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Iquique, the Pacific War and ghost towns ... (1)

Street names, monuments and statues of places are sometimes quite useful clues for understanding and immerse themselves in the history of a city or region. When you walk in Iquique for example, it is striking that a series of recurring names. They are all keys to opening the door of a city which apparently could only be bathing. There is room Condell, Baquedano streets, Esmeralda and Covadonga, and of course the famous Arturo Pratt alone names the pier, a place, the university and honor, has its size replica face and calm green waters of the most beautiful beach of the city: Cavancha beach. "Who knows Cavancha knows Iquique, also proclaims the tourist brochures."

Speaking Arturo Pratt, precisely, one can not evoke the personality of the military without addressing the historical context for the least shaken in which he became famous.
Before 1879, the configuration of Chile had not yet that we know it today. Its northern neighbor, at the time, was Bolivia, which occupied the current Chilean province of Antofagasta. A strategic province in this country altiplanic because it allowed him to have its sole access to the sea further north again, to the tune of Iquique began Peruvian territory. Boundaries making long been controversial because, although totally desert, the region contains not only large deposits of guano, but also and especially silver nitrate and saltpetre. The latter was used for the manufacture of fertilizers (For the European export) and gunpowder. An important part of the Chilean economy was then in the profits generated by the export of nitrates.
At the time, Chile had even encroached heavily on Bolivian territory to set up places of business of saltpeter on payment of significant financial compensation to its northern neighbor.
is when in 1879 the government of La Paz decides to increase these fees from establishments that Chile is the perfect excuse to forcibly send her army and give itself the same time-and-final this strategic area. Peru, Chile's historical ally since the independence struggles in mediator tried to intervene but to no avail. A secret pact linking Bolivia to Peru was discovered and became Peru, following an enemy to hunt off the land to nitrates.
To conquer territories in Bolivia and Peru, the strategy chosen by the Chilean military is to choose the sea and to land its troops each time a little further north in the region to invest and thereby isolate it from its sources supplies. This technique requires the supremacy at sea, and begat a series of improbable naval combat and the conflict was of course "called" War of the Pacific. Among those fighting the so-called "Iquique" was memorable. It was held May 21, 1879 when two Peruvian ships trying to force the Chilean blockade lasted for over a month and a half already. A first boat Chile (Esmeralda, an old wooden sloop!) Will also sank after, say, a heroic battle and much of its crew will perish along with his captain Arturo Pratt. Feeling grow wings by this first victory, the Peruvian military tries to reserve the same fate in the second Chilean vessel providing a blockade. It (The Covadonga) ordered by Admiral Carlos Condell succeed, however, lead to his rival Peru (Independencia, a boat more modern steel and heavier ...) to the shallows and will run aground. The wind had turned again and regained the top Chilean ... .. Their victory definitely return in 1881.A After the war, Bolivia will have lost permanently its nitrate deposits and especially its access to the sea As in Peru, he has even seen the Chilean troops in a demonstration of the Moorish advance mata up its capital, Lima! It was also during this war and chaos in the context surrounding a British businessman, John North, will acquire part of the vast deposits of saltpeter in the region. It is said also to him that he was the real winner of the Pacific War without firing a single shot! (based travel diary of November 91)

(representation "art" of battle Iquique, with the left, the corvette Esmeralda sinking)