The article mentions it, but I only learned recently that Bolivia did not used to be landlocked. Chile took Bolivia's coastline somewhat recently (late 1800s/early 1900s).
> The dispute began in 1879, when Chile invaded the Antofagasta port city on its northern border with Bolivia as part of a dispute over taxes. Within four years Chileans had redrawn the map of South America by taking almost 50,000 square miles of Bolivian territory, including its 250-mile coastline on the southern Pacific Ocean. Bolivia accepted this loss in 1904, when it signed a peace treaty with Chile in return for a promise of the “fullest and freest” commercial access to port.
Disclaimer: I live in Chile, but not a Chilean national(nor of similar ethnicity), and certainly not a historian.
The dispute is seen differently in Chile and is not as simplistic as Chile invading a port. In general i've gotten the sense that the general populace believes that Bolivia(with its secret alliance with Peru) had other intentions.
>In February 1878, Bolivia increased taxes on the Chilean mining company Compañía de Salitres y Ferrocarril de Antofagasta [es] (CSFA), in violation of the Boundary Treaty of 1874 which established the border between both countries and prohibited tax increases for mining. Chile protested the violation of the treaty and requested international arbitration, but the Bolivian government, presided by Hilarión Daza, considered this an internal issue subject to the jurisdiction of the Bolivian courts. Chile insisted that the breach of the treaty would mean that the territorial borders denoted in it were no longer settled.
>Ill-defined borders and oppressive measures allegedly taken against the Chilean migrant population in these territories furnished Chile with a pretext for invasion.
Yeah, you are missing the backstory for that, which another commenter mentioned. Bolivia violated a treaty they had with Chile, and also had a secret alliance with Peru. They violated the treaty so they would go to war with Chile, and then team with Peru and try to conquer Chile. However, Chile had a very recently professionalized army and navy trained by the Germans, whereas Bolivia and Peru had peasants conscripted.
(To this day the Chilean armed forces are amongst the most trained in the world.)
The result? Bolivia lost all of its coastline, and Peru also lost its southern territories.
You can summarize the war as in Bolivia and Peru fcked around, and then found out.
If you go to the Bolivian part of Lake Titicaca (home of the Bolivian navy), there is a statue with a sword pointing West saying something along the lines of "We are going to take back what is ours".
> The dispute began in 1879, when Chile invaded the Antofagasta port city on its northern border with Bolivia as part of a dispute over taxes. Within four years Chileans had redrawn the map of South America by taking almost 50,000 square miles of Bolivian territory, including its 250-mile coastline on the southern Pacific Ocean. Bolivia accepted this loss in 1904, when it signed a peace treaty with Chile in return for a promise of the “fullest and freest” commercial access to port.
https://time.com/5413887/bolivia-chile-pacific/