlessly through
lands in the department of Potosí, that of the Litoral and that of Oruro.
Only one episode can be rescued from such hapless driving, the
attack of
Tambillos led by the head of the small sniper detachment in command
of Colonel Rufino Carrasco and his collaborators Mariano Colodro and
Mariano Palacios. December 3 took Chiu Chiu. From there they
started towards Calama first and towards Atacama later, before the
numerical superiority of the enemy. in the gorge Tambillos, between
Calama and San Pedro, defeated two Chilean regiments leaving more
than a hundred casualties between dead, wounded and prisoners.
inexplicably Campero did not attack Calama with his division.

4.7 Battle of White Courts

On november 12, 1879 produced the glorious battle of white courts
heroic day where the potosino battalions and tarijeños of the fifth
division submitted and crushed the army chilean within the colchak
municipality of the nor lipez province of the department of Potosi"
"hundreds of indigenous potosinos next to the battalion poyo
potosinos and tarijeños defeated the chilean army that had the
intention to take potosi, chuquisaca and tarija, the governments of
campero and arce they made every effort to make everything
disappear related to the battle.

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4.8 The End of the War. The Battle of the Alto de la Alianza(Tacna)
In April 1880, Campero left for Tacna at the head of a new division of
1,500 soldiers to meet the Peruvian-Bolivian forces The battle began
on 26th May 1880. The Chilean objective was Tacna and for this he
had prepared an army of 19,000 men under the command of General
Manuel Baquedano. Allied forces added only 12,000 troops, 6,500
Peruvians and 5,500 Bolivians.
More than 5,000 dead and wounded with a high proportion of chiefs
and officers
They were scattered on the field. The Murillo and sapper detachments
of
Bolivia and Tacna of Peru, were the last resistance.
Tacna fell into the hands of the Chileans at the end of the afternoon.
.

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4.9 The 1904 treaty

The Bolivian negotiators started from two quite realistic premises, the
The first was that the logical Peruvian obstruction made it impossible
to transfer a port (read Tacna or Arica). The second, that in fact the
coastline was administered and exploited by Chile whose decision to
perpetuate itself in it was irreversible. Consequently, the page had to
be closed as was done with the Acre and look to the future.
On October 20, 1904, the chancellor of Chile Emilio Bello Codecido
and the Plenipotentiary of Bolivia Alberto Gutiérrez, signed the peace
treaty and friendship that can be summarized as follows: Bolivia
recognizes the absolute domain and perpetual rule of Chile over the
occupied territories. Chile is committed to build a railway between
Arica and La Paz at its own cost.

5 CONCLUSIONS

The Pacific War was a very important success that defined Bolivian
history and for that, we don’t have a sovereign outlet to the sea.
We also have to understand that although Chile unfairly took the sea from
us, Bolivia was, one could say, the one that caused this, with the fact of
having signed a treaty in which the Chileans did not pay taxes and when
trying to solve it, no came out as expected.
Bolivia also did not act well with its ally Peru because it abandoned it and
because of us Peru also lost territory, so Bolivia was not a holy victim of
the war, neither Chile nor Peru, there were no good ones, it was just a
fight for territories. It's like that in all wars.

6 RECOMMENDATIONS
To understand this issue we must not from a patriotic point of view,
but from the point of view of objectivity because patriotism is not
objective and often blinds people, it is also important to understand
what was the point that led us to this conflict.
It is also advisable to understand the Pacific War from the 3 points of
view, the Bolivian, the Chilean and the Peruvian and thus be able to

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reach a conclusion as objective as possible.

7 WEBGRAPHY

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