The Pacific War 1879-83

I mentioned this briefly earlier and I’m coming back to it now that I have the Osprey Men-At-Arms book on this topic, though the Stupid Wars book by Strosser & Prince helped out on the basic narrative of the war timeline.  Those guys drip with spite and sarcasm, while Osprey simply says what happened.

So we’ve seen that Bolivia & Paraguay fought to a stalemate in the 1930s in the Chaco War, while Paraguay got its ass kicked by Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay in the War of the Triple Alliance (1864-70).  Rounding out the three major South American wars is this one, from 1879-1883 (though Chile and Peru didn’t actually sign a peace treaty until 1929).

On the dry, desolate Pacific coast of South America, birds tend to poop.  The poop – guano – accumulates.  By the mid-1800s, this guano was in high demand for explosives.   Peru, Chile, and Bolivia – back then, Bolivia still had a Pacific coast – got into an argument about this.

Because the area in question was poorly developed and mostly oriented towards delivering guano to the coast for shipment overseas, naval operations took a primary role at first.  After some confusion when Chile and Peru had ironclads passing each other on the seas, Chile finally defeated Peru’s navy and secured the coastal areas.  This should have ended the war immediately, but neither Bolivia nor Peru conceded defeat.

So the Chileans took on Peru, and managed to defeat that country as well – or at least strategic victories locking up the coast and defeating Peru’s forces – and occupying Lima, the Peruvian capital.  Ever the loyal ally, the Bolivians barely showed up to fight before running away from the coast.

Where things get a bit stupid, is that even now Peru didn’t see fit to surrender.  They took off to the hills to continue a guerilla war.  Eventually the Chileans had to chase them into the Andes and kick their asses there.  Only when NO hope was left did the Peruvians give up – in 1883.

Bolivia lost its Pacific coast and wound up landlocked.   Peru?  Well, Chile and Peru haggled over peace terms until 1929, Peru getting a little bit back at the bargaining table.

And guano? By the time WWI came by, German chemists had finally synthesized the basic chemicals which came from guano, freeing the worlds’ military from dependence on bird poop to fire weapons. 

Uniforms.

Chile.  Its armies looked remarkably like French armies:  dark blue doubled breasted coats, red pants, and blue kepis.  Later they switched to an all-grey version of the same uniform which presumably blended into the surroundings a little better than dark blue and bright red …decades before the French made their switch to horizon blue. 

Bolivia.  All over the place on uniforms.  Different colors, basically taking the stock “coat & kepi” and playing around with multiple colors.  Given the very limited role Bolivian forces played in the war, these soldiers were the least often seen on the battlefield and the least relevant.  

Peru.  Similar to Chile – blue uniforms with either blue or red kepis, switching over to a more neutral grey later.  Both the Chileans and the Peruvians also used some imported German pickelhaubes (spiked helmets) for some units.  Moreover, much of Peru's forces wound up being irregulars anyway, thus not much in the way of "uniforms".

The Chaco War

I’m not entirely convinced that the Iraq War was solely about oil, though given how much oil Iraq produces, to claim oil was not a factor at all would certainly be naïve.  Here, however, it seems that oil was the primary motivation: the Chaco War between Bolivia and Paraguay between July 29, 1932 and July 31, 1935.  As is the case with most of these minor war issues, my sourcebook is from Osprey Men-At-Arms, their publication The Chaco War 1932-1935 (South America’s Greatest Modern Conflict), by A. de Quesada with P. Jowett, and illustrated by R. Bujeiro.

 My first exposure to this was a Tintin story (yes, the character now brought to life by Spielberg & Jackson just before Christmas) called “The Broken Ear”.  Tintin winds up in a fictional South American country and his two enemies are drafted into what looks like the Bolivian Army in this dispute.  Tintin, acting as an aide-de-camp to General Alcazar, initially turned down the oil company’s request to start a war; only to have his orders overruled by Alcazar himself shortly thereafter.

 It seemed a large, undeveloped semi-jungle wasteland between Bolivia and Paraguay called The Chaco, which had previously been ignored by both countries – even to the point of conclusively establishing their mutual borders – was now front center focus when someone decided there might be oil in them there hills.  Competing oil companies (Standard Oil for Bolivia, Shell Oil for Paraguay) lined up behind the two countries and a war broke out.

 Bolivia nominally had the advantage with not only a much larger population from which to draft its army, which topped out at 6 divisions, but also German military advisors.  These included Ernst Roehm, the infamous leader of the Nazi Sturm Abteilung (SA, better known as the Brownshirts), though by this time he was back in Germany and taken out in the June 1934 “Night of the Long Knives”.  Bolivia’s soldiers had better weapons and equipment and something vaguely similar to a German uniform (in any case a standard uniform for an army in the 1930s) but Roehm’s successor, General Kundt, did a poor job of advising the Bolivians and whatever advantages they may have had were mostly squandered.

 Paraguay, however, was not down for the count.  Its soldiers, though dressed in Daisy Mae floppy hats (neither side wore steel helmets), sandals, and rustic cow-horn canteens, adapted better to the poor environment.  The Paraguayans also aggressively drafted their population to fight, bumping up the army to 4 divisions.  But most of all, the Paraguayans had a brilliant commander, Jose Felix Estigarribia, very much a Robert E. Lee-class general.  This man knew how to best use the forces at his disposal and faced no one in the Bolivian Army with anywhere near the same talent or imagination. 

 Both sides used Mauser bolt-action rifles in 7.62mm – the ammunition issue was greatly simplified due to both sides using the same caliber.  The Madsen light machine gun was a popular weapon on both sides.  The Paraguayans captured so much ordnance from the Bolivians that they were set up for the next 40 years; they were able to sell much of the surplus to the Spanish Republicans during their Civil War. 

 The “armor” war was quite limited, as the terrain wasn’t suitable for tanks; the Bolivians were the only ones with any appreciable armor, the main one being the Vickers Mark E Type A, twin turret six ton tank.  The few tanks they had were used in infantry support roles – some were even captured by the Paraguayans.  Apparently Guderian was not among the German advisors in Bolivia. The Paraguayan Air Force had a small fleet of French Potez 25 light biplane bombers; the Bolivians had 88 planes of various different types.  Much of the air war was reconnaissance and ground support, with very little dogfighting.  The “naval war” simply consisted of Paraguayan support operations on the Rio Paraguay and Rio Picomayo.

 War of the Triple Alliance (1864-70).  I might as well cover this war.  This was Paraguay vs. the TA of Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay.  Paraguay, led by its dictator Solano Lopez, attacked Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina.  Although initially successful, the Paraguayans were eventually kicked out and invaded; Asuncion was taken.  Lopez tried to conduct a guerilla war but wound up being killed.

War of the Pacific (1879-83).  Instead of oil, this was fought over… bird poo, better known as guano.  Guano is an excellent source of nitrates which are used to make gunpowder.  Chile fought against Bolivia and Peru – eventually defeating both countries and landlocking Bolivia.

All three of these wars are described in much more detail - with a heavy dose of sarcasm and contempt - in Stupid Wars: A Citizen's Guide to Botched Putsches, Failed Coups, Inane Invasions, and Ridiculous Revolutions, by Ed Strosser and Michael Prince.