(La Paz) On March 1st 1879 Bolivia declared war on Chile and in doing so demanded Peru honour its secret agreement to come to Bolivars aid in case of war with Chile. 4 years later Chile came out victorious and took as collateral land it had captured from both Peru and Bolivia. The problem for Bolivar was it lost all access to the sea. In 104 a peace treaty was signed between Chile and Bolivia with the Chileans agreeing to build a railway line from the coast to Bolivia allowing them access to the sea. The thing is whilst Chile has kept the railway line in good order and operational at their end. Boliva has allowed its rail system to deteriorate. so much so, that passenger trains no longer run in Bolivia and instead buses (Yes buses) have been converted to run on the lines and that was the way things stood until vast supplies of Lithium (As used by the high tech industry) were found in the country.
Naturally the Bolivians want to cash in on the market , but instead of rebuilding the rail way system across the country. It instead decided to play the victim card claiming that Chile was a nasty country and that the moral thing would be for it to return all the lands it lost in a war it started. naturally as this is a socialist country , lots of abuse was thrown at Chile such as calling them the Israelis of South America, and they took their case to the UN and then spent a lot of time promoting their righteous cause. Well yesterday the UNs International court of justice arrived at its decision and decided agaisnt Boliva. Stating that a string of agreements, memorandums and statements produced over decades of talks had not created a legal obligation on Chile to enter negotiations. In a sweeping rejection of the Bolivian case, the court, by a 12-3 majority, dismissed eight different legal arguments presented by Bolivia’s lawyers.
You can guess that , that didn't go down well in La Paz with Bolivia’s president, Evo Morales opining to the media:
“Bolivia will never give up” its claim. The people of the world know that Bolivia had an invasion and we had our sovereign access to the Pacific Ocean taken away from us,”
