Andean Tragedy Studies in War, Society, and the Military general editors Peter Maslowski University of Nebraska–Lincoln David Graff Kansas State University Reina Pennington Norwich University editorial board D’Ann Campbell Director of Government and Foundation Relations, U.S. Coast Guard Foundation Mark A. Clodfelter National War College Brooks D. Simpson Arizona State University Roger J. Spiller George C. Marshall Professor of Military History U.S. Army Command and General Staff College (retired) Timothy H. E. Travers University of Calgary Arthur Waldron Lauder Professor of International Relations University of Pennsylvania Andean Tragedy Fighting the War of the Pacifi c, 1879–1884 William F. Sater University of Nebraska Press Lincoln and London © 2007 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging- in-Publication Data Sater, William F. Andean Tragedy: Fighting the war of the Pacifi c, 1879–1884 / William F. Sater. p. cm.— (Studies in war, society, and the military) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn-13: 978-0-8032-4334-7 (cloth : alk. paper) isbn-10: 0-8032-4334-0 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. War of the Pacifi c, 1879–1884 2. Chile—History, Military—19th century. 3. Bolivia—History, Military—19th century. 4. Peru—History, Military—19th century. I. Title. f3097.s264 2007 983.06Ј1—dc22 2006029929 To John M. Dixon, my son-in-law, and Milo Joseph Dixon, my grandson. To those men and women who sacrifi ced their health, their lives, and their youth protecting their respective patrias. Contents List of Maps viii List of Tables ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction 1 1. The Prewar Maneuvers 27 2. Comparing the Armies 44 3. Comparing the Navies 96 4. Chipana to Iquique 116 5. Angamos and Beyond 137 6. The Land War Begins 170 7. The Tacna and Arica Campaigns 212 8. Investing Lima 258 9. The Dirty War 301 10. Conclusion 347 Notes 361 Bibliography 423 Index 437 Maps 1. Naval Battle of Iquique 125 2. Naval Battle of Angamos 153 3. Landing at Pisagua 173 4. Battle of Dolores/San Francisco 188 5. Battle of Tarapacá 202 6. Battle of Tacna/Campo de la Alianza 230 7. Battle of Arica 248 8. Battle of Chorrillos 282 9. Battle of Mirafl ores 283 10a. The 1882 Sierra Campaign 314 10b. The 1882 Peruvian Counteroffensive 315 11. The 1883 Sierra Campaigns and the Battle of Huamachuco 316 Tables 1. Peru’s prewar army 45 2. Bolivia’s prewar forces 51 3. Chile’s prewar army, 1878 59 4. Small arms 62 5. Artillery 64 6. A comparison of Chilean and Peruvian naval vessels 113 7. Bolivian army, 1 April 1879 178 8. Peruvian forces stationed in Tarapacá Province, 5 November 1879 179 9. Bolivian army in Tarapacá, 5 November 1879 180 10. Chilean expeditionary forces invading Tarapacá, 2 November 1879 184 11. Allied forces defending Pisagua 185 12. Battle of San Francisco/Dolores, 19 November 1879 186 13. Peruvian forces participating in the Battle of Tarapacá, 27 November 1879 200 14. Vergara’s column 201 15. Battles of Los Angeles, 22 March 1880 222 16. Battle of Campo de Alianza/Tacna, 26 May 1880 228 17. Chilean contingents at Campo de Alianza/Tacna 232 18. Battle of Arica, 7 June 1880 249 19. Peruvian defenders 275 20. Battles of Lima, 13, 15 January 1881 280 21. Battle of Huamachuco, 10 July 1883 335 22. Estimated Chilean combat casualties 348 23. Allied casualties 349 Acknowledgments This book, like many scholarly works, is the result of a collab- orative effort. My close friends Professors Christon Archer and Jaime Rodriguez mercilessly harassed, hectored, and hounded me in order to present the reader with a study that purports to be a volume of objective scholarship. I think their collective efforts have successfully restrained my natural exuberance, al- though the churlish might disagree. The list of Chilean colleagues to whom I owe a great deal grows longer with each year. Professor Patricia Arancibia Clavel, her brother, Gen. Roberto Arancibia Clavel, Ret., and his daugh- ter Claudia Arancibia Floody provided me with much assistance, as did Capitán de Navio Carlos Tromben, Ret., and Sr. Gilles Galté. Dr. Ricardo Couyoumdjian and his wife, Mabel, have al- ways made a place for me in their home, as well as at their din- ner table, which I deeply appreciate. I have also benefi ted from works of Professors Gonzalo Vial, Alejandro San Francisco, and Angel Soto. My mispocha—the late Nana Bronfman and her chil- dren and Lucy and her husband, Claudio, son Eduardo, and daughter Irene—have generously welcomed me whenever I vis- ited Santiago. Gonzalo Mendoza and his wife, Veronica, have made me feel at home be it Los Angeles, Madrid, or Santiago, and I have spent some delightful hours with them and their children. Peru’s general counsel to Los Angeles, Ambassador Liliana Cino, and her husband, Ambassador Gustavo Silva, as well as Jorge Ortiz Sotelo facilitated my research in Peru, as did the director and the staff of that country’s national library. The interlibrary loan section of the California State University, Long Beach, also helped me enormously. Introduction hen asked to defi ne “armed confl ict,” George Ives, an 111-year-old veteran of Britain’s struggle with the W South African Boers (1899–1902), relied on the same logic that the thief Willy Sutton employed to explain why he robbed banks: “You went to war to kill someone,” Ives ob- served, “and they tried to kill you back.”1 In this sense the War of the Pacifi c is not unique; it is just one more of the countless blood baths that characterized the nineteenth century. And it is perhaps for that reason that many scholars never heard of the War of the Pacifi c or that the few who may vaguely recall it con- fuse that confl ict with the Pacifi c theater of the Second World War. In fact, the War of the Pacifi c did not occur in the twentieth century. Beginning in 1879 and lasting until 1884, it pitted the Republic of Chile against the combined forces of Bolivia and Peru. This struggle would dramatically alter not merely these nations’ boundaries but their collective memory as well. A tri- umphant Chile would annex the Bolivian province of Atacama, thereby making La Paz the capital of a landlocked nation and Santiago the owner of its guano beds and nitrate (salitre) mines. (Chileans did not know at that time that the Atacama also con- tained some of the world’s richest copper deposits.) Thanks to its victory, Chile also incorporated the Peruvian province of Tara- pacá, thus endowing Santiago with almost complete control of the world’s nitrate deposits. The export of salitre, used to man- ufacture explosives and fertilizer, would fund various Chilean governments until the early 1920s. Conversely, the loss of the sa- litreras stunted Peru’s economic growth. Long after the fi ghting had ended, the Peruvians and Bolivians threatened to unleash a 2 introduction revanchist war on Chile. Santiago, however, tenaciously retained two Pe- ruvian provinces, Tacna and Arica, until an agreement in the late 1920s returned the former to Peru. Bolivia, although allowed to use the port of Arica duty free, still yearns, not for a place in the sun, but for one by the seashore. The International Context The War of the Pacifi c was not only one of the longest struggles of late- nineteenth-century Latin America; it was one of the few large-scale con- fl icts to affl ict the world at that time. After 1871 the normally pugna- cious countries of western Europe ceased to annihilate each other with their customary zeal. These nations did not suddenly beat their swords into ploughshares nor their spears into pruning hooks; on the contrary, they spent enormous sums keeping their weapons well honed. They had simply shifted the venue for slaughter to Asia, Africa, or Europe’s fringes, the land separating Russia and Turkey, central Asia, or the Bal- kans. Thus, the British battled the Pathans of Afghanistan in the late 1870s; what some derisively dismissed as the Fuzzy Wuzzies or Dervishes of the Sudan in 1885 (who despite the patronizing name broke the Brit- ish square); the Zulus of Natal (1879); and the Boers of the South Afri- can veld. Other European nations also participated in imperial struggles: the French fi nally triumphed over the Vietnamese in the early 1880s, although they had to use melinite shells to vanquish the Hova people of Madagascar between 1883 and 1885 and, after 1898, some of the island’s other tribes. We should not be completely surprised that the Germans, anxious to seize land in southwest Africa, waged a genocidal war that killed 90 percent of the region’s pastoral Herero people by 1908. Even the smaller European powers indulged colonial impulses: King Leopold oversaw Belgium’s post-1884 brutal occupation that annihilated millions of Congolese; his Dutch neighbors found it somewhat harder to fi ght the sultan of Achin in Indonesia in 1873. The Italians fared the worst, suffering a humiliating loss to Menelek’s Ethiopian legions at the 1896 Battle of Adowa. Alexander III, unlike his western European neighbors, did not have to travel overseas to continue Russia’s inexorable push into central Asia introduction 3 or to fi ght the Turks in 1877–78. Apparently success in these two arenas encouraged Alexander’s heir, Nicholas II, to battle the Meiji emperor’s newly modernized armed forces in 1904–5. Simple good judgment should have curbed the czar’s imperial appetites, but as Kaiser Wilhelm had earlier concluded, wisdom was not Cousin Nicky’s long suit.