Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Andean Tragedy: Fighting the War of the Pacific, 1879 – 1884

2008; Duke University Press; Volume: 88; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00182168-2008-374

1527-1900

Thomas Whigham,

Historical Studies in Latin America

It is doubtlessly a truism to argue that all wars are tragic. Wars invariably show society at its worst, with all kinds of national and religious hatreds manifested in the basest slaughter. That said, some wars are worse than others, for, in addition to the immediate brutality of killing, they also inaugurate long histories of rancor and unresolved conflict. As every schoolchild in Lima, La Paz, and Santiago knows, the 1879 – 84 War of the Pacific was one of those wars. It unleashed a seemingly unending series of claims and counterclaims, mutual suspicion, and truculence that no amount of political convergence or economic interest seems able to heal, even at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Not surprisingly, given all this bad feeling, the War of the Pacific has produced an extensive volume of polemical analyses and military hagiographies but few accounts that can be described as reasonable and thorough. Thus, this aptly titled study of the conflict is a welcome addition to the literature, and Professor Sater deserves considerable praise for having tackled this difficult subject in such a concise manner.Sater has been working on this period of Andean history for many years and has already written two books on different aspects of the conflict. One of these, Chile and the War of the Pacific (University of Nebraska Press, 1986), covered the intricate politics that governed its conduct. In this new work, he sticks more consistently to the military background and how the war affected the common soldier. There is much to discuss. For one thing, it is obvious from his thorough analysis of infrastructures that neither of the opposing parties — Chile on one side and Peru and Bolivia on the other — were ready for war at the outset. Modern armaments were initially scarce, training inadequate, manpower questionable, objectives ill defined, and command hampered by a shocking ineptitude in the senior ranks. Courage of a superlative character was always present, however, and once Bolivian mistreatment of Chilean miners in the Antofagasta territory had provided the casus belli, there seemed little doubt that the unfolding campaign would bring a vast effusion of blood.Sater is scrupulously fair in recognizing the bravery of Peruvians, Chileans, and Bolivians alike. He also argues strongly that the war need never have been fought, that the various antagonisms in the mining zone could have been smoothed over through diplomatic means. That this did not occur Sater ascribes to accident, with “one unrelated act knocking over the first domino that in turn unended others” (p. 42). He also rejects as simplistic the oft-heard explanation that attributes the war to a calculated Chilean desire for Bolivian and Peruvian nitrates. There was far more to it than that.As Sater explains it, the War of the Pacific had several distinct phases. In the first, the Chileans swiftly conquered Antofagasta and within days took the rest of the Atacama Desert. This was immediately followed by a naval campaign that lasted from April to October 1879 and which saw the Chileans defeat the Peruvian fleet on the high seas and establish supremacy over the Andean coastline. The Chileans then moved by land into Peru’s Tarapacá province, where they suffered some short-term setbacks before conquering that area as well. By May 1880, they had also succeeded in driving their opponents out of Tacna and Arica provinces, after which the Bolivians abandoned the fight and went home. Despite this setback, the Peruvians refused to yield, and in response the Chileans mounted an ambitious offensive, ferrying a huge army by sea 500 miles northward for an ambitious assault into the enemy’s heartland. Lima fell in January 1881, and there followed two further years of desultory guerrilla warfare characterized by the worst atrocities committed against both irregular troops and the civilian population. The Peruvians finally signed a peace treaty in October 1883 when both sides were close to collapse. Bolivia followed suit shortly thereafter.This seems like a straightforward, easy-to-understand horror story. Sater shows, however, that there was nothing simple about it. Battle plans gone awry, untrustworthy politicians, men dying of thirst in the desert — it is all here. The cast of characters is exceptionally interesting: the petulant and inept Chilean admiral Juan Williams Rob-ledo; his heroic countryman and naval captain Arturo Prat, for whom 162 towns and hamlets were eventually named; the egomaniacal Bolivian chief-of-state Hilarión Daza, who devoted all his free time to playing handball; and the flawed if patriotic Peruvian president Mariano Prado, who saw his country defeated and his reputation torn to shreds. With such personalities at the center of the tale, the narrative cannot help but be riveting, and Sater keeps up the pace nicely.Military buffs will be interested in the details provided on late nineteenth-century innovations in armament and particularly naval technology. Rarely will they see such extensive attention paid to the wartime use of ironclad vessels (outside of studies of the U.S. Civil War). These same buffs might chide Sater for failing to provide complete order of battle information on the many engagements he describes. But such data are not so easy to obtain, even in the archives and the official histories of the conflict. Besides, that is not the sort of history that Sater is writing. His approach eschews a narrow recounting of statistics in favor of exploring the human elements, for therein lies the best measurement of the suffering that the men experienced.The book would have benefited from a section of illustrations, for the reader would like to put faces on key figures and nuances on key scenes. Similarly, although the maps of individual battles are well drawn and instructive, it is surprising that no one thought to include a general map showing the entire territory in dispute and its relation to the rest of Peru, Bolivia, and Chile. Finally, the index provided is thinner and less developed than it should have been. These, of course, are minor considerations, and they do not seriously detract from Sater’s achievement. His is a well-researched and serious study that both scholars and casual readers will learn much from.