It might be a strip of sand without even a jetty but a small stretch of the Pacific coast now harbors Bolivia’s dream of regaining a coast and becoming a maritime nation.
The landlocked Andean country has won access to a desolate patch of Peru’s shoreline, fuelling hopes that Bolivia will once again have a sea to call its own.
Bolivian President Evo Morales signed a deal on Tuesday with Peruvian President, Alan Garcia, allowing Bolivia to build and operate a small port about 16km from Peru’s southern port of Ilo.
The accord, sealed with declarations of South American brotherhood, was a diplomatic poke at Chile, the neighbor that seized Bolivia’s coast and a swath of Peruvian territory in the 1879 to 1884 War of the Pacific.
“It is unjust that Bolivia has no sovereign outlet to the ocean,” Garcia said, flanked by Morales in front of lapping waves at Ilo. “This is also a Bolivian sea.”
Bolivia’s leader said if he ever got married he would spend his honeymoon at the port and holiday resort to be built on the 3.6km2 patch of sand that La Paz will lease from Lima for 99 years.
“This opens the door for Bolivians to have an international port, to the use of the ocean for global trade and for Bolivian products to have better access to global markets,” said Morales. “Bolivia, sooner or later, will return to the sea.”
The agreement, a modest step towards Bolivia’s maritime dream, marked a reconciliation between Peru’s conservative, pro-business leader and Bolivia’s outspoken socialist. Morales once called Garcia “fat and not very anti-imperialist.”
The deal allows Bolivia to build a dock, moor naval vessels and operate a free-trade zone, in theory giving it an alternative to shipping exports such as zinc, tin and silver via Chile.
A similar, albeit more limited accord in 1992 was trumpeted by Bolivia’s then president, Jaime Paz Zamora, but the promised infrastructure never materialized, leaving the sands outside Ilo untouched.
This time may be different. Bolivia’s economy is thriving and Morales has promised to restore national pride.
Maritime yearning is expressed by a sign at a Lake Titicaca base where Boliva’s tiny, idiosyncratic navy putters in tranquil waters 3,800m above sea level. “The sea belongs to us by right, to take it back is our duty.”
From his presidential palace in La Paz, Morales, like his predecessors, speaks in front of an antique map showing Bolivia with its pre-1879 coast. White-uniformed sailors serve as his guards of honor.
Chile’s seizure of territory still rankles Bolivians and Peruvians, who say there is nothing more dangerous than a Chilean with a map and a pen. Chilean refusals to return some of the territory, as well as jokes about inviting Bolivians to the beach, have not helped salve the wounds.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
BOMBARDMENT: Moscow sent more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, in ‘one of the most terrifying strikes’ on the capital in recent months A nighttime Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed at least 15 people and injured 116 while they slept in their homes, local officials said yesterday, with the main barrage centering on the capital, Kyiv. Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said 14 people were killed and 99 were injured as explosions echoed across the city for hours during the night. The bombardment demolished a nine-story residential building, destroying dozens of apartments. Emergency workers were at the scene to rescue people from under the rubble. Russia flung more than 440 drones and 32 missiles at Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki yesterday erupted again with giant ash and smoke plumes after forcing evacuations of villages and flight cancelations, including to and from the resort island of Bali. Several eruptions sent ash up to 5km into the sky on Tuesday evening to yesterday afternoon. An eruption on Tuesday afternoon sent thick, gray clouds 10km into the sky that expanded into a mushroom-shaped ash cloud visible as much as 150km kilometers away. The eruption alert was raised on Tuesday to the highest level and the danger zone where people are recommended to leave was expanded to 8km from the crater. Officers also
RSS