1932's Chaco War of Paraguay and Bolivia

U.S. Pre brassnt Rutherford B. Hayes presided everywhere settlement reached in 1878, awarding disputed Chaco territory to Paraguay. In splurge's words, "paradoxically ... the Hayes Award, an act of international good will, helpe to sharp new conflict ... Sixty years would elapse onward the issue of Chaco proprietorship would fade into obscurity."

The issue simmered for decades, with various diplomatistical efforts going nowhere, and by the late 1920s skirmishes were taking go under between Bolivian and Paraguayan troops. Though thinly inhabited, the section had potential economic value, in part for its forests and grazing land, and in part because of nearby crude fields, for which the best routes of out-shipment ran through the Chaco. For the near part, however, according to Bout, ownership of the Chaco was for both parties mainly a affaire of national pride.

When war broke out, however, it seems to have been by accident. subsequently an initial round of action in 1929, both sides mobilized for war, unless full-scale fighting did not break out until 1932. charm Bolivia had a nominal military superiority, conditions vitiated its advantages; for example, it was required to cypher heavily on troops recruited among the Indians of the Bolivian altiplano, who were ill-acclimated to the tropical, sea-level conditions of the Chaco. Paraguay in any case enjoyed superior military and political leadership. These advantages were not enough to be decisive, however; spot Paraguay retook an

d held the Chaco, it never reached the oil fields that had been a strategic goal. two sides were exhausted by the time an armistice was reached in June of 1935, aft(prenominal) about 80,000 soldiers had died on both sides. The question then became unrivaled of converting the armistice into a permanent peace.

One other practical interpretation is brought up, only to be dismissed. The Chaco region was near oil fields in Bolivia, oil fields operated by the standard Oil company. In 1934, Senator Huey Long (the "Kingfisher") claimed in a congressional speech that Standard Oil was supporting the Bolivian side in the war. Bout acknowledges that many Latin Americans believed this, but he views it only as a complicating factor in American diplomacy.

A Marxist, or more recently an adherent of dependance theory, might have been more disposed to suspect that this was true, and a significant factor in the course of the war, but Bout give no serious attention to this view, even to repel it.

The peace negotiations were complicated by many of the same issues that ready behind the long previous non-resolution of the issue. Argentina, though nominally neutral, had a long history of bad relations with Bolivia, and provided supplies and military learning to Paraguay. Argentina, eager to supplant the U.S. as hegemonic power, also viewed U.S. participation in the peace process with extreme suspicion. Chile tilted toward Bolivia, while Uruguay shipped arms to both belligerents. Of regional powers, only Brazil stayed truly neutral. Regional participation in the peace process was indeed shot through with contradictions.

Bout published his book in 1970; it was thus written within living memory of the events, when principals in the war and subsequent negotiations were still alive to be questioned by the author. Indeed, in his acknowledgements he records a conversation with a diplomat "whose name, I was later informed, it would be 'unwise to disclose.'" The diplom
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