Expulsion of Chileans from Bolivia and Peru in 1879

Chilean workers in Peru and Bolivia

In Peru and Bolivia, migrant Chilean workers took jobs that the local inhabitants were unable or unwilling to perform, in industries such as railroad construction, the nitrate industry, and the docks. These Chileans came freely, in search of better lives for themselves and their families. There were also Chilean investments in both countries.

Chileans were often key protagonists of labour, delictual but also "nationalist" quarrels and riots.

Regarding the attitude of the Chilean workers in the new countries, Chilean historian Juan Pinto Vallejos asserts that they were, to a certain extent, accustomed to industrial work discipline and that their permanent rebellion against authorities and bosses were only a visible refusal to the capitalist driven disintegration of the traditional Chilean society. Among Chileans there arose a kind of spirit of corps because of their condition as foreigners in Peru and Bolivia, within a group whose only common ground was to come from Chile.

Due to their increasing number, their violent conduct or their exacerbated national identity, Chilean migrants became an unsolved issue for the maintenance of peace, public order and security in Tarapaca as well as Antofagsta, and hence an object of official suspicion and surveillance.

Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna wrote about a Chilean organization "La Patria" whose objective was to separate Antofagasta from Bolivia.

Peru

Chilean workers were present in Peru during the second half of the 19th century, especially in the Tarapacá Province but also in Central Peru. It is not known how many Chileans were living in Peru in 1879. Chilean historian Juan Pinto Vallejos cited the 1876 Peruvian census which registered 9,963 Chileans (26%) among 37,099 inhabitants of Tarapaca. In Iquique, the main port of the region, 52% were Chileans. Pinto Vallejos says that 1876 was a year of deep economic crisis in Peru, and so the Chilean population of the region must have increased between then and 1879. For example, between 1868 and 1872 there were 20,000 to 25,000 Chileans who came to work on construction of the railroads, recruited by Henry Meiggs.

About 19% of the nitrate produced in Tarapaca (1878) came from previously Chilean-owned nitrate fields and factories before their expropriation by the Peruvian state in 1875.

On December 27, 1876 Chile and Peru agreed on a treaty of friendship, commerce and navigation, but it was not ratified. Inter alia, it would have protected the rights of migrants in both countries.

Bolivia

In Bolivian Antofagasta, the 1878 census registered 6,554 Chileans among 8,507 inhabitants (77%).

Chilean companies also exploited the mineral resources in Bolivia, including Huanchaca (silver mine), Corocoro (cooper mine), Oruro (silver mine) and the prosperous silver town of Caracoles. In all, there were 49 companies registered in Santiago or Valparaiso, with a nominal capital of 16,000,000 Chilean pesos. The main producer of nitrate in Antofagasta was the Chilean Compañía de Salitres y Ferrocarriles de Antofagasta (CSFA) which had as a minority shareholder the British Antony Gibbs & Sons of London. The CSFA had a nominal capital of $2,000,000 Chilean pesos.

Crisis

In 1878 the Bolivian Government imposed a new tax upon nitrate exports, affecting the CSFA, in contravention of Article IV of the Boundary Treaty of 1874 between Chile and Bolivia which prohibited any new tax on Chilean capital in Antofagasta. The company refused to pay the tax, and in February 1879 the Bolivian Government cancelled their mining licenses, expropriated the CSFA and announced their auction. Peru, allied with Bolivia by the Secret treaty of alliance between Peru and Bolivia of 1873, had for a long time tried to build a Saltpeter Monopoly and was set to enjoy the biggest gains after a breakup of the CSFA, its main competitor.

On 14 February 1879 the port of Antofagasta, and later the whole province, was seized by Chilean troops. On 1 March 1879 Bolivia declared a state of war with Chile. On 5 April 1879 Chile declared war on Peru, and Bolivia and Peru declared the casus foederis the following day.

Eviction decrees

On 1 March 1879, Hilarion Daza, dictator of Bolivia, announced that Bolivia was in a state of war and ordered the cessation of all commerce with Chile, and the eviction of all Chilean citizens from Bolivian territory within 8 days (from the day they were officially informed); they were permitted to take only hand luggage and their personal papers. The rest of their property was seized by the state; their businesses had to be continued by a state supervisor, and the profits confiscated. This applied to all Chilean-owned industries (whether or not the owners lived in Bolivia). The expropriation of property was definitive, as the war required an energetic response from Bolivia. Moreover, any transfer of Chilean property dated after 8 November 1878 was nullified.

In Peru, the eviction was decreed by the Government of Mariano Ignacio Prado on 15 April "to secure the success of the military operations"; within 8 days all Chileans had to leave Peru, except Chilean owners of real estate and those with a Peruvian wife. Any infringement would result in the internment of the wrongdoer. Two days later, these exceptions were suspended "in reprisal for the Chilean bombardment of defenseless Peruvian ports", and all Chilean citizens had to leave Peru within 8 days.

On 17 April the Peruvian newspaper "El Peruano" justified the measure, which was considered tough but necessary, for reasons of security against espionage, the insolent and provocative attitude of the Chileans in Peru, the aggression against Peruvians citizens in Chile, the Chilean bombardment of defenseless ports and the danger that creates the large number of Chileans in Peru for the public order. It alluded to the expulsion of German citizens from France during the Franco-Prussian War and that it was conform to the international law, according to Bluntschli. Further, the newspaper referred that Chile wouldn't reply because there were few Peruvians citizens and no Peruvian investments in Chile.

Direct consequences

In Peru a human tragedy unfolded, as thousands of men, women and children tried to reach the coast and get a ticket in one of the ships bound for Chile in order to return home. Those who could not leave the country were imprisoned, and in some cases condemned to forced labor.

Chilean historian Diego Barros Arana wrote:

Sergio Villalobos asserts that the first group from Huanillos were 400 Chileans and the journey took three days, but later other groups came from Huanillo to Tocopilla. Other groups came to Iquique. They were concentrated in the customs zone of the port, and the Peruvians used them as a human shield in the face of the Chilean shelling of the port. On 5 April, hundreds of refugees from Lima embarked on the Chilean transporter Rímac (1872) and once there they began to threaten General Juan Buendia, Chief of the Peruvian Army of Iquique. The captain of the ship, without the means to confront the refugees, had to disembark Buendia at the next harbor.

In Pabellon de Pica, one of the guano extraction fields in Tarapaca, during a Chilean Navy raid against the port on 15 April, Chilean sailors found 350 refugees on a pontoon, property of a British citizen who had allowed them to stay there because they were unable to walk to Tocopilla. The next day the raid was continued in Huanillos, where they found 100 Chileans enclosed in a pontoon. In both places, the guano loading equipment was destroyed and the refugees brought to Iquique (under blockade) to be embarked to Antofagasta.

Carlos Donoso Rojas asserts that the Chilean Consul in Iquique, Antonio Solari Millas, had to face the difficult task of moving from the port the thousand of compatriots expelled and embark them and that on 29 May the Peruvian Government issued a decree that punished with fines those who protected or hid Chilean refugees. Even before their arrival in Antofagasta, the expelled workers had been contacted by the Chilean Army through the consul to serve in the buildup of the Expeditionary Corps.

More than 1000 Chileans remained imprisoned in Lima and Callao until the occupation of the capital of Peru by the Chilean forces in January 1881. Others were sent as forced laborers to the coal mines of Junin, and even at the end of 1879 and in January 1880 there are still reports of persecutions and suffering endured by those who were unable to leave Peru: on November 19, 1879, Spencer St John, British Plenipotentiary Minister in Peru, supported the claims of Henry Pender, a British subject who was beaten and robbed by the soldiers in Callao during riots against Chilean women married to foreign citizens. Pender had been mistaken for a Chilean.

Military and economic consecuences

According to Valentina Verbal Stockmeyer, during the buildup of the Chilean Army the first troops of the Expeditionary Army came from the professional army which was fighting in the Arauco War. The second wave of soldiers came from the Chilean inhabitants of Antofagasta which had acclaimed the Chilean occupation of the territory in February. The next draft came from the workers returning from Peru after their eviction. Chilean historian Francisco Antonio Encina estimated that about 7,000 repatriated people were enlisted in the Chilean Expeditionary Army.

Historians point out the Chilean soldiers' resentment because of their expulsion as the origin of some unlawful behavior during the war. Regarding the looting and burn down of Mollendo Gonzalo Bulnes wrote:

The Peruvian Navy had dismissed the Chileans who were serving in the warships before the eviction decree.

For the Tarapaca nitrate industry, the loss of a considerable part of the workforce and the blockade of the port of Iquique reduced production.

Aftermath

During the failed Peace Conference of Arica in 1880 and during the negotiations of the Treaty of Ancon, one of the Chilean demands was the return of the confiscated property of the expelled Chileans. Tribunales arbitrales (courts of arbitration) were established between Chile and Peru in order to determine the amount of reparations to be paid for the confiscated property. (see Chilean law 1014, Establecimiento de Tribunal Arbitral Chileno-Peruano en 1897).

Sergio Villalobos wrote about the expulsion: