During the 1930s, power dynamics and political changes occurred on the European continent.
At the same time, across the ocean, the war in the Gran Chaco was an extremely exhausting,
costly and disastrous war for both participants, Bolivia and Paraguay.
The war itself was marked by mismanagement on the Bolivian side, and the aftermath marked
a turning point in the history of both countries, as a period of economic and political chaos
ensued.
Today we’ll look at the bloodiest military conflict fought in Latin America during the
20th century… over a desert.
-intro-
Background
The Gran Chaco is a desert with bushes and white plains of sand, spanning around two-hundred-and-fifty
square miles (about six-hundred-and-forty square kilometres) between the rivers Pilcomayo
and Paraguay, which culminate near the capital of Paraguay, Asuncion.
Its drought render it sparsely populated, with an early Spanish explorer recalling how
he found the remnants of Paradise, after it was burned by God.
Back when the Spanish Empire ruled over its part of Latin America the sparse population
of missionaries and natives of the Gran Chaco fell under the jurisdiction of the Audiencia
of Charcas, present-day Bolivia.
During the early nineteenth century the Latin American Wars of Independence were fought
and the new republics of Paraguay, Bolivia and Argentina were formed.
All of these republics could provide documents that supported their claim to the Gran Chaco,
because the former Spanish borders were confusing, they overlapped and the area itself was badly
mapped and relatively unknown.
Argentina took part of the Gran Chaco they considered theirs, after the crushing defeat
of Paraguay in the War of the Triple Alliance, the most bloody inter-state war in Latin America’s
history.
Yet even after this war the conflict between Paraguay and Bolivia over the Gran Chaco territory
continued.
It wasn’t just because of territory, it was because of what could potentially be in
the ground as well.
In the Andes mountains close-by oil was found, and some voices were speculating that the
Gran Chaco could be rich in oil as well.
Both sides employed fanatic scholars, who referred to themselves as Chacologists.
These chacologists published books which confirmed the claim to the territory of either side,
as the archives were messy, incomplete and partisan, thus not one explanation could be
considered the right one.
It came down to this: Bolivia wasn’t rich, Paraguay even less so and the Gran Chaco was
too far away.
It was verbally that the dispute was present, but it had to wait until the physical occupation
of the Gran Chaco for it to escalate.
This occupation was easiest for Paraguay.
Around eighteen-eighty-eight the Argentinian businessman Carlos Casado received a concession
of six million square miles, and other Argentinians, several Paraguayans and British companies
were looking for ground as well.
Around nineteen-twenty-five around fifty million dollars was invested in the Gran Chaco and
a Paraguayan could argue that such an important part of the republic’s economy depended
on this area that losing the Gran Chaco could be compared to an amputation that the country
would most likely not survive.
The process of Bolivia penetrating the Gran Chaco was quite a different one.
You see, Bolivia had lost its small coastal strip next to the Atlantic Ocean after it
lost the war of the pacific against Chile in eighteen-eighty-four.
Afterwards, a near geographical claustrophobia emerged within the country, that was abused
by politicians for their own gain.
It wasn’t rare for politicians to point to the Gran Chaco and state that it could
be a new opening to the Rio de la Plata.
Bolivia certainly had the instruments to back up a potential claim, at least so it seemed;
they had an air force, were richer and more densely populated, allocated two million pounds
for new Vickers-weaponry and their Chief of Staff of the Army and Minister of War was
Hans Kundt, who used to be a general in the German army and now sold his experience, training
soldiers of the Bolivian armed forces.
Bolivia decided to construct so-called fortines, small military posts at the Gran Chaco, to
which Paraguay retaliated with building their own fortines.
And that is when the incidents started happening.
The incidents
In March of nineteen-thirty-one Daniel Salamanca became the president of Bolivia, and he took
a war-hawk like attitude towards the whole Gran-Chaco dispute.
He didn’t know much about war, nor about geography, and perhaps it was mainly the theatrical
aspect that he embodied as he steered towards a war, but steering towards war he did.
When he ordered the Bolivian army to attack a Paraguayan garrison in Vanguardia, war broke
out.
The Bolivian generals had told Salamanca that within three months Bolivia would be dictating
the peace in Asuncion.
The war started in May nineteen-thirty-two and ended three years later, with the complete
expulsion of Bolivia from the Gran Chaco.
While the war was a disaster for both parties, in order to understand how Bolivia lost a
rather simple element should be shed light on: water.
The war was mainly a war of connections and accessibility of resources and the Paraguayan
general José Felix Estigarribia understood this.
He exclaimed to his officers: This will be the war of thirst, and I will drink to victory.
Paraguay had water located closest to its frontlines, owned railway lines to supply
the troops and these troops knew the Gran Chaco area a bit better.
Bolivia on the other hand wasn’t exactly adept at finding water during the war, and
the supply lines between the army and the home-front were too thin throughout the war.
As for General Kundt, he was old school, still convinced trench warfare was the way to go.
He refused to give up any territory and Salamanca supported him thoroughly, openly connecting
the prestige of Bolivia as a whole to the fortines, that were rather useless.
It resulted in Bolivian troops sacrificing themselves for strategically useless territory.
When Kundt ordered the attack, his troops surrounded the Paraguayans, employing the
same battle tactics the Germans had employed on the Western front during the First World
War.
A crucial mistake was that to employ this type of warfare, water is necessary to quench
the thirst of troops in this climate, even if they had water however, the Bolivians didn’t
have enough grenades to properly assault the Paraguayans.
The Paraguayans, on the other hand, under Estigarribia, were prepared for the old-school
way of waging war.
Estigarribia had read up on Kundt and what he was taught in military school, what battle
tactics he favoured and what he did during the First World War.
Estigarribia stated: “His only order tends to be ‘forwards’, preferably communicated
by phone”.
Now, while sources vary, Bolivia mobilized between two-hundred and two-hundred-fifty
thousand troops, whereas Paraguay mobilized around one-hundred-forty to one-hundred-fifty
thousand troops.
As the war waged on, president Salamanca started getting more and more involved with the strategies
of General Kundt.
He used his rights as president to declare himself Captain-General of the Armed Forces,
and not completely against expectations, increased the ineptness of the leadership of the armed
forces.
He wasn’t a military man, nor was he able to properly arrange the finances.
Kundt wasn’t a tactical genius either, ordering many frontal assaults, not investing in a
Bolivian intelligence service and often ignoring reports about enemy movements.
As Bolivian forces kept being encircled and destroyed, things reached a low-point for
Kundt at the Siege of Campo Vía.
He lost over eight-thousand troops and Salamanca dismissed him in anger, upon which Kundt left
the country.
Kundt’s dismissal didn’t increase the situation for the Bolivians though, and eventually,
in November nineteen-thirty-four, the Colonel Jose Torro and Major German Busch instigated
a military coup against Salamanca, replacing him with his vice president José Luis Tejada.
Apparently, after the coup, Salamanca said that it was ‘the only maneuver in which
his generals had been successful’.
Bolivia never really found its true commander during the war, whereas Paraguay had José
Felix Estigarribia, together with President and intellectual Eusebio Ayala.
Estigarribia was one of the few professional soldiers Paraguay had been able to afford
and he was a sober man, not drinking during wartime and smoking merely one cigarette a
day.
As for Ayala, he was a skilled diplomat and while international negotiators often attempted
to make him sign agreements that weren’t beneficial for his country, he managed to
continue the fight and utilize the few resources Paraguay had more efficiently than Bolivia
used theirs.
When the final balance was made up, Paraguay had spend around one-hundred-and-twenty-million
dollars on the war, a large sum for the country.
Still, it was around half of what Bolivia had spent.
Argentina and the end of the war
While Bolivia was in this war alone, Paraguay received material aid from Argentina, who
weren’t too eager to see Bolivia have a harbour at Rio Paraguay nor have Bolivia threaten
Argentines territory in the Gran Chaco.
It supplied grenades, weapons, fuel and aided in the purchase of trucks.
Furthermore, military intelligence was passed on and it offered two interest-free loans
to Paraguay.
While the Argentinian Foreign Minister Carlos Saavedra Lamas managed to broker a negotiated
settlement of the dispute and chaired the Assembly of the League of Nations after the
war, it is..
Interesting that he received the Nobel Peace Prize that same year.
Anyway, multiple setbacks for Bolivia, a Paraguayan advance all the way towards the oilfields
near Camiri, mismanagement within the military leadership all culminated in the war not looking
good for Bolivia.
The League of Nations offered peace deals that did not reassure the countries attacks
in the future wouldn’t happen, all the while both countries were making sacrifices that
were near fatal and an armistice would, for Paraguay, at this point, be worse than it
would be for Bolivia.
Eventually, in June nineteen-thirty-five, Paraguay advanced to such a point that Bolivia
was forced to sign a peace treaty in Buenos Aires, in which Paraguay received three-fourths
of the territory of the Gran Chaco.
Bolivia lost fifty-seven-thousand men, Paraguay lost thirty-six-thousand.
These numbers were extremely heavy, nearly a quarter of each armed forces.
The economic and social pressure the war had caused would cause radical changes in both
republics, the twenty years that followed were marked by economic and political chaos.
What did Paraguay gain though?
It certainly wasn’t oil, as later on it was discovered the Gran Chaco did not contain
any oil.
This war laid the basis for the sexenia and the period of social revolution during the
‘50s in Bolivia, but that’s a story for another time.
Thank you for watching this video and what is a person or event in Latin American history
that you would like to know more about, and perhaps see a video of?
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See you next time.