Chaco War
The Chaco War is the name of the war between Paraguay and Bolivia fought between September 9, 1932 and June 12, 1935 for control of the Boreal Chaco. It was a major war in South America during the 20th century. In the three years it lasted, Bolivia mobilized some 250,000 soldiers throughout the conflict, who faced the Paraguayans and Bolivians in combats in which there were a large number of deaths and a large number of wounded, maimed and missing. The different types of illnesses, both physical and psychological, the hostile characteristics of the theater of operations, the lack of water and poor nutrition produced the highest percentage of casualties, affecting the health of the surviving soldiers, many for life.
The confrontation consumed enormous economic resources from both countries, which were already very poor. Paraguay supplied its army with a large quantity of weapons and equipment captured in different battles from the Bolivians. After the war, some surpluses were sold to Spain (Decree-law 8406, January 15, 1937).
The cessation of hostilities was agreed on June 14, 1935. Under pressure from the United States, through a secret treaty signed on July 9, 1938, Paraguay relinquished 110,000 km² occupied by its army to the cessation of hostilities. hostilities. The Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Boundaries was signed on July 21, 1938 and on April 27, 2009 the final boundary agreement was established. The area in dispute was divided into a quarter under Bolivian sovereignty and three quarters under Paraguayan sovereignty. Bolivia received an area on the banks of the upper Paraguay River, called the Dionisio Foianini Triangle.
Description of the region in dispute
The central South American region known as the Gran Chaco is divided, from north to south, into three regions: Chaco Boreal ―north of the Pilcomayo River―, the Central Chaco ―between that river and the Bermejo River―, and to the south from the latter the Southern Chaco. The disputed area between Bolivia and Paraguay corresponded exclusively to the Chaco Boreal.
The Chaco Boreal has an extension of approximately 650,000 km² (similar to that of France) and until the end of the 1920s it was almost uninhabited and unexplored. Its limits are: to the south the Pilcomayo river and Argentina; to the east, the Paraguay River and the eastern region of Paraguay; to the northwest, the Bolivian foothills and to the northeast, the jungle regions of Brazil and Bolivia.
The region was covered by forests, thorny scrub, and palm trees. In the strip near the Paraguay River, the quebracho colorado was exploited for the production of tannin. The development of agriculture at that time was scarce.
The mountain [chaqueño] is the absurd materialized in trees. It is the terrible world of disorientation. Everywhere it is the same, low, dirty, terrifying green. [...] Their trees are not trees, they are scarecrows of tortured forms, in whose bark they ruminated their physiological misery thorns and parasites [that] grow attached to a sterile and unfecundated land, so they live and die without adorning their branches with the green caress of the leaf or the luminous miracle of the fruit.Carlos Arce Salinas, ex-combatants and Bolivian politician;
(Arce Aguirre, 2009, p. 32)
The climate is tropical savannah (Aw) in the eastern sector, and warm semi-arid (BSh) in the western sector, both predominantly hot, with practically two seasons a year: rainy summers and dry winters. The temperature can reach almost 50 °C in summer, and be less than 0 °C. in winter. It is the habitat of a wide variety of poisonous snakes and disease-carrying insects, such as the bug and mosquito. Water is scarce and brackish in the central areas; The few existing wells and lagoons were of vital importance during the war, but their contamination caused many casualties from dysentery.
There is a magnificent water well in Platanillos. The Paraguayans, when they left, put a bomb on him. It is 40 meters deep and efforts are made to rehabilitate it. But his water is untouchable by nauseaunda. It has already been extracted enormous amount of water, it is crystalline but infect, idionda to quartiembre, to rotten leathers. The result of the analysis of Villa Montes is expected.Luis Fernando Guachalla, payer of the Second Bolivian Corps, March 5, 1933;
(Guachalla, 1978, p. 248)
During the rainy season, from December to May, the few roads, which were dusty trails for most of the year, turned into impassable mud flats due to poor soil permeability. This inhospitable region was many times the main enemy faced by both contenders.
Background and causes
The background and causes of the Chaco War are complex. When Bolivia and Paraguay became independent states, they inherited from the colonial era a vague determination of the limits of that inhospitable and unpopulated area, for which reason they had to establish their respective jurisdictions according to often contradictory documents or through the drawing of geodesic lines. The four boundary treaties that were agreed between 1879 and 1907 were not definitively accepted by any of the parties. When Bolivia lost the exit to the Pacific Ocean, as a consequence of the Pacific War (1879-1884), that region acquired a strategic value for that country: the occupation of the Chaco Boreal was necessary to reach the Atlantic Ocean through the Paraguay River. Both countries made few expeditions to the Chaco. Another cause was the supposed existence of oil in the Chaco subsoil that the American company Standard Oil was already extracting on its mountainous edges. This company had failed in its attempt to transport Bolivian oil through a pipeline to be built in Argentine territory to the refinery that had a subsidiary of its own, in Campana, on the Paraná River, leaving it as the only option to cross through the Chaco Boreal towards the Paraguay River, as far south as possible.
Paraguay, a few decades before, had been devastated by the war of the Triple Alliance (1865-1870). One of the consequences was the loss of huge territories in the eastern zone. Regarding the Boreal Chaco, Argentina tried to incorporate a part of it into its territory by resorting to arbitration by US President Rutherford Hayes in 1879; This failed, determining that the area between the Pilcomayo and the Verde rivers, to the north, corresponded to Paraguay. With these antecedents, it was difficult for that country to accept the Bolivian claims over the Chaco Boreal.
Commanders-in-Chief of Armies
Bolivian Commanders
During the Chaco War, the Bolivian army was successively led by four generals:
- Filiberto Osorio (between September and October 1932);
- José Leonardo Lanza (between October and December 1932);
- Hans Kundt (between December 1932 and December 1933); and
- Enrique Peñaranda Castillo (between December 1933 and the end of the war).
Behind them, President Daniel Salamanca and the Bolivian oligarchy had a strong influence. Osorio and Kundt were substituted for driving errors and political reasons.
- Hans Kundt was the main military figure in Bolivia in the two decades before the war. He arrived in the country on March 11, 1911, with the highest degree, leading a mission of 18 German military personnel hired by the Bolivian State to reorganize the army. His good performance, exclusively technical, earned him the promotion of the Bolivian army.
In 1914, while on vacation in Germany, World War I broke out. He essentially participated on the Eastern Front and then on the Western Front. He retired from the German army with the rank of general and returned to Bolivia in 1921 as a civilian. He was hired again by President Saavedra, became a Bolivian national in 1921 and became head of the General Staff until 1926, but with duties that were increasingly linked to internal Bolivian politics. In the mid-1930s, he attempted to guide Bolivian officials on political issues in favor of the re-election of President Hernán Siles. When he was overthrown, he had to go into exile.
In December 1932, already 63 years old, he was called by the Government to lead the Bolivian army on campaign. He was qualified as a trooper officer, for not having studies for the General Staff, which influenced the deficient mobilization of the Bolivian army in 1928 with its sequel of looting, riots, mutinies and desertions. He not only had to face the Paraguayan army, but also the intrigues of the Bolivian high command officers. In December 1933, after successive failures in Nanawa, Campo Grande and Alihuatá-Campo Vía, he was dismissed by Daniel Salamanca. He left Bolivia and died in Switzerland six years later.
- Enrique Peñaranda Castillo was elected by President Salamanca as successor of Kundt for having escaped from the Mount of Campo Vía, a fact that was not true and that Peñaranda avoided clarifying.
He participated, before the war, in the deception of the Bolivian high command against President Salamanca on the occasion of the occupation of the Paraguayan fort Carlos A. López, relying on due obedience.
Fearing from a strategic point of view of his own, and deceptively almost by omission in his civil-military relations, Peñaranda was a mysterious mixture of "raft chambers", which gave him access to the suggestions of the subordinates and of quarterly intolerance when he was irritated (complicating his relations with Salamanca).(Dunkerley, 1987, p. 223)
General Peñaranda remains the man without his character or initiative. This impression has become conscious in the army and no one disguises it.Salamanca, in (Querejazu Calvo, 1981)
Although he submitted his resignation twice before the battle of El Carmen, President Salamanca ignored them because he considered that the different factions of the army respected him because he did not overshadow anyone.
Salamanca held him responsible for the defeat at El Carmen and tried to replace him. This fact motivated Peñaranda to lead the riot known as the Corralito de Villamontes on November 27, 1934 and which, because it happened in times of war, was described as of "treason to the Fatherland".
A short time later, Peñaranda was unable to prevent the collapse of the Bolivian Second Corps in front of La Faye by not imposing his authority on Colonel David Toro to withdraw to a safer place. From that moment on, and with the promotion from Colonel Toro to the position of chief of staff, he commanded the army almost collegiately with him. Historian Bruce W. Farcau maintains that it is pending evaluation whether Peñaranda's leadership was not worse than that of the reviled Kundt.
Paraguayan Commander
In contrast to successive Bolivian commanders-in-chief, the Paraguayan army was led by José Félix Estigarribia from the beginning to the end of the war, during which time he never left the Chaco.
José Félix Estigarribia was of humble social origin, he completed higher studies at the Faculty of Agronomy. After obtaining the diploma he changed careers and in 1910 enlisted in the army with the rank of lieutenant in the infantry. From 1911 to 1913, he attended the Bernardo O'Higgins Military School, in Chile. In 1917, he was promoted to captain. He was selected to attend the General Staff course at the École Supérieure de Guerre in France. He was a scholar of the warfare of movement overcoming the strategies of the First World War. His first military experience in the desert was in Morocco, in the operations carried out by the French army under the command of Marshal Louis Lyautey. In 1927, he completed the three-year course and, in 1928, he was appointed chief of staff. When war seemed inevitable, the Government decided that Estigarribia was the most qualified man to lead the Paraguayan army.
In April 1931, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and, on June 18, he assumed command of the 1st Division based in Puerto Casado, in the Chaco Boreal. After the battle of the Boquerón fort, in September 1932, he was promoted to colonel, with which rank he commanded the Paraguayan army until September 1933. After the successful siege of Campo Grande, he was promoted to general. He was a calm, serious and austere man, in his unmistakable uniform with always short sleeves. The good knowledge of each officer under his command allowed him to demand from each the maximum effort that he could give. He directed operations from very close to the front to expedite decision-making and freed his officers to carry out the tactical operations that the time and place required. He has been criticized for being excessively conservative in the early months of the conflict. His greatest strategic achievement was to conduct the war in the Chaco desert as if it were a naval battle.
Army strategies
Bolivian Strategy
The Bolivian strategy was based on the undoubted superiority of economic resources and population (3 to 1) that it had over Paraguay. For the Bolivian General Staff, the occupation of the Chaco and access to the Paraguay River was more a diplomatic problem than a military one.
Lt. Colonel Angel Rodriguez considered that there was only enough water to send five thousand men, and that only units no larger than a company could maneuver between the bushes, while Kundt remained firmly convinced that three thousand men would suffice to take Asunción.(Dunkerley 1987, p. 207)
The history of that small country located to the south and the importance it attached to the possession of the Chaco Boreal were not taken into account. In 1928, Dr. Salamanca, for whom Paraguay was "the most miserable of the republics of South America", said:
Bolivia has a history of international disasters that we must counter with a victorious war [...]. Just as the men who have sinned must be subjected to the test of fire to save their souls [...] the countries like ours, that have made mistakes of internal and external politics, we must and need to subject ourselves to the test of fire, that can be no other than the conflict with Paraguay [...] the only country we can attack with assurances of victory.Salamanca, in (Antezana Villagrán, 1982, p. 12/13 v. 2)
When the war began, Bolivia did not carry out a total mobilization, it considered that it was enough to carry out an economic war and that it did not alter the daily life of the population.
For these reasons, no attempt was made to improve the supply to the distant Chaco front by building a railway line to Muñoz and the essential bridge over the Pilcomayo river. The troops were transported by truck and rail to Villazón, from there by truck to Tarija, and from there on foot to Villamontes, the main base in the Chaco. From there the soldiers had to march up to 400 km through the dust, mud and sweltering heat of the Chaco Boreal. The basic means of transport was the truck, and these were always scarce. President Salamanca asked the Chief of Staff:
Tell me, General, what do you think of doing with the 600 trucks and what have you done with the last 20 I bought two months ago?(Dunkerley, 1987, p. 214)
To cover the six stages of the Villazón-Muñoz stretch, 480 trucks were needed. Since there were only units for supplies and especially water, the soldiers had to mobilize on foot throughout the war. The vehicles were limited in turn by the bad roads, all of them dirt and that the rains made impassable.
Bolivia prioritized territorial occupation to justify “de facto” its rights (See Pitiantuta lagoon incident). The loss of a fort was experienced dramatically by the Bolivian people, the Government and the army to the point of hiding the information from each other. Political parties, regionalism and the opposition press did not miss any opportunity to criticize President Salamanca and the high command with the sole objective of achieving a greater share of power.
The training of the officers and that of Kundt himself were not up to date. The Military College was a refuge for reprobate students and failed high school graduates. Very few received higher education once they graduated from that College, inside or outside the country. The promotions were fingered politically in open negotiations. The Spanish military mission that arrived in February 1931 observed that elementary subjects such as algebra were taught to colonels and topography to graduates of the Escuela Superior de Guerra. The doctrines of the early First World War prevailed with their frontal attacks with enormous cost in lives and which were already being surpassed by more modern conceptions. Before the war began, despite years in charge of the Bolivian army, General Hans Kundt was never in the Chaco.
For the soldiers who came from the highlands it was difficult to adapt physically and mentally to the Chaco habitat. The unity of the people in the face of the war was weak due to the anachronistic Bolivian agrarian feudalism. In 1927, north of Potosí, the so-called "peasants" rose up against the Bolivian land-owning oligarchy on three occasions; Eduardo Nina Quispe (1930-1933) fought for a Republic of Original Nations and Peoples and in 1935 peasants were massacred in Pucarani to force them to go to war.
The Aymara soldier, who did not know Spanish, blindly went to war (and to death) without knowing why. One of them asked his sergeant: «And who, then, boss, is our enemy? Are they from Cochabamba?"
The Indian went to war, but he did not like it naturally because he had no patriotic conscience how could he have it as a soldier to the indigenous without forcing it?J. Espada Antezana, Bolivian War Minister,
(Arce Aguirre, 1987, p. 258).
The Indians are cowards? They do not know what the Homeland is, but they are committed to fierce struggle against those who intuit that they are their adversaries or, more appropriately, against the officers who command them.Bolivian Subteniente Alberto Taborga,
(Dunkerley, 1987, p. 244)
The relationship between Salamanca and the high command and between them was difficult throughout the war as many had political and corporate ambitions that affected the conduct of operations.
The military class had come to form a kind of privileged caste, carefully closed to the profane, of exclusively official access and whose components progressed Masonically in degrees and emoluments by action of the time [...] United in close solidarity of interests, in front of the government and the whole nation, [...], they ended up to show, in contact with the war, all the pride that they were penetrated. [...] Unfortunately, so much military pride was accompanied by incapacity and defeat, with all its vicious consequences. [...] They created in the Chaco a private and closed field in which they could move freely. They called for soldiers, trucks, supplies, weapons and ammunition in increasing quantities without addressing the financial possibilities that limited the Government ' s efforts (in spite of their good will).Salamanca, in (Guachalla, 1978, p. 90 and 91)
Some historians, Querejazu Calvo among them, characterized the Bolivian army of the time as a "colonial army" because it was a force primarily aimed at internal repression, lacked popular support, was racially divided, and was used to defend a political system that was already in the process of disintegrating.
The purchase of weapons, at the end of the 20s, was disproportionate compared to the probable enemy, the Paraguayan army. This aroused the concern of other neighboring countries: Chile and Peru. This purchase, largely unified in the English firm Vickers, produced a series of problems in terms of quality and delivery compliance. Tanks were purchased despite opposition from Bolivian technicians who claimed they would not serve in the Chaco. At the start of the war, a significant volume of arms was still unmanufactured and unshipped in England.
In 1932, Bolivia suffered serious economic difficulties due to the drop in the price and volume of tin exports, which in 1929 had been 46.9 million dollars, reducing to 10 million dollars in 1932. In addition, it lacked international credit for having defaulted on the payments of its external debt. Mining production concentrated, in 1930, 95% of Bolivian exports, absorbing peasant labor that prevented the development of agriculture and favored dependence on food imports from neighboring countries, especially Argentina. In 1931, General Osorio, in a report to the Ministry of War, warned about this strategic weakness:
[...] in a war emergency with Paraguay [...] there is the danger that our supply and supply [...] almost total and obligatoryly carried out in the Argentine markets, is obstructed with great damage to our military interests.General Osorio in (Seiferheld, 1983, p. 283)
Although there were problems, imports of food and other supplies from Argentina and other neighboring countries continued throughout the war. Even products from Paraguay entered Bolivia with the approval of the Paraguayan government.
The oil production of the American company Standard Oil in Bolivia could not satisfy the needs of the army and during the war the demand for the lack of gasoline was permanent. Bolivia had to import fuel and lubricants, at a higher cost, from a distillery that Standard Oil had in Peru, or from the one that entered illegally from Argentina by crossing the Pilcomayo River through Puerto Cabo Iriyoyen (Argentina) to Linares, according to Kundt, "at an exorbitant price". After the end of the war, the allegations were confirmed that Standard Oil of Bolivia, since 1926, had been smuggling part of its production to Argentina, through a clandestine pipeline, with the approval of high-ranking officials of the Argentine and Bolivian government. linked to that American company.
Paraguayan Strategy
The Paraguayan general staff planned the defense of Chaco using existing communications in the area. Men and resources were transferred from Asunción along the Paraguay River to Puerto Casado and from there by a narrow gauge railway, used in the exploitation of tannin, to very close to Isla Poí, the main military base in the Chaco. During the early part of the war, this advantage offset, to some extent, the Bolivian superiority in resources.
However, the lack of trucks was chronic and many times allowed the enemy, totally disjointed, to escape. The water supply, for the same reason, was another difficult problem to solve. On October 5, 1934, during his visit to the front, President Ayala told General Estigarribia that he could not provide him with the 500 trucks that the army needed as an absolute priority due to the lengthening of its supply line. Estigarribia then justified his plan to attack the Bolivians in Cañada El Carmen saying:
In this case [...] we should not waste time waiting for better perspectives but instead act soon and decisively because we cannot move [for lack of trucks] but we cannot stay where we are.(Vittone, 1986, p. 198).
The Paraguayan offensives were carried out in the seasons with little rain, when the heat was preponderant. The tactic of "encirclement and annihilation" was used, the popularly called "corralito": rupture or envelopment of the front, penetration towards the enemy rear, cut off supplies and command enemies. Movement was prioritized, overflowing the Bolivian fixed defenses on the sides, avoiding high-intensity frontal attacks. The objective was the annihilation of the enemy army and not the territorial occupation. In February 1934, a report from the Bolivian Superior Command on the modus operandi of the Paraguayan army stated:
The systematic way the enemy is using in its attacks consists of the frontal mooring, with combat groups and active fire explorations to seek the wrap, with its mass, of one or both wings, and the exit of successive fractions on the rear roads. These manoeuvres call for serious precautions for their execution; however, they are carried out by the enemy with unwise confidence, simply supported by the moral result of their previous successes.(Guachalla, 1978, p. 114).
The most capable officers were sent abroad: Argentina, Chile, France, Belgium, Italy, for higher studies. The Paraguayan people, convinced that they were once again being attacked, as had happened 60 years before by Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, once again united behind the Government and its army in what is known as Total War. No one doubted that the Chaco should be "defended." The people collaborated with all kinds of activities, both at home and abroad, to increase the production of exportable goods, raise funds and all kinds of resources for the war. In April 1934, citizens delivered 800 wooden tables from their homes to build 1,200 boxes for 18,000 hand grenades built in the arsenals and urgently needed to be sent to the front. There was homogeneity between officers and soldiers where they all had the same traditions, customs and spoke the same language: Guarani. In this respect the Paraguayan army had a decisive advantage over its Bolivian opponent where there were distinct ethnic/linguistic groups, pronounced differences in class, origin and culture between soldiers and officers, and even foreign mercenaries in higher command. Observing a group of Paraguayan prisoners, the Bolivian poet and ex-combatant Ángel Lara was surprised that the soldiers conversed with their officers "quite naturally".
The perfect complement between two men with dissimilar characteristics, Commander Estigarribia, as the highest military official, and President Eusebio Ayala, in his political and economic function, allowed Paraguay to have a unified and almost seamless leadership, essential to achieve the best results in the military campaign.
The acquisition of weapons had to overcome three fundamental problems:
- To have open the communication lines that passed through Argentina: railways and navigation.
- Lack of resources and credit.
- The need for the secret not to provoke a Bolivian reaction that would speed up the war before they arrived in Paraguay.
The sending of General Manlio Schenoni, in September 1926, to tour the European arms factories had the objective of diverting the attention of the Bolivian spies, since the purchase was made by Dr. Eusebio Ayala secretly using the technical studies that the Argentine army had carried out for its own equipment and the reports sent by Paraguayan officers studying in Europe.
While a chief [Schenoni] was observed, the acquisitions were done in another subreptial way; Bolivia ' s alarm was dissipated as we made our plans. For this reason the President of the Republic said in one of his messages to the Congress: “We prefer to do what does not seem, to make what we do not.”(Ayala Queirolo, 1985, p. 65)
The purchases were made with great meticulousness and secrecy, choosing the best weapons, from various suppliers. Paraguay started and ended the war with the same officers and soldiers. He only had to replace the dead, wounded and sick. This meant counting, after a few months of continuous fighting, with an experienced army for the difficult war in Chaco.
An important aspect of the Paraguayan strategy was to have the support of Argentina as a source of supply of vital inputs. For this purpose, the historical commercial relations and the existing cultural, social and migratory links between both countries were used. From a geopolitical point of view, Argentina considered Paraguay as the first line of defense or the spearhead against a possible Brazilian expansion to the west. Once the war began, the Argentine people supported the Paraguayan cause with donations and volunteers of all kinds.
Dr. Luque, chief editor The PressHe said to me, "I do not speak in my house of what is done in the newspaper, and so I never speak of the Paraguayan-bolivian question; but it is true that my wife, my children and all the service do not lose any opportunity to express their sympathy for Paraguay. That is the spirit of all people."(Rivarola, 1982, p. 134)
These events were not a secret to the Bolivian government and staff, which received extensive reports not only from their officials based in Buenos Aires but also from Luis Fernando Guachalla himself, Bolivian ambassador in Asunción until July 1931.
Attack on the Carlos A. López fort
Red: Bolivian defenses.
Blue: Paraguayan attack
On May 6, 1932, the United States Secretary of State, Francis White, president of the Neutrals Commission, proposed that the non-aggression pact between Bolivia and Paraguay, currently being negotiated, should start from the territories occupied by the parties at the time of signing. The Bolivian army accelerated its territorial occupation plan, especially of the important lagoon accidentally discovered by its aviation on April 25, 1932.
In their third attempt to reach that objective, on June 15, 1932, a Bolivian detachment under the command of Major Óscar Moscoso attacked and destroyed the Paraguayan fort Carlos Antonio López, located on the edge of the Pitiantuta lagoon (or «laguna Chuquisaca" as it was later named by the Bolivians). This surprising military action was carried out contrary to the orders of Bolivian President Salamanca to avoid any kind of provocation in the Chaco given the negotiations that had been under discussion in Washington since November 1931.
With this "operation" of cover-up, lies and disobedience and even loss of documentation, carried out by members of the high command behind the president's back, one of the conflicts that would affect Bolivia throughout the war began, that of Salamanca against those in charge of the army and that would culminate, years later, with his dismissal. A month later, on July 16, the Paraguayan detachment Coronel Palacios recovered the area after a small skirmish. This fact was presented to the Bolivian people as a devious attack by Paraguay on Bolivia and it was also flavored with false acts of barbarism committed by Paraguayan soldiers. On July 19, 1932, from the balconies of the Palacio Quemado, Salamanca addressed the people who had gathered to listen to him:
Citizens, children of Bolivia, at a time of real national anguish, when there is a new aggression against national dignity, there has been this magnificent reaction that manifests the life and vigor of Bolivian patriotism. If a nation did not react to the outrages inferred to it, it would not deserve to be a nation.(Querejazu Calvo, 1990, p. 29)
Thousands of Bolivians applauded those words without suspecting the deception and that they would go to their deaths a short time later in the unknown and arid plain of Chaco.
Bolivian climbing
The Paraguayan recovery of the Pitiantuta lagoon, which returned things to their previous state, was not for Salamanca. As if it were an affront to national honor, he asked General Osorio to prosecute those responsible. Shortly after, politically weakened and driven by a warmongering climate that he himself had encouraged, he ordered General Quintanilla to seize the Paraguayan forts Corrales, Toledo (from July 27 to 28) and Boquerón (on July 31, 1932) in retaliation.).
Execute the order well, if there is any merit in it, it would be yours; if responsibilities arise, they will be mine.(Dunkerley, 1987, p. 219)
On the diplomatic front, before the Paraguayan protest as a country attacked, Salamanca was firm in not returning the three forts and demanded that they be incorporated into a "disputed zone." Previously, on July 22, 1932, he ordered the Bolivian delegation to leave the Commission of Neutrals, which acted as a mediator between the two countries. Faced with the Paraguayan request that what happened in Pitiantuta be investigated, Julio A. Gutiérrez, Bolivia's Minister of Foreign Relations, upset by the military action carried out by the high command, tried to defend the indefensible through increasingly aggressive language:
After the attack [refers to the Paraguayan recovery of the fort Carlos A. López] [Paraguay] appears again in Washington boasting pacifism. This is a sarcasm of the reality of facts, a mockery, not only for us, but for the very neutral.(Paraguay. Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1933, p. 188)
Finally, Foreign Minister Gutiérrez, in an arrogant note dated August 1, added: "We are not interested in investigations that do not define the fundamental issue."
On August 7, Bolivian forces occupied the Paraguayan fort Carayá, baptizing it Huijay.
With this excessive reaction without valid reasons, the Government of Salamanca advanced from a policy of demilitarizing the Chaco to a war with thousands of deaths and injuries. But the Bolivian army, at the end of July 1932, was not prepared for a large-scale military operation in the Chaco. On August 30, 1932, just 9 days after the attack by the entire Paraguayan army on Boquerón and the start of the war, General Osorio sent Memorandum 507/32 to President Salamanca. With an almost haughty and disrespectful tone, he stated that the high command did not have precise directives nor was there an Operations Plan to guide the Bolivian army in the Chaco. In the same memorandum he proposed a plan that consisted of advancing to the north, in upper Paraguay, an area diametrically opposed to what was being carried out in the south. Osorio's plan had the objective of occupying the coast of the Paraguay River facing a neutral country (Brazil), easy to supply and maintain indefinitely. At the same time, in the southern zone, General Carlos Quintanilla, head of the Bolivian forces in the Chaco, requested authorization to occupy two more forts: Nanawa to the south and Rojas Silva to the east. This last fort was occupied on September 6, 1932.
Thus Quintanilla, the General of the Reprisals, moved somewhat by the presidential order and more by his crazy desires to popularize himself [...] obtaining cheap triumphs over Paraguay, indirectly cooperated [...] to precipitate the inermous Bolivian people to the voragine of Chaco.(Tabera, 1979, p. 154)
In July 1932, the Bolivian army had the First Corps in Chaco, about 4,000 men, in the southwestern part, plus two divisions, about 2,000 men, in the northwest. During the month of August approximately 6,000 soldiers began to be slowly transferred to the Chaco due to serious logistical complications.
Paraguayan reaction
The capture and destruction of the Carlos A. López fort that the Bolivian Foreign Ministry continued to deny, the occupation "in retaliation" of three Paraguayan forts that it refused to return, and the intransigent and warmongering attitude of the Bolivian government, convinced the Paraguayan government to that the military solution was the only way out of Chaco's problems. President Eusebio Ayala decreed a general mobilization to launch Paraguay into a full-scale war. During the month of August 1932, 8,000 soldiers were concentrated at the Isla Poí base of operations; 1,500 in the Nanawa fort and 3,000 were located on the upper Paraguay River. Another 3,000 reinforcements were sent to Isla Poí in late August. These forces were commanded by 8 lieutenant colonels, under 50 years of age, who had mostly completed advanced training courses in Europe, and 12 older ones, who were under 40 years of age and who had also studied abroad. An airstrip was built on Isla Poí and the entire air force was transferred. Trucks and private boats were requisitioned, the former for the transport of troops and resources in the Chaco and the latter to reinforce the logistics that was carried out from Asunción to the Casado port on the Paraguay River.
Lieutenant Colonel Juan B. Ayala, of the General Staff, the officer who had received the most training in France and who had analyzed the causes of the failure of the mobilization of 1928 that prevented the war from starting that year, managed to now plan to triple, in just 30 days, the forces of the army in peacetime. Lieutenant Colonel Estigarribia estimated that the Bolivian army could just complete its massive mobilization, and reach the inevitable superiority in men and resources, in 90 days, enough time to carry out, with that strategic advantage, the first Paraguayan offensive in the Chaco.
On August 29, the Neutrals Commission proposed an unconditional truce of 60 days that Bolivia accepted if it was reduced to 30 days but that Dr. Justo Pastor Benítez, Paraguay's foreign minister, with all the war machine in full swing movement, he rejected it, arguing: "We have to ensure our own security that we consider seriously threatened."
First Paraguayan offensive (September-December 1932)
Battle of Boquerón
On September 8, Bolivian planes detected the approach of Paraguayan forces on the road to Boquerón and bombed and machine-gunned the column, causing casualties among men and horses.
Lieutenant Colonel Manuel Marzana assumed command of the forces that occupied Boquerón on July 31, 1932 due to the death of Lieutenant Colonel Luis Emilio Aguirre (together with other officers and soldiers), in the ambush prepared in advance by the Paraguayan forces defending the fort. This competent officer was responsible for sustaining the siege of Boquerón, resisting the onslaughts of the bulk of the Paraguayan army that, from September 9 to 29, 1932, would attack it incessantly.
The Paraguayans unscrupulously attacked Boquerón on September 9. When willful direct attacks were unsuccessful, units fanned out into the surrounding area to ambush forces that might come to the fort's aid. On the 10th, a Bolivian column advancing towards Boquerón fell into an ambush, suffering heavy casualties. In these first days many deficiencies could be observed in the Paraguayan army, mainly in the water supply. Driven by thirst, the soldiers abandoned the lines to look for water in the rear. There were also shortcomings in the synchronization of movements between the units.
The Bolivian aviation tried to neutralize the "artillery" that was bombing Boquerón and which was the one that produced the most casualties without being able to locate it. These were the modern Stokes-Brandt mortars that even Marzana thought were long-range guns. The initial combats served for the Paraguayans to gain experience at the cost of many casualties. The entry of aid to the surrounded fort made by the Bolivian army with small units, some successful and others not, was at great cost in casualties since those forces had to leave the fort again due to the lack of resources in the place.
We started our retreat [...] I pass through a rain of bullets. Follow the massacre. The number of dead increases dangerously, [...]. Finally we managed to pass the entire area where the enemy was and we arrived at the Command. We all asked for bread and water. We were no longer the enthusiastic and strong boys who left Oruro. We were just spectra. We all wanted to go. Journal of Bolivian Lieutenant Germán Busch. (Brockmann, 2007, p. 218)
The aviation dropped ammunition, food and medicines on Boqueron but due to the Paraguayan anti-aircraft fire and the need to preserve the planes, it was done from a great height, so they were destroyed in the fall or fell into the hands of the enemy.
In the diplomatic field, Bolivia accepted the proposal of the Neutrals Commission to suspend hostilities by creating a two km neutralization belt around Boquerón. Paraguay did not accept it and maintained the initial position that previously Bolivia had to return the forts captured in the month of July.
On September 21, 8 days before the fall of Boquerón and the Bolivian general withdrawal, President Salamanca responded to General Osorio's impertinent memo of August 30, saying that as long as the army had followed his instructions, the capture of Toledo, Corrales and Boquerón and for not having done so, the Chuquisaca lagoon had been lost. He disputed the plan to attack from the north and maintained:
In my view, a war with Paraguay must be waged in the Southeast by concentrating there the possible forces to unload decisive blows that will allow us to impose a peace treaty in Asunción. Note by President Salamanca to General Osorio. (Vergara Vicuña, 1944, p. 39 v. 2)
The high command finally convinced Salamanca of the need to abandon Boquerón. A stormy meeting of several generals took place in Muñoz, the headquarters of the Bolivian command in Chaco, which almost ended with gunshots. This motivated General Quintanilla, on the 27th, to ask Marzana to endure ten more days while he organized a counterattack. Neither of these two things was possible due to the exhaustion of the Bolivian forces and the enemy's superiority in men and resources. The Bolivian high command refused to acknowledge that they had not foreseen the surprise Paraguayan strategy of attacking with their entire army. When Major Julio Aguirre, on September 10, informed Colonel Francisco Peña that there must be several thousand Paraguayans, because there were more than 400 soldiers on the Yujra-Boquerón road alone, he replied: "You saw visions... He enemy is cowardly and does not exceed a thousand men". A few days later, Peña changed his mind and informed General Quintanilla:
My division is now going through a very delicate situation. All the reports I receive let me know that the troops are completely demoralized and exhausted. We have tried three offensives with fresh forces, full of enthusiasm to well-defined objectives, none could be culminated in the overwhelming superiority of the adversary, both material and special combat instruction in the forest; any new offensive with the elements that I have had serious negative results, leading our staff to a sterile sacrifice. I would like to suggest a solid defense in Arce and a momentary diplomatic intervention to save the Marzana detachment in Boquerón and complete our preparation. Report from Peña to Quintanilla. (Arze Quiroga, 1952, p. 159 v. 2)
The Bolivian government found out about the fall of Boquerón from the news coming from Paraguay and Argentina. This forced him to withhold the information from the Bolivian people. Salamanca dismissed Filiberto Osorio and replaced him with General José L. Lanza in the midst of popular demonstrations, mainly in La Paz, who accused the Government and especially the high command for the defeat, asking for the return of General Hans Kundt. On October 8, 1932, Salamanca received a "protest" note (supposedly on behalf of officers of the 4th and 7th Division) where General Quintanilla and his Chief of Staff, Lieutenant Colonel David Toro, to the on the verge of insubordination, they held the president responsible for the military failure and expressed their offense at Osorio's removal.
In Boquerón, and in the unequal combats that took place in the surrounding area, Bolivia lost 1,500 men, between dead and prisoners, including the most experienced officers and soldiers in the Chaco theater of operations. In merit of the achievements, José Félix Estigarribia was promoted to colonel, a rank with which he would lead the entire Paraguayan army until September 1933.
Fall of the Arce fort and withdrawal towards Saavedra
After the capture of Boquerón, the Paraguayan army with 15,000 men continued its advance towards the Arce fort. Estigarribia reorganized his forces, creating the 4th Division under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Nicolás Delgado, an officer who had just arrived from France where he had completed his studies at the War College in that country.
For their part, the troops of the Peñaranda Detachment and auxiliary forces, exhausted and demoralized, withdrew towards Arce offering light resistance some 11 km from that fort. Paraguayan pressure caused three Bolivian regiments to abandon their positions without fighting:
In the afternoon of today [30 September 1932] there is movement among the soldiers and there are several groups heading away. We do the same and in the paper we leave our positions. It's a shameful act. He deserts all over the enemy. But right now nobody thinks. We arrived at Arce [dista] 5 leagues. Journal of Bolivian Lieutenant Germán Busch. (Brockmann, 2007, p. 222)
Estigarribia, very cautiously, sent a division along the Yujra-Arce road while a second advanced to the right to win the back of the enemy. The third remained as a reserve, assuming that taking Arce would be more difficult than Boquerón, where he had suffered some 2,000 casualties, including dead, wounded, and sick. In the advance, a Paraguayan patrol captured Lieutenant Colonel Humberto Cárdenas (commander of the Bolivian RI-35) who with 5 trucks was bogged down on the Arce-Yujra road. Facing Yujra, a fraction of the Bolivian Loa regiment was surrounded by the RI-1 Dos de Mayo and the RI-3 Corrales and in the course of a confused capitulation the Bolivian Major Francisco Arias, 7 officers and 80 soldiers were captured.
The Paraguayan army occupied the forts Ramírez and Castillo (October 8), Lara (October 11) and Yujra (October 12). On October 22, at dawn, the attack on Fort Arce began and by noon the Paraguayan regiments surrounded the Bolivian lines, coming out to their rear. Noticing this maneuver, four Bolivian regiments abandoned their positions completely demoralized. Colonel Peñaranda, fearing being surrounded, ordered the withdrawal.
War Minister Joaquín Espada Antezana, who was in Arce, tried to put some order in the human torrent that was heading south. It was inevitable to order a new withdrawal to Alihuatá. Anyway the crowd threw itself to the road and the paths, and even broke bush to mashes, abandoning their weapon everywhere. The thirst and exhaustion were annihilating many and the withdrawal routes were marked with the bodies in grotesque attitudes. (Brockmann, 2007, p. 213)
In the general lack of control, the Bolivian high command sent to the Arce fort, inside boxes with whiskey bottles, two vials containing Wrathful Vibrio, to contaminate the lagoons that were abandoned to the enemy and unleash a cholera epidemic in the Paraguayan army. Peñaranda handed over the vials and the relevant order to Dr. Gabriel Arze Quiroga, who happily, for moral and health reasons, disobeyed the order and buried the material that would have affected even the Bolivian troops.
On October 23, at 1:30 p.m., Paraguayan forces entered Fort Arce (renamed Fort France) finding it empty and in ruins due to the burning of its abandoned facilities, equipment, and weapons. The 4,000 defenders had retreated to Alihuatá and Saavedra.
The Paraguayan capture of Fort Arce, the command base of the Bolivian 4th Division, implied a great strategic advantage as it had a large water reservoir and was a junction of roads heading south and west. From there, the Paraguayan army occupied the Falcón (Rojas Silva) fort on the 25th; Alihuatá on the 26th and Fernández (Herrera) on October 30. Although it may seem paradoxical, this general withdrawal was the best the Bolivian army could do against a superior enemy, thereby buying valuable time until it could mobilize its resources. Estigarribia would have wanted them to fight in order to annihilate them.
The Bolivian army was only able to resist the Paraguayan advance 7 km from the Saavedra fort, on the edge of a long and wide grassland that the Paraguayans had to cross if they wanted to reach Muñoz. The 4th Division was positioned there under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Bernardino Bilbao Rioja, who replaced Peñaranda for health reasons. Meanwhile, criticism of President Salamanca and the high command were intensifying, calling for Kundt's return. General Quintanilla responded bitterly by saying that neither General Kundt nor anyone else could remedy the lack of troops, weapons, and organizational deficiencies that characterized the situation of the Bolivian army in the Chaco. Quintanilla relinquished command on October 11, 1932 to later suffer persecution, hostility, and confinement.
At the end of December 1932, the Bolivian army, under the command of its new commander, Bolivian-German General Hans Kundt, completed its mobilization. Given this circumstance, plus the beginning of the rainy season, the lengthening of logistics by 200 km, the lack of trucks, and the physical exhaustion of the soldiers after 3 months of offensive, Colonel Estigarribia decided to strategically switch to "active defense". » to confront the entire Bolivian army.
A visit made to the different infirmaries of the regiment, put me in a position to say that persisting in pauperizing causes noted in previous reports (insufficient ration, vigils, fatigue, nakedness, etc.) the soldiers are detaching ostensibly from day to day. [...] for days they have taken alarming increase an evil whose apparent manifestations are: generalized edema, muscle unrest and unrest. Report of Dr. Cañete, of Paraguayan healing. (Fernández, 1955, p. 330 v. 2)
On December 4, 1932, over the trenches at "km 7", Bolivian aviation captain Rafael Pabón, piloting a Vickers Scout type 143, confronted Lieutenant Trifón Benítez Vera who was piloting a Potez 25 A2, no. 6, which had Captain Ramón Ávalos Sánchez as an observer, and which ended with the destruction of the Paraguayan aircraft and the death of its two occupants.
Bolivian offensive (December 1932-August 1933)
Appointment of General Hans Kundt
The Bolivian army was the work of Hans Kundt, it was the army that paraded in perfect formations the days of civic remembrance, it was the army that carried out manoeuvres in the highlands causing concern in the governments of Chile and Peru, and it was also the army that had never been prepared for a campaign in tropical climate and forest terrain.(Querejazu Calvo, 1990, p. 55)
Salamanca summoned Kundt under pressure from the general belief that he could lead the Bolivian forces to victory and because it would allow him to control the senior army officers and the opposition political parties that after the Boquerón results they systematically denied their support. This choice was not easy because Kundt, during the previous governments of Saavedra and Siles, had made important enemies in the political parties and in the army. The requests for his prosecution for crimes, real or alleged, of receiving money for the purchase of weapons, selling secret codes to Paraguayans, wanting to offer his services to Chileans, dividing the army or instigating coups were fresh.
Kundt asked Salamanca for only a force of 25,000 men because "more soldiers [...] would hinder him and he did not want to impose more expenses on the country". His arrival as savior raised the morale and spirits of the citizens who asked for his return to Bolivia after the first three months of failures, which annoyed the officers of the Bolivian high command who felt his ability was undermined by the elderly officer German. Many feared him and either for that reason or by calculation they hid the truth, which led them to tell him in tactically dangerous situations that they had no problems.
His immediate collaborators were always very bizarre in his presence and concealed his thought and then depopulated behind his back, in public or in the circle of his cliques, calling him "choo", "inútil" and "ventive". Bolivian Lieutenant Colonel Félix Tabera (Tabera, 1979, p. 145)
There was the case of Lieutenant Colonel Ángel Rodríguez who had been expelled from the army in 1925 for having said that Kundt "wasn't even good for a squad corporal" and that later led to a trial by him and the publication of a book full of accusations by him. This situation of tension between Kundt and his subordinates continued until the day of his dismissal.
I didn't have a friend in the command to convey my concerns and complaints; it seemed that everyone formed a block, just to crush me personally, and make me fail in the campaign. General Hans Kundt.(Dunkerley, 1987, p. 220)
First attack on Nanawa
Red: Bolivian forces.
Blue: Paraguayan forces.
Kundt's initial order was for the Second Corps (8th and 3rd Division) to capture the Corrales, Toledo and Fernández forts, while the First Corps (7th Division formed by the forces defending the regions of Agua Rica, Murguía and Cuatro Vientos plus some regiments of the 4th Division) will take Nanawa.
The Nanawa fort was important because it opened up several strategic possibilities: advancing north to reach Arce-Isla Poí, the Paraguayan center of operations; or head east and exit to the Paraguay River in front of the city of Concepción.
After careful preparation, on January 20, 1933, the first battle of Nanawa was fought. Such was Kundt's confidence in his plan and in the ability of his troops that he ventured to forecast the time the fort would fall. The 7th Division, under the command of Colonel Gerardo Rodríguez, one of the best in the Bolivian army, with strong artillery support and the collaboration of twelve planes, divided into three columns with the idea of surrounding the fort and occupying it through frontal attacks.. The fort was defended by the Paraguayan 5th Division under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Luis Irrazábal, who had just finished his training course in Belgium.
On the north wing, the attackers prematurely closed their advance and collided with the right flank of the fortifications. The attack on the south wing did not prosper either. At one point in the battle, the 5th Paraguayan Division began to run out of ammunition due to the rains that made supplies difficult and the high consumption to stop the enemy attack. An airstrip was built so that planes could resupply the pillbox by airlift. After suffering heavy casualties as attacker, the Bolivian forces consolidated into an aggressive semi-circle around Nanawa. From February to June 1933, this front was stabilized with minor combats and artillery duels, a period in which both parties improved their respective positions.
The American historian Zook attributed the failure of the Bolivian attack to four factors:
- Insufficiency in coordination.
- Lack of necessary information before action.
- Violation of the principle of the economy of forces.
- Underestimate the opponent.
First battle of Fernández (Herrera)
The Bolivian 8th Division, commanded by Colonel Roberto Schnor, easily dislodged the Paraguayan RC-1 regiment from the Platanillos fort, a communications hub between Bolivian forts before the war. From there, on January 14, he advanced against the Fernández (Herrera) fort with only 575 soldiers assuming that the defenders would be about 200 soldiers.
However, the fort was defended by the RI-1 Dos de Mayo regiment under the command of Major Paulino Antola, who had about 1,000 men. Only on the 21st did the Bolivian forces attack the fort, but the lack of coordination, the frontal attack, the absence of reserves, and the surprising resistance of the defenders, which was five times higher than expected, produced some 300 casualties. Two days later, already with 2,400 men and the support of 4 guns, Colonel Schnor resumed operations.
The Paraguayan defenders repulsed the attack, causing casualties that reached 25% of the Bolivian forces. The Bolivian Colorados regiment was practically decimated.
On January 26, 1933, Schnor called off the attack and withdrew to Platanillos. General Kundt replaced Schnor and his chief of staff, Major Raúl Barrientos, with Colonel Rafael Morant and Major Alfredo Sánchez, respectively.
Battles of Corrales and Toledo
- Attack and counterattack in Corrales
On January 1, 1933, in compliance with General Kundt's Directive No. 2 (of December 27, 1932), the 3rd Division, commanded by Colonel Gamarra, attacked the Corrales fort. At 12:00, the Paraguayan captain Aguirre, facing the danger of being surrounded, left the fort heading for Toledo, forcing his way through.
Faced with this Bolivian incursion, on January 20, Estigarribia, misinformed about the number of enemy forces, ordered Lieutenant Colonel Ayala, stationed in Toledo, to attack the Corrales-Platanillos sector to relieve Bolivian pressure on Nanawa and Fernández (Herrera). Ayala, in command of the Second Army Corps (in formation), made up of two divisions, attacked Corrales from January 27 to 30 but, realizing the error, aggravated by problems in the supply of water and fuel that endangered his men decided to cancel the attack and retreat back to Toledo.
- Attack on the Toledo fort
Kundt, before this unusual withdrawal and the insistence of Lieutenant Colonel Toro, his chief of operations, ordered the 3rd Division reinforced with parts of the 8th Division to occupy Toledo and threaten the Mennonite Colony and the route of all Paraguayan logistics.
After a slow march of 22 days due to rain and mud, on February 25, the Bolivian 3rd Division, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Luis Gamarra, attacked, without any surprise, the Colonel Ayala's forces in Toledo. The Paraguayan unit had troops with no experience in combat, it lacked the regulatory weapons or the ones it had were obsolete. A plague of dysentery and typhoid affected many soldiers. For this reason and to increase control, Ayala organized the defense not in continuous lines but in centers of resistance that, like hedgehogs, pointed in all directions and left open spaces that served as real traps. Despite the support of artillery and 10 planes that bombarded and machine-gunned the entire area, the vigorous frontal attack of the Bolivian 3rd Division did not achieve its objective, suffering a large number of casualties. The Bolivian aviation support was deficient because the objective was covered by dense forests that facilitated the concealment of the enemy, due to the 150 km that the planes had to travel from Muñoz to Toledo and the complicated link between the command of the Second Corps located in Yayucubas and the air force command located in Muñoz.
Demoralization spread in various Bolivian regiments after the unsuccessful attacks carried out in the following days. To decompress the situation Kundt ordered the 8th Division:
Muñoz. 6-III-33. Time 15:00. C II. CE. Cif. 86/300. Day 9 in the early 8th Division must perform a demonstration attack on Fernandez [Herrera]. General Kundt to General Osorio.(Vergara Vicuña, 1944, p. 34 v. 4)
When Ayala ordered the counterattack on March 10, some Bolivian regiments, totally exhausted by the effort made, mutinied and fled without their officers, even shooting at the very forces that were trying to contain them. The battle ended on March 11 with the withdrawal of the decimated Bolivian 3rd Division to 15 km before Corrales where it established a defensive line.
Once again, the Bolivian high command did not concentrate a significant attack force in the area to achieve an objective that would have created serious concerns for the Paraguayan command. Kundt dismissed Lieutenant Colonel Gamarra and his Chief of Staff, Major Luis Añez, and appointed Colonel José M. Quintela and provisionally Lieutenant Armando Pereyra in his place. The latter, an excellent officer, would commit suicide four months later psychologically affected by the ferocity of the fighting in front of Toledo.
First battle of Alihuatá
The Bolivian offensive was paralyzed at its northern and southern ends, the 3rd Division between Corrales and Toledo and the 7th Division in front of Nanawa. The other two divisions also made no progress towards their objectives.
Between the 4th Division, which was still at Kilometer Seven, and the 8th and 3rd Divisions, which acted on the left wing, there was a gap of more than 50 km, with no solution of continuity. Kundt planned to attack through that sector to relieve the 4th Division that was still fighting at Kilometer Seven. With the recently created Reserve Division (9th Division) he came out surprisingly on the Paraguayan right flank, capturing the Alihuatá fort on March 13.
This attack, despite being well organized, had errors in its execution, which produced disproportionate casualties to the objective and the few Paraguayan soldiers who defended that logistics transit fort.
Paraguayan withdrawal from Campo Jordán
The capture of Alihuatá was a setback for Colonel Estigarribia who did not expect such a bold penetration. The Bolivian Campos regiment cut off the Alihuatá-Saavedra road, the supply route of the Paraguayan 1st Division, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Fernández, who was fighting at Kilometer Seven, Kilometer Twelve and Campo Jordán. In turn, the Bolivian 4th Division, with 3,000 men, increased the pressure on that division.
Estigarribia tried to take advantage by concentrating forces in Arce to envelop the 9th Division and asked Fernández to try to hold his position until March 20. Fernández, despite the request of his boss, seeing that the logistical situation was increasingly delicate, made the decision to abandon his position. The withdrawal of the 1st Paraguayan Division towards the Gondra area was perfectly planned along a road open to truck traffic, without loss of men or heavy material.
[...] in anticipation of our detachment, I already disposed from the 15th day that from the sunset the artillery bombarded the enemy positions [...] and that the troops make fire of harassment in a decreasing form until the half night shortening their duration in an hour [...] Every night that great crepitation of all weapons ended earlier, so that on the night of March 17, 1933, when the fire ceased at 19:00, the enemy did not realize at all that the first line was evacuated almost entirely. Lieutenant Colonel Carlos Fernández.
Second battle of Fernández (Herrera)
After the capture of Alihuatá, the Bolivian 9th Division attacked Arce (France) arriving 5 km from the fort. Three Bolivian regiments tried to break through the defenses, suffering heavy casualties equivalent to 33% of their troops. When Kundt realized that these defensive lines were not even the main ones, he ordered the attack to be called off. He then decided to attack Fernández (Herrera) again and then return to Arce from two directions, south and northwest.
On March 10, 1933, the Bolivian 8th Division, commanded by Colonel Rafael Morant, advanced towards Fernández (Herrera). This force was composed of 5 regiments and 2 artillery groups: 61 officers, 1,900 soldiers, 52 machine guns, 7 guns and aviation support.
Colonel Morant sent Colonel Luis Saavedra with two regiments to surround the fort and cut the road that connected it with Arce. The Saavedra column became disoriented in the mountains. Without knowing where the Saavedra group was, Morant began successive and bloody frontal attacks that were repelled by the Paraguayan defenders. When Saavedra finally reached his objective he was attacked by forces coming from Arce and had to return to his starting base.
On March 27, 1933, after several days of attacks, the Bolivian forces withdrew towards Platanillos. The significant casualties affected the morale of the Bolivian combatants. When the suspension of the attack and the withdrawal were ordered, the situation of the soldiers was not good:
They seemed to be resigned to die, absolutely lacking in feelings and totally insensitive. Persuasion, supplication and threat were used with them, with no result. We assured them that the Paraguayans used to castrate their prisoners, but remained unmovable [...] as a last resort, I took a desperate measure. I ordered the officers to cut rods from the trees and snatch those soldiers who refused to leave.Bolivian Officer Ovidio Quiroga Ochoa,
(Dunkerley, 1987, p. 251)
General Kundt criticized the actions of the commander of the 8th Division, which caused anger for being unfair and inconsiderate.
In six months of offensive, General Kundt had only managed to take Corrales, Alihuatá and correct the Paraguayan penetration at Kilometer Seven and Twelve. He then returned to his original plan: to capture the strategic fort Nanawa, to the south.
Diplomatic activity and declaration of war
On December 15, 1932, when the Bolivian army had reached its maximum power in the Chaco and the Paraguayan offensive was halted, the Neutrals Commission proposed the cessation of hostilities and the withdrawal and demobilization of the armies. The Paraguayan army had to retreat to the Paraguay River and the Bolivian army behind a line that went from Ballivian to Vitriones. This position was reinforced with the successive accession of 13 American countries plus the 5 that were on the Commission. Paraguay rejected it for being "neither satisfactory nor fair" since it left its army outside the Chaco while the Bolivian army remained in the middle of it. He also maintained that in order to "reestablish the rule of law, a severe investigation was necessary to point out the culprit of this iniquitous war."
In the months of December 1932 and January 1933, two mediation attempts carried out by Argentina and Chile separately failed, as members of the ABCP group (Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Peru) that is, bordering countries of Bolivia and Paraguay. The mediators requested:
- The suspension of hostilities.
- Withdraw armies from the area of operations.
- Submit the disputed matter to the Permanent Court of International Justice.
- Demobilization and return of prisoners.
On January 25, 1933, Argentina and Chile (now jointly), with the agreement of Brazil, confidentially sent to the Governments of Bolivia and Paraguay a new proposal that was later called Act de Mendoza, which was officially handed over a month later, on February 24. On February 27, Bolivia and Paraguay accepted the Act with a series of objections. The Paraguayan minister Vicente Rivarola, stationed in Buenos Aires, told his government that Bolivia was not going to accept the ABCP group's proposal, taking into account the position it had always held. He suggested that Paraguay should officially declare war on Bolivia in order to cut it off from any outside support and give its leaders a justification to change their position:
Bolivia, if it is to be overcome in the military field or in the field of diplomacy, will need to be, not by Paraguay, not even apparently, but by strange causes to the Chaco: by the injustices of the neighbors, by geographical inconveniences, by natural phenomena, since, within its idiosyncrasy, it will always need to present itself as a victim of the strongest and continue to cry for the errors of geography and for the injustices of its destiny.Letter from Vicente Rivarola to President Eusebio Ayala, March 1933,
in (Rivarola, 1982, p. 166)
During the month of March and a good part of April, negotiations stalled. For this reason, on April 21 and 22, the ABCP group urged the parties to suspend hostilities. On April 23, the Paraguayan government withdrew its objections to facilitate the negotiations, but Bolivia, three days later, objected to the pressure it was supposedly receiving from the ABCP group. On May 8, the governments of Chile and Argentina accused Bolivia of making the negotiation fail.
The Paraguayan government, recognizing that Bolivia was only trying to delay the proposals while maintaining the offensive unleashed since December 1932, with which it intended to win the war or, at least, a more favorable position to negotiate, decided to formally declare war to Bolivia on May 10, 1933. The objective, in addition to complicating the supply of arms and supplies to his opponent, was to eliminate the mediation of the Commission of Neutrals, led by the United States, which Paraguay presumed was favorable to Bolivia. Thus, said Commission, due to its systematic failures since before the war, ceased its activity as mediator on June 27, 1933.
Second attack on Nanawa
Red: Bolivian forces.
Blue: Paraguayan forces.
Paraguayan intelligence reports indicated that Kundt was massing large forces in front of Nanawa. Estigarribia's concern centered on determining whether the enemy planned to attack the fort or continue long and making a detour, coming out at the end of the Casado rail, in the rear of the entire Paraguayan army, or advancing east, towards the Paraguay River. and exit almost in front of the city of Concepción. When Kundt began the frontal attack against the fort, Estigarribia understood the mistake of his adversary and ordered Lieutenant Colonel Irrazábal to resist to the last man to achieve the greatest possible wear and tear on the Bolivian army.
Months before, Salamanca had warned Kundt:
Let me now express concern to you Government regarding attack Nanawa, where surely enemy has concentrated its elements and will make maximum effort [...] if we suffer a rejection, our situation in the Chaco will be lost, or little less.President Salamanca to General Kundt,
en (Cuadros Sánchez, 2003, p. 195)
Considering the political, military, and personal importance of the capture of Nanawa, Kundt concentrated everything he had to achieve that goal. In July 1933 he finished preparing for the attack. He had superiority in men, aircraft, and artillery. He had two groups of Vickers tanks and the new flamethrowers but he lacked good drivers. Colonel Gerardo Rodríguez, commander of the 7th Division, in charge of the attack, had inspected the first line only three times in the previous months and never completely. Kundt demanded that he do it more often:
Despite these measures, many have not been found. This shameful matter is cited to record how the collaboration of the subordinate commands was not always up to the operations and was not as active as the interests of Bolivia and the Army demanded it.General Hans Kundt,
in Kundt (1961, p. 90-91)
Nanawa's Paraguayan positions were substantially improved in the months after the first attack. The Bolivians used air force and tanks for close support and also had enormous artillery superiority, but frontal attacks lacked precise coordination between aircraft, artillery, tanks, and infantry.
The attackers managed to penetrate, with great heroism and waste of casualties, several sectors of the Paraguayan defensive system but, exhausted and decimated by the effort made, they were repulsed by the counterattack of the reserves.
The attack produced more than 2,000 Bolivian casualties compared to the 189 dead and 447 wounded Paraguayans, an expected proportion in an attack of this type. It was Kundt's first major defeat and it allowed Salamanca to insist that the operations had to be done economizing men. As early as June 1933, Kundt wanted to leave his post because of the intrigues of the officers under his command, but only in September did he make his resignation available to Salamanca, which was not accepted. Lieutenant Colonel Luis Irrazábal was promoted to colonel for his performance in the defense of Nanawa.
Siege in Gondra
Taking advantage of the concentration of forces in front of Nanawa and the subsequent failure of the Bolivian attack, Paraguayan Lieutenant Colonel Rafael Franco planned the destruction of the Bolivian 4th Division under the command of Colonel Peñaranda.
Faithful to his leadership style and contrary to military manuals, Franco opened a dive on the southern flank towards the enemy rear and sent a regiment more than 20 km from his base seeking to compensate for that risk with the multiplier effects of surprise. On July 11, 1933, the Paraguayan RI-4 regiment plus a reinforcement battalion advanced through that dive and the next day cut off the only enemy supply path almost at the Peñaranda command post and its divisional artillery. All of the 4th Division's medical was captured, especially an important drug park. Taking advantage of the confusion in the rear, Franco launched a frontal attack that penetrated the Bolivian positions. Kundt commented:
The command of the 4th Division, which during the night had given part of a great triumph obtained (in these parts there is never a lack of indication that the field is covered with [enemies] corpses), is seen in the light of the next day completely cut and threatened by the attack of superior forces since its rearguard. Development is very typical. No bookings available. Notwithstanding all indications from the Superior Command, the stews are completely abandoned.General Hans Kundt,
in Kundt (1961, p. 114)
However, three factors played against this ambitious operation:
- The mass of Paraguayan manoeuvre in the Bolivian rear was too weak to quickly achieve the disarticulation of enemy forces.
- The rapid decision of Peñaranda and Moscoso (in charge of the General Staff) to order the withdrawal of the 4th Division to Alihuatá by opening a bit towards the northwest called Picada de Salvación.
- The cold climate that allowed Bolivian forces to survive longer with the water reserves available at the time of the enemy attack.
When the Paraguayan forces finally cut off the escape route to Alihuatá on July 15, 1933, the 4th Division had completely slipped out of the encirclement.
Attack on the Rojas Silva (Falcón) fort
The attack on the Rojas Silva (Falcón) fort planned by Kundt had the objective of cutting off the supply route of the Paraguayan 1st Division that was defending Gondra and at the same time alleviating the compromised situation of the Bolivian 4th Division. It also had a psychological and political objective: after the failure at Nanawa and the withdrawal of the 4th Division from Gondra, Kundt wanted to take Rojas Silva (Falcón) making it coincide with August 6, 1933, Bolivian independence day, to erase the impression of the failure of his offensive and the loss of the initiative. Without waiting for reinforcements to rebuild his depleted and tired units, Kundt began a general demonstrative attack on the entire front to hide his intention to occupy the Gondra-Pirizal and Pirizal-Falcón roads, arriving, in the latter case, on August 4, to Campo Aceval, 15 km from Falcón.
Independently, on August 3, 1933, two regiments of the 9th Division, the RI-18 Junín (commanded by Major Condarco) and the RI-36 (commanded by Major Jorge Rodríguez), commanded Through the latter, they left Alihuatá and, opening a narrow path so as not to be detected, they left unexpectedly on the 5th in front of the Falcón fort after two days of exhausting march. The attack had to coincide with another in the Campo Aceval area. After this diversionary attack, the Paraguayan Battalion 40 regiment left to the south, leaving a clearing in the defense of the fort through which Rodríguez's column infiltrated, leaving at night behind a squadron of RC-9 Captain Bado and he reached the command post of his boss, Captain Nicolás Goldsmith, who was miraculously saved because he was machine-gunned while he slept. After the combat began, the Bolivian forces, who had easily captured the first lines, attacked the second line and, despite their exhaustion, tried to take it. But, the surprise lost and facing forces that came from all sides, Major Rodríguez, almost without ammunition and with his forces decimated, had to withdraw to the nearby mountains where, after a brief rest, he left dead and wounded and withdrew from back to Alihuatá.
Kundt repeated the mistake of sending insufficient forces at great distances, without reserve support and with little chance of achieving a favorable outcome despite the fact that in this circumstance he had achieved complete surprise.
Second Paraguayan offensive (September-December 1933)
The siege of Campo Grande
Red: Bolivian forces.
Blue: Paraguayan forces.
The transfer of Bolivian forces to sustain the attacks and counterattacks in the Bullo-Gondra zone weakened the advanced sector of the Alihuatá fort defended by three Bolivian units: the RC-2 Ballivián regiment, in Campo Grande, to the left of Alihuatá; the RI-27 Chacaltaya regiment, in the center, on the Alihuatá-Arce road; and a small company from the RI-18 Junín regiment, in Pozo Favorito.
The 7th Paraguayan Division, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Ortiz, upon verifying the weak link between them, planned three separate encirclements, the main one being the one against the Ballivián regiment.
The RI-4 Loa and RI-8 Ayacucho regiments were transferred from the south to help, but the Loa regiment also fell into the encirclement and the Ayacucho attack could not break the Paraguayan encirclement. Both General Kundt and his chief of operations, Lieutenant Colonel Toro, misjudged the intention, magnitude, and main direction of the Paraguayan attack, which led to a poor distribution of the Bolivian forces.
Due to the lack of water and increasing enemy harassment, on September 15, 1933, the Ballivián and Loa regiments capitulated. A total of 509 soldiers, with 2 chiefs, 11 officers, 3 medics and 10 non-commissioned officers surrendered. The company of the Junín regiment, surrounded in Pozo Favorito, also surrendered. In the center, the Chacaltaya regiment was able to save itself thanks to the RC-5 Lanza and RI-22 Campos regiments, which, after hard fighting, opened a gap through which they could escape.
"I don't know what to do. I think about committing suicide, surrendering to the enemy or going to Argentina," Kundt said. But Lieutenant Colonel Toro reassured him: "Don't worry, General, we'll see how to write the news." Kundt hid the results from President Salamanca: he did not mention the capture of the Junín company (I / RI-18) in Pozo Favorito, he stressed the liberation of Chacaltaya and regarding Campo Grande he commented:
An absolutely unsuspecting and inexplicable fact occurred. After victorious combat, considerable fractions of Loa and Ballivían regiments were left [sic] to surround completely. General Hans Kundt. (Querejazu Calvo, 1990, p. 86)
Colonel Estigarribia took advantage of the fact that the Bolivian army was attacking in the area of Pirizal and Gondra to strike north of Alihuatá, from Campo Grande to Pozo Favorito. This attack, totally unexpected due to its location and speed, put Kundt in the dilemma of continuing the attack or admitting that he had lost the initiative and had to defend himself. Without having the necessary information or not giving importance to what he received from his subordinates, Kundt assumed that the Paraguayan attack was merely "distractive." For this reason, reluctantly, he moved the reserves destined for his offensive, bringing them from Pirizal, Bullo, Gondra and even from Nanawa to break the Paraguayan encirclements when they had already consolidated and it was too late.
The battle of Campo Grande was the first sign of a change in the strategy of the Paraguayan army and a miniature rehearsal of what would come next. In merit to the realization of him Estigarribia was promoted to the rank of brigadier general.
Second Battle of Alihuatá
I cannot help but hide from you the anguishful pain that causes me to think of the bloodshed in the Chaco. I trust that you can save our cruel wear as soon as possible without compromising the final success of the campaign. President Salamanca to General Kundt.(Querejazu Calvo, 1990, p. 89)
Salamanca recommended Kundt not to repeat attacks like the one at Nanawa, suggesting a defensive strategy, with the lowest possible cost in lives and materials, that would wear down the enemy until it forced him to reach a reasonable peace treaty. He was no longer thinking, like a year before, of signing the end of the war in Asunción, the Paraguayan capital.
Bolivian Major Oscar Moscoso told General Kundt the deplorable state and inferiority of the Bolivian forces after the fighting from July to September and suggested a strategic withdrawal of 150 km, to the Magariños-Platanillos line, to rest there the soldiers and pre-concentrate a force of 80,000 men before retaking the initiative. Kundt objected that this would mean giving up many forts and that Bolivia did not have the resources to create and above all maintain such a large force in the Chaco. Moscoso pointed out that then there was a danger of losing the forts, men and weapons.
Paraguayan President Ayala traveled to the Chaco on October 3 to promote Estigarribia to the rank of General. At that meeting he approved the Operations Plan, where the Paraguayan army resumed the offensive attitude against its Bolivian counterpart, and promised to send the maximum resources to carry it out successfully.
On October 10, 1933, during his visit to La Paz, Kundt stated before Salamanca and his cabinet: «There is absolutely no possibility of defeat [...] we can wait in peace in our fortified positions [...] ] with the certainty of not losing ground". Taking advantage of this absence, Toro sent Roberto Bilbao La Vieja to the commands of the large units to gather unfavorable opinions about Kundt in order to achieve his removal.
On October 11, 1933, the representatives of Argentina and Brazil signed the Act of Rio de Janeiro in which they declared that the Chaco conflict could be resolved through arbitration. Paraguay accepted the proposal but Bolivia rejected it.
On October 23, 1933, after gathering significant forces and resources, Estigarribia began the first phase of the plan, which consisted of a series of holding attacks against the Bolivian 9th Division under the command of Colonel Carlos Banzer to push it to its main lines. Once the positions of the defenders, who put up a stubborn resistance, were established, he moved on to the second phase: encircling his left flank from the west. This maneuver was led by the Paraguayan 7th Division.
Throughout the month of November, the Paraguayan forces advanced on the left wing of the 9th Division, permanently outrunning it despite the reinforcements sent by Kundt, who was unaware of the enormous enemy superiority in that sector.
The initiative is in the hands of the Colonel [Paraguay] Help her make use of her vigorously. The Bolivian army combats the implacable will of its adversary. Paraguayan regiments attack, cling, infiltrate, assault all sectors of the broad front of battle.(Antezana Villagrán, 1982, p. 209 v. 2)
On December 3, 1933, taking advantage of a strong storm that made logistics and radio communications difficult, the vanguard of this powerful Paraguayan maneuver mass reached Camp 31 and cut the Saavedra-Alihuatá road, placing the 9th Division in danger of being taken over. That day, General Estigarribia personally assumed the tactical leadership of the operations, replacing the hesitant Colonel Ayala. Other Paraguayan forces cut a second route that through Pozo Negro also went to Saavedra. Seeing that he was not going to receive massive help to contain the impending encirclement, Banzer decided, on December 7, 1933, to withdraw his division by a third route that was still free. The Alihuatá fort was evacuated and set on fire, news that the government hid from the Bolivian people. The 7,000 men of the 9th Division quietly left the trenches and, exposing themselves to enemy siege and thirst, trudged southeast towards the 4th Division which was fighting in the Gondra area.
At that very moment, in distant Muñoz, headquarters of the high command, the encrypted communications of some Bolivian officers showed other concerns:
De Muñoz. 5/12/33. 11:40. For Villamontes. Figure 1/150. Please increase at order 10 bottles of Cinzano. For me another 10. A beer jar for Colonel Vázquez. Tell Acosta to lend me the missing money. Muñoz to Villamontes.(Querejazu Calvo, 1995, p. 191)
What Banzer could not foresee was that on December 7, 1933, at 4:35 a.m., the Gondra front in charge of the 4th Bolivian Division collapsed due to the surprise night attack, which on its own initiative, carried out by Lieutenant Colonel Rafael Franco in command of the 1st Paraguayan Division. The Bolivian division, exceeded in several sectors, had no other option than to retreat towards the same area where the 9th Division converged. This unexpected break even surprised General Estigarribia, who asked several times for confirmation that Franco was indeed advancing to the south, closing the escape routes for two Bolivian divisions.
Surrender in Campo Vía
The Bolivian 9th and 4th Division met in the area called Campo Vía where they were immobilized by the two arms of the Paraguayan pincer.
Thousands of earth-colored men circulated on the small field waiting for the departure order. Tripods, mortars, ammunition boxes, spare cannons, grenades, machine guns and rifles, equipment amen, were transported on the shoulders not on the back [...] [On a road] of five meters wide through the forest [...] rested our column of trucks [...] loaded with artillery pieces and ammunition for the various weapons, ora with tanks destined to supply water and gasoline, ora, finally, loaded with supplies, tents and equipment. Most of the 4th and 9th troops. Division that were detained in their march, covered how much free space remained on the route and above all, along the column of cars [...]. Thus, bottled [...] in the bit, reduced to a narrow radius of action, [...] any maneuver more than difficult became impossible [...] Such was our situation on the 9th of December in the afternoon, grave in the extreme and even more if it takes into account physical exhaustion and the consequent moral depression.Captain of Bolivian artillery Torres Ortiz of the 4th Division,
(Brockmann, 2007, p. 344)
On December 10, 1933, the ring was completed. Kundt considered the reports of the pilots and Banzer to be alarmist and incorrect, since he was convinced that the enemy army was not capable of carrying out coordinated operations with a large number of units (5 divisions) on such a wide front. Kundt reproached Peñaranda because he had inexplicably withdrawn from Kilometer Twenty-one towards Saavedra, to the south, and ordered him to return to that position to help the two encircled divisions. For his part, Banzer tried to open a dive to escape but the Paraguayan pressure, the thickness of the forest, the heat and the fatigue of the Bolivian sappers prevented his completion.
On December 10, 1933, at 5:00 p.m., the Bolivians tried to break through the siege but by mistake the Bolivian aviation bombed the forces of the RI-50 Murgia regiment under the command of Captain Antezana Villagrán, a fact that later some historians Bolivians tried to hide. Only the Lanza regiment, in a fierce fight and with heavy losses, managed to break through but very few soldiers managed to escape. On December 11, 1933, the two encircled divisions, without any options, had to surrender.
Bolivian losses were significant: 2,600 soldiers died and approximately 7,500 were taken prisoner (18 chiefs, 170 officers, 7,271 soldiers). In one fell swoop, more than two-thirds of the Bolivian army was destroyed. Only 1,500 men escaped, most of them belonging to Peñaranda's forces that were not inside the encirclement. When La Paz was informed that Peñaranda had been saved, he never clarified the situation and reaped it in his favor as if he were the hero of the day, which is why Salamanca promoted him instead of Kundt.
When on December 11, 1933, the ministers and Toro arrived in Muñoz to dismiss General Kundt, he received them at his command post:
He was no longer in the role of the god Thor, who would grind his mere existences of officials in anvil with his thunder hammer. Rather he slipped with bitterness that he felt sick and overwhelmed not only by the concerns of the campaign and its latest results but by the situation of his family and his business.Brockmann (2007, p. 323)
The surrender at Campo Vía provided Paraguay with a large quantity of weapons and equipment: 8,000 rifles, 536 machine guns, 25 mortars, 20 artillery pieces, 2 Vickers tanks, many trucks and a large quantity of ammunition. The rest of the Bolivian army withdrew towards Magariños.
In Muñoz, the Bolivian command center in the south, on December 14, 1933, at 10:00 a.m., in the midst of the bustle to evacuate the fort and destroy its facilities, the dismissed General Kundt boarded a Junkers 52 trimotor of Lloyd Aéreo Boliviano and left Chaco forever. In the afternoon, the Paraguayan Listening Service deciphered the following part:
De Muñoz, no. 319, December 14, 1933, 18:00. For Director Etapas. Villamontes. Figure 724/171. If there is no urgent charge for trimotor, you can bring tomorrow cigarettes, coca, alcohol, some bottles of pisco and sweet troupe pills that arrive in bad physical conditions.Figure 724/171,
in (Querejazu Calvo, 1995, p. 191)
That same day, 50 km to the east, with the presence of General Estigarribia, the Paraguayan flag replaced the Bolivian one on the mast of the Saavedra fort where it had flown since its founding in 1924. The Muñoz fort began to burn at sunset on December 19, 1933. The next day, after a light bombardment by Paraguayan artillery, the soldiers of the RC-7 San Martín slowly entered.
On December 24, 1933, at the Ballivián fort, the new headquarters of the Bolivian command, 200 km northwest of Campo Vía, the Bolivian officers met to celebrate Christmas: Enrique Peñaranda, Ángel Rodríguez, Óscar Moscoso, David Toro and his protégé Germán Busch.
The new leaders gathered around a long table to celebrate their cover. The disaster of Campo Vía was forgotten. The main culprit [Kundt] was confined [...] his spirits returned from freedom and joy. They were now the owners of the situation and would be able to show the country and the world that they could suffice themselves, leading the campaign as they could not do it either Quintanilla, Guillén, Lanza, or Kundt. The liquor ran without a fee. It was the first of the pararandas with which the members of those commands, with few exceptions, would add, to their failure as strategists, the fame of intemperant. Bolivian historian Querejazu Calvo. (Brockmann, 2007, p. 362)
Armistice and creation of the second Bolivian army
With the defeat suffered in Alihuatá and Campo Vía, the Bolivian army only had the 7th Division left, which had to withdraw from the Nanawa area towards Magariños. Lieutenant Colonel Franco's proposal to use all available trucks to rapidly advance towards Ballivián-Villamontes and finish off the rest of the Bolivian army did not prosper. President Ayala believed that he had won the war and that Bolivia, without an army, had no choice but to capitulate and sue for peace, and to allow time for diplomacy, he proposed an armistice that the Bolivian government immediately accepted.
The twenty-day armistice, from December 19, 1933 to January 6, 1934, entirely favored Bolivia. This country accepted the armistice to buy time and form a new army. During the first year and a half of the war, Bolivia had mobilized 77,000 men of whom only 7,000 combatants remained in Chaco (the 7th Division) and 8,000 men who provided various types of services. Of the remainder: 14,000 had died, 32,000 were evacuated due to injury or disease, 10,000 were taken prisoner, 6,000 deserted.
When the armistice expired, the new Bolivian army had a total of 18 regiments whose strength was greater than the one Kundt had commanded a year earlier.
But this new army had three drawbacks:
- Thousands of peasants whose lands were expropriated by the Bolivian landowners, resulting in several uprisings, were recruited as soldiers to fight in an inhospitable and sterile desert. The soldiers lacked good preparation and experience in combat; their morals and motivation were low. In many cases, soldiers were recruited not physically fit to support the demands of the theatre.
They complained about the poor and scarce food, the fear of the Chaco jungle and the executions of deserters that they were forced to witness.
In early 1934, the Bolivian high command recognized that 2 newly recruited soldiers were needed for every Paraguayan soldier to defend positions, provided they were well fed and supported by machine guns and artillery. To attack this relationship, he raised 4 Bolivian recruits for every Paraguayan soldier. This complicated the logistics, a problem that Kundt had already discussed the previous year, especially in the consumption of food, water and ammunition that the recruits used to waste:
If today the troop eats 600 grams, increasing the army cash, it would have to ration by 300 grams per soldier [...] My command has been quoted for not asking for more people. The reasons are in this report. They would have starved.General Kundt to President Salamanca;
(Dunkerley, 1987, p. 248)
- The officer's picture was very rough. The command of the regiments was given to captains or elders with little experience and foreign mercenaries, especially Chileans, were hired, who in the number of 105 entered from April to the end of 1934.
To the surprise of many, Chilean officials were able to overcome the barriers of nationality, race, colour, class and language that separated them from their soldiers. Unlike the Bolivian officials, who preferred to remain in the rear and flee to the first problem, the Chilean officers remained with their men in combat, withdrawal or surrender.De la Pedraja Tomán (2006, p. 468, note 10)
Despite the fact that this caused diplomatic friction between Paraguay and Chile, the Chilean mercenaries were treated by the Paraguayan army under the same rights that the Geneva Convention protected Bolivian combatants and prisoners and not under the legal figure of "combatants illegal" (with sentences of imprisonment and firing squad).
While the Paraguayan army was preparing students for officers, their Bolivian counterparts were enlisting them as soldiers, and the low training and number of officers is often attributed to the structure of Bolivian society, elitism, and racism. The friends and relatives of politicians and the youth of the bourgeoisie in all its layers occupied bureaucratic positions in the rear, thus avoiding going to the front lines. According to General Peñaranda, this lack of officers and classes transformed the Bolivian army into a "body without a soul".
- The defeat of Alihuatá-Campo Via did not improve the unity of the high command of the army with the government but rather the opposite. The cliques broke even more. When the new commander-in-chief wanted to appoint Colonel David Toro as head of the General Staff, several senior officials opposed him, so Peñaranda received a severe warning from Salamanca:
You are on the verge of a military rebellion against the foreign enemy. Reflect well and stop on time [...] His duty is to comply with the order I have already reiterated four times and that I now reiterate him for the fifth time.President Salamanca to General Peñaranda,
(Dunkerley, 1987, p. 224)
As a solution, Toro was appointed commander of the First Army Corps. He, in turn, appointed Germán Busch, a young 29-year-old officer without any training or experience in that function or in commanding large units, as Chief of Staff of that unit, who from then on appeared as his "protégé". » in the court that Toro organized around him with young officers, socialists, buffoons and poets where the pleasures of good food, drinks and women reigned.
As a symptom of this climate of insubordination within the army against President Salamanca, on April 5, 1934, the cadets of the Military College mutinied and, supported by the police, left their barracks and occupied a large part of the city of La Paz. This mutiny failed due to the lack of popular support and the military sector led by Peñaranda.
President Salamanca, increasingly doubting the effectiveness of the Bolivian military, tried to penetrate the "fief" that they had built in the Chaco in two ways:
- First, at the end of April 1934, he attempted to establish the position of Army Inspector General with the liaison function between the President and the High Command. He proposed for office a civilian, Dr. Joaquín Espada. The opposition of General Peñaranda and the immediate and undisciplined reaction of Lt. Col. Moscoso made Salamanca immediately ask for his resignation from Moscoso as head of the major state, which became effective despite the pleas against Peñaranda.
- Secondly, in the month of May 1934 the Czech military mission contracted by Salamanca consisted of five high-ranking officers, all in charge of General Vilem Placek to advise the Government in key sectors of the army. This measure also sparked the total disagreement of the heads of Bolivian Corps and Division.
Third Paraguayan offensive (January-December 1934)
The Paraguayan army, after this rest, continued its advance capturing the forts of Platanillos, Loa, Esteros, Jayucubas, while the Bolivian army, in a defensive attitude, tried to create various lines of containment. Starting from Campo Vía, the Paraguayan army began to suffer from the same problem that had afflicted its opponent since the beginning of the war: the lengthening of its logistics line. With a fleet of trucks always scarce, with covers and engines worn out from intensive use, in extremely hot conditions, and the need to transfer more men to take care of and maintain the fluidity of those supply lines, Estigarribia had to hold his strategic decisions to these logistical constraints. The capture of a large number of enemy soldiers in the different battles and encirclements, who had to be transferred to the rear, fed and above all provided with water, also made it difficult for the retreating Bolivian forces to pursue.
Fall of the Magariños fort and battle of Cañada Tarija
Magarinos
After the defeat at Campo Vía, the Bolivian high command decided to withdraw to the Magariños-La China line. There the Bolivian First Corps built the best defensive system of the entire war.
At the beginning of February 1934, the Paraguayan army advanced on the La China sector and verified that the Bolivians were transferring troops from Magariños to increase the defense. To stop this movement, on February 10, a demonstrative attack on the Magariños zone was planned to fix the greatest amount of Bolivian forces there. On the 11th, to the surprise of the Paraguayan command, the attack managed to open a gap of 300 m in that powerful defensive line through which the Paraguayans penetrated 7 km towards the enemy rear. The next day, the defenders abandoned the fortifications without fighting. The Bolivians had 60 casualties between dead and wounded, the Paraguayans 10 dead and 27 wounded. The Magariños fort was abandoned and destroyed by the Bolivians.
Cañada Tarija
In February 1934, the new Bolivian 9th Division was placed under the command of Colonel Francisco Peña. His mission was to defend the desert area of Picuiba, for which purpose he moved the RI-18 Montes, with 1,500 men, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Bavía towards Garrapatal towards Cañada Tarija. Peña located his command post in Carandaitý, outside the desert and 250 km from Garrapatal.
The Paraguayan high command assumed that these forces could affect their operations in front of the Ballivián fort and decided to attack them.
On March 20, 1934, the Paraguayan 6th Division, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Federico W. Smith, intercepted the RI-18 Montes in Cañada Tarija. The Bolivian major Juan Belmonte, located in Picuiba, was in charge of acting as a liaison between Bavía and the distant commander Peña. This forced him to make intensive use of radiotelegraphic means, which were intercepted and deciphered by the Paraguayans, which allowed him to anticipate his movements. For this reason this battle is also known as the "Battle of the Cryptographers".
The Paraguayan commander surrounded two Bolivian battalions, capturing the entire ammunition park of the regiment. Belmonte tried to save the fenced off but had to retreat towards Garrapatal.
The Bolivian regiment surrendered losing more than 1,000 men among dead, prisoners, wounded and missing, and all its weapons. His boss, Ángel Bavía, attempted suicide and was transferred to a Paraguayan hospital where he died on April 5, 1934. The new Bolivian codes, important maps and reports on the non-existence of water wells in the entire desert up to Carandaitý were captured.
On March 28, 1934, Paraguayan forces occupied Garrapatal and established defensive positions beyond the fort. The result of this battle seriously affected Bolivian public opinion as it showed that the new army was not yet up to the demands of the operations. What the Bolivian people were unaware of were the bacchanalia of Colonel Peña and his subordinates in Carandaitý with women brought from Villamontes and who were denounced by deputy Roberto Ballivián Yanguas at the secret meeting of Congress on August 20, 1934. There he said:
"Accumulated as were all the provisions intended for orgy, a band of the army was taken to threaten them [...] the chiefs and officers danced [of the 9th Division] disastrously with the daifas [...] neglected in the most criminal way their military duties."
Battle of Canada Strongest
The new Bolivian line had a great weakness: the open space between the two Army Corps that defended Ballivián. The Paraguayan command decided to penetrate through it until reaching the Pilcomayo River and isolating the Bolivian First Corps that was defending Ballivián. But the Bolivian aviation discovered the hidden pit that the Paraguayans opened in the mountains and in which they worked at night.
Red: Bolivian forces.
Blue: Paraguayan forces.
Colonel Ángel Rodríguez, of the Bolivian General Staff, decided to let the Paraguayans advance to a certain limit, in order to enclose them by means of a concentric maneuver that would unite regiments of the First and Second Corps behind them.
On May 10, 1934, the 9 regiments and the artillery that made up the First Paraguayan Corps advanced through the gap between the two Bolivian Corps without suspecting that they were walking into a trap. The powerful Bolivian 9th Division with 14,000 men, secretly transferred from the north, and divided into two columns, cut the El Lóbrego road in the rear of the 5,500 men of the Paraguayan 7th and 2nd Division and in their The advance closed in a Paraguayan battalion of 200 soldiers from the RI-16 Mariscal López ―under the command of Captain Joel Estigarribia―, who circumstantially ended up in the middle of the two columns.
Without any tactical need, the Bolivians insisted on annihilating it, surrounding it with a triple encirclement, thus losing the central objective of the maneuver and valuable time due to the stubborn resistance offered by that small Paraguayan unit. Due to this delay, the encirclement that the Bolivian Jordán and Loa regiments of the Second Corps, the northern arm of the encirclement, had to carry out, also failed. They reached the limit of their radius of maneuver and, unable to join the 9th Division, were left with their rear and flank exposed to enemy forces attempting to escape.
After the initial surprise and thanks to the delay in closing the two pincers, the Paraguayan regiments managed to leave by paths built for that purpose or not yet controlled, or they made their way by force. Several battalions of the 2nd Paraguayan Division that became disoriented in the bush during the withdrawal had no choice but to surrender.
The combat took place from May 18 to 25, 1934. The Bolivian army managed to capture 67 officers and 1,389 soldiers, more than half of those they would capture in the entire war. They belonged to the Sauce, Captain Bado, Dos de Mayo and Mariscal López regiments of the 2nd Division, which at first hesitated to withdraw and in doing so became disoriented in the bush with the consequent exhaustion of personnel. In addition to the prisoners, light weapons and ten trucks were captured. All the Paraguayan divisional artillery managed to evade the encirclement.
Paraguayan prisoners show a joyous, almost jovial semblance. You barely see a sad face. They talk to their officers with all naturality; they laugh, they seem satisfied with their situation, even though they bring their hands tied with strings [...] Paraguayan prisoners have always been characterized by their swollen altitude and above all by their absolute faith in the triumph of their army in this war. [...] "We are the Two of May," says a prisoner, white, bearded, who must be fried in the 40s. We were the best in the army, chosen people."Angel Lara, Bolivian ex-combatants and poet in Lara (1972, p. 58-59)
The battle of Cañada Strongest did not have the expected result due to the excellent strategic planning of the Bolivian General Staff: the annihilation of an entire Paraguayan Army Corps. However, its partial result strengthened the morale of the command, combatants and population of the country. For its part, the Paraguayan command learned not to underestimate the capacity of its opponent and re-adjusted all the security precautions that had been violated at the beginning of this battle: close and distant patrols, intelligence on the enemy (the Paraguayan General Staff did not knew that the 9th Division had moved in from the north) and the need for surprise for their offensive actions.
Stagnation of operations
.JPG)
Despite the setback in Cañada Strongest, the Paraguayan command insisted on occupying Ballivián. From June to the first half of August 1934, there were intense attacks and counterattacks, with the Bolivian forces bearing the brunt. The Bolivian historian and ex-combatant Hugo René Pol mentions the physical and mental state in which the Bolivian units found themselves after months of fighting:
It will be necessary to point out that fatigue and other factors [...] broke in more than once the morals of our wary units, as in the cases of the break of the fortified line of the denoted Perez regiment (R-3) in the early morning of 18 June [in Ballivián]. It was believed or argued that this break was due to a carelessness [...] However [...] on July 8, the Manchego regiment (R-12), in spite of the precautionary measures taken the night before, to the first pressure of the enemy left his positions [...] two days later, the development of an operation to envelop the enemy in his positions was maligned by the disband of the Colorado regiment (R-41), one of the best of the 1st Army Corps.Bolivian Officer Hugo René Pol,
in Pol (1945, p. 91)
These comments denounce the psychological condition that years later was called «combat fatigue», and that at that time was mistakenly confused with cowardice.
Red: Bolivian forces.
Blue: Paraguayan forces.
The war reached a balanced situation: the Bolivian army, by not abandoning Ballivián, lacked the necessary superiority to launch an offensive in another sector. In that fort were immobilized 18,000 soldiers, 20 cannons, 600 heavy machine guns, 200 trucks, 5 million rifle projectiles and 5,000 cannon and mortar grenades. The Paraguayan army also did not have the necessary superiority to capture Ballivián, which did not prevent it from carrying out an air attack with 4 Potez 25 planes on July 8, 1934, which damaged 5 Bolivian Curtiss-Wright Osprey planes, trucks, fuel tanks on the ground, aviation and the airstrip. Of the three Bolivian planes that went out in pursuit of the attackers, one was shot down, killing Bolivian Major Nery and his co-pilot, Lieutenant Dorado.
Faced with this situation, President Salamanca considered that the conditions existed for diplomatic action and that limits could be set on the lines reached by both armies. Previously, and to compensate for the bad results of the war, he thought that an area on the upper Paraguay River could be occupied, without a Paraguayan presence, for a future port towards the Atlantic. Salamanca assumed that this would in no way affect Paraguay or the diplomatic negotiations and for Bolivia it would justify, on the internal front, the war and its outcome. To this end, he began to form the Third Army Corps, under the command of General Lanza, despite the opposition of the high command who considered this plan, proposed by General Osorio in August 1932, as a diversion of resources. Due to the delay in the execution, on June 16, 1934, Salamanca claimed General Peñaranda:
His encryption 60 leads me to insist on that command in the project to prepare the campaign in the north to go to the Paraguay River. [...] Our presence in the Paraguay River would be a fatal blow to the enemy and victory for us. I judge that the most practical thing would be to prepare a campaign or a shock of surprise on Bahía Negra. As only the dry season is profitable it is convenient not to waste time.Figure of President Salamanca to General Peñaranda, in (Guachalla, 1978, p. 37)
Lightning flash towards Carandaitý
When General Estigarribia was informed that the new Bolivian Army Corps was targeting the upper Paraguay River, which could affect the Casado port from which the entire Paraguayan army was supplied, he ordered the immediate aerial exploration of that entire sector. On July 31, he advanced his command post to Fort Camacho, the first sign that he was thinking of modifying the main theater of operations, taking it to the most deserted area of the Chaco.
And this is the epic moment of the strategy of General Estigarribia, because through finite patients and great serenity of spirit was placed in the faithful of the balance in order to be stronger on the site and precise moments [...] to be able to counter [...] the new initiative and the numerical superiority of the opponent that he had had the talent of diluting in the gigantic scenario of the operations.Vergara Vicuña (1944, p. 686 v. 5)
On August 12, 1934, the Paraguayan pilot Peralta, when he was returning to his base after exploring that area, was attacked by a Bolivian plane that ended up being shot down. The deceased pilot turned out to be Major Pabón, who had destroyed a Paraguayan plane in December 1932.
Colonel Franco received the mission of occupying the 27 de Noviembre fort and logistically isolating the Ingavi fort, the starting point of the future Bolivian advance towards the upper Paraguay River. On August 13, 1934, he left Garrapatal and two days later he captured the Picuiba fort, taking 450 prisoners and a large batch of weapons at the cost of very few casualties and injuries. On the 17th, he seized the 27 de Noviembre fort, concluding his mission after advancing 120 km in just five days.
Realizing that he had surprised the Bolivian commando, Estigarribia allowed Franco's motorized force to turn west toward Carandaitý, now targeting the Parapetí River and the Bolivian oil zone.
At great speed and risk, on the 20th, the Paraguayan regiment RI-14 Cerro Corá, after traveling 100 km from the 27 de Noviembre fort, arrived near the Huirapitindí junction, 45 km from the Parapetí river. For its part, further south and in parallel, the Paraguayan 6th Division advanced 160 km in 13 days, through a desert with hills of sand and scrub, leaving behind its own artillery and retreating enemy forces. On August 22, he annihilated a Bolivian detachment in Algodonal under the command of the experienced Lieutenant Hugo René Pol, which produced many Bolivian casualties and the capture of an unused weapons depot.
This record of a célere advance with successive tactical action [...] results [in the] movement of the 6.a Paraguayan Division [a] precedent of Guderian's panzer divisions especially for water shortages on the way.Bolivian military and historian Antezana Villagrán,
in Antezana Villagrán (1982, p. 354 v. 2)
On August 27, 1934, the Paraguayan 6th Division arrived 5 km from Carandaitý, more than 50 km north of Villamontes, in the rear of the entire Bolivian army in the Chaco. At that point it had to stop due to the exhaustion of the soldiers and logistical problems due to the fact that the water had to be brought from Garrapatal, 250 km away to the southeast. The lack of this vital element was a constant concern for Colonel Franco who arranged to drill wells at different points.
The alarmed President Salamanca urgently traveled to the Chaco to solve this unexpected and dizzying Paraguayan advance.
Bolivian advance in the desert
After the urgent meeting at the Bolivian army command headquarters in Samayhuate where Salamanca, several ministers and all the high-ranking commanders of the army (Peñaranda, Toro, Sanjinéz, Bilbao and Rivera) were present, in which some proposed "processing peace in any condition" and even capitulation, it was agreed to form the so-called Cavalry Corps, made up of the best Bolivian regiments, whose command, for political reasons, was handed over to Colonel David Toro.
Faced with this new situation, General Estigarribia changed Colonel Franco's strategic mission. Now it had to slowly withdraw to progressively distance this powerful Bolivian force from the operations that were being planned in Cañada El Carmen, the central zone of the Bolivian device. Thus David Toro faced the most skilled and unpredictable officer of the Paraguayan army, Rafael Franco, the same one who, on his own initiative, had surprisingly closed the escape route of two Bolivian divisions in Campo Vía.
The strategic distribution of the Bolivian army in the Chaco, whose main mass was still in the Ballivián fort, was slowly modified by the transfer of forces to the northeast to form the Toro Cavalry Corps and the new Army Corps in command Colonel Bilbao Rioja in the Parapetí area:
It was [a] set [of] 20 000 men of magnificent troop and endowed with great firepower: worth adding, the flower and nata of the army.Vergara Vicuña (1944, p. 19 v. 6)
Thus, what Estigarribia had planned with Franco's maneuver towards Carandaitý began to be fulfilled: that the central zone (Cañada El Carmen) would weaken, making it possible to split the Bolivian army in two and isolate the forces located in the fort Ballivián, in the far south.
From the beginning of September 1934, the Cavalry Corps began the pursuit of the two divisions of the Second Paraguayan Corps. According to Colonel Toro, once that unit was destroyed, they would be "in a position to capture the bulk of the Paraguayan army that was operating against Ballivián-Villamontes to the west, isolate it from its main bases and force it, at least, into a disorderly retreat to the west." southeast". However, the Bolivian advance through the desert, in the middle of summer, against an enemy who, according to Estigarribia's plan, was to allow himself to be "nibbled" and flee, stretched his supply line, weakened his security and exhausted himself physically and morally. To the soldiers. From the Paraguayan side, the officers were aware that their soldiers were excellent in the offensive but that they did not adapt so easily to permanent withdrawal maneuvers.
Fence in Donkey Post
At the beginning of September 1934, Colonel Toro ordered the execution, through very detailed orders, of a wide linear fence with a radius of 50 km, in an area of very dense mountains that were difficult to cross. The two arms were to unite at Puesto Burro, in the rear of the Paraguayan 6th Division, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Paulino Antola. This maneuver suffered from various tactical deficiencies: the extent of the encirclement; the unequal dosing of the enveloping forces where the northern arm, which was the strongest, had to cover the greatest distance; and Colonel Toro's contemptuous assessment of the physical and maneuvering capacity of the few Paraguayan forces.
On September 5, Toro ordered his men to close the 6th Division, which was done just on the 8th day. [...] Without any trace of modesty in his personality, on 9th, Toro announced that his victory reminded him of the victory of the German army in Tannenberg, in the First World War. But precisely that day, while self-happiness for the triumph, the Paraguayans of the 6th Division ruined the celebration by quietly escaping through a gap.De la Pedraja Tomán (2006, p. 371-374)
Bolivian aviation dropped pamphlets urging the Paraguayans to surrender when they had slipped out of the encirclement. Toro blamed aviation for its lack of cooperation and its poor ability to detect, from the air, the movement and location of the enemy.
On the 10th, Major Ichazo informed Colonel Ángel Rodríguez, of the General Staff, that the encirclement had failed. He took the opportunity to warn him that the Bolivian forces, taking into account the logistical problems posed by the desert, should not go beyond Algodonal and only with small forces, while the bulk should be concentrated in Santa Fe, on the Parapetí River, and from there undertake an offensive action against the fort on November 27. Toro rejected these suggestions in a bad way because they left him in a secondary role:
We think of Ichazo that his actions for future operations are premature. We do not find enormous explanation for accumulation forces in the north, as with which I have, reinforced perhaps with [the regiment] Ingavi, we can take La Faye, fast operation as total enemy [which] operates [in] this sector is only 2461 men.Message from Colonel Toro to Colonel Rodriguez,
(Tabera, 1979, p. 246)
The following three months of fighting to reach La Faye showed Colonel Rodríguez's accurate strategic vision of not falling into the trap designed by Estigarribia that neither Peñaranda nor Toro took into account.
President Salamanca, on September 17, 1934, made a critical summary of all these actions:
With anguish I see that the enemy pushes us quickly and then stops us where he wants. In a blow he takes us to Carandaitý and now he attacks us in Algodonal and November 27. The worst thing is that it closes us [to the fore] Ingavi, breaking down the projects late received by that command.Message from President Salamanca to General Peñaranda,
in (Querejazu Calvo, 1981, p. 336)
Fence in Algodonal-La Rosa
On September 22, Toro once again surrounded the Paraguayan 6th Division in Algodonal, a maneuver that he considered "the best executed operation" of the entire campaign.
This linear detour was also imperfect because:
a) The south wing, where it was expected that the enemy would try to escape, was the weakest.
b) There was no coordination in time and place between both wings.
c) No meeting point was set for them.
Colonel Franco arranged, as a security method, to surround his forces externally with a large number of checkpoints made up of 3 or 4 men scattered in the desert, joined by liaison strikes that were covered by a soldier 2 or 3 times a day. This tenuous and sensitive web allowed him to detect in advance the movement of the enemy without them realizing that he had been detected.
Paraguayan Lieutenant Colonel Paulino Antola, before the Bolivian forces consolidate their positions, concentrated all his forces in one point. The Paraguayan regiment RC-1 Valois Rivarola broke through the lines of the RC-3 Chuquisaca and opened the siege of the entire Division towards La Rosa, from where it also managed to escape without problems. The Bolivian army carried out these envelopment and search maneuvers with great sacrifice and low.
The second meeting was the following day with the presence of Salamanca, Peñaranda, Tejada Sorzano and Rivera. As if the relations between Salamanca and the military commanders needed to be worse, Salamanca had in his hands a letter from Toro in which he claimed that his "victory" of Algodonal had not had enough coverage in the press. Toro stated that 7000 Bolivians had defeated 8000 Paraguayans who, without being able to escape through any breach, were forced to a massive attack to leave the fence above the bodies of Bolivian defenders. Toro seemed to overlook that despite the difficulties of the enemy to escape this did not transform him into a victory. It even doubled the size of the Paraguayan forces locked up and underestimated its own forces.Bruce W. Farcau, American historian,
in Farcau (1996, p. 188)
Colonel Franco prepared the defense of Yrendagué and to his surprise Toro stopped his advance to concentrate more units.
To prevent an attack from the Ravelo area, to the north, Estigarribia ordered the capture of the Ingavi fort. Franco sent a battalion of 150 men supported by 5 trucks that had been stationed in the Pitiantuta lagoon since July 1932. That unit, after a 220 km march through an impenetrable mountain, captured the fort on October 5, 1934.
- Cerco en Yrendagüé
On November 9, Colonel Toro, with three divisions plus two regiments that he managed to get out of the Second Corps, surrounded the 6th Division and the DRG (General Reserve Division) again in Yrendagüé. Toro hoped to achieve a great victory that would politically lead him to the presidency of Bolivia. He invited Generals Peñaranda and Rivera and Ministers Alvéstegui and Sanjinez to his command post to witness the course of the battle.
Once again the slow Bolivian grip allowed the Paraguayan forces full freedom to regroup. On November 11, 1934, Colonel Franco concentrated all his forces on the Bolivian Cochabamba Regiment, broke the encirclement and withdrew towards Picuiba. The Bolivian historian Luis F. Guachalla defined these maneuvers by Colonel Toro as "torista", which were characterized as:
Linear bearings with small radius and with an equivalent force on both wings of manoeuvre, which in practice annulled the effectiveness of a centre of gravity (...). The Paraguayan Command, acquaintance with this stereotypical modality, always had, with success and opportunity, what proceeded to do to mock these hooks destined to close behind their troops, i.e., it drained their troops through the still open space, or broke the necessarily weak fence line, or forcefully acted against one of the two wings of the rodeo by preventing or delaying the fulfillment of their task.Luis F. Guachalla, Bolivian historian,
in Guachalla (1978, p. 202)
Toro attributed the failure to Colonel Ayoroa and indirectly to his eternal rival, Colonel Bilbao Rioja, for not having helped him with his forces. He also mocked the capture of the November 27 fort carried out by the latter:
He did not miss the stage note on this memorable day. The forces of the Second Corps that advanced on the fort 27 of November announced by order of the [Bilbao Rioja] command that they had surrounded an enemy regiment. The part addressed to the ministers Alvéstegui and Sanjinés was promptly rectified. It was only an enemy battalion, resulting after there was no shadow inside the fence, ending the fences by making fire among them.Colonel David Toro,
en (Querejazu Calvo, 1981, p. 345)
At the end of November, the Paraguayan forces had to abandon the Picuíba fort to which they had retreated. Thus, what Colonel Franco achieved in 16 days (from Picuíba to Carandaitý), Colonel Toro reversed it in exhausting and costly three months of struggle (September to the end of November 1934). Years after the end of the war, Colonel Toro wrote in his book that "those actions constituted the most brilliant pages in our history." In 1944, Colonel Ángel Rodríguez criticized Toro's comments, saying that if he had adjudicated the withdrawal from Conchitas as a "victory", all the more reason for the Paraguayans to adjudicate the withdrawals from Carandaitý, Algodonal, La Rosa, etc., as victories. where, in addition to circumventing the pincers, they took Bolivian prisoners and weapons.
Battle of El Carmen
Red: Bolivian forces.
Blue: Paraguayan forces.
President Salamanca, as if he knew what was going to happen, tried to make some changes in the command of the Bolivian army. He asked that Colonel Bilbao Rioja replace Colonel Rivera in the post of chief of staff. Peñaranda and Toro opposed it, the first because he preferred his relative to continue in that position and the second because he feared that Bilbao Rioja would totally overshadow him. Shortly after, Salamanca agreed with Peñaranda that Lieutenant Colonel Moscoso would replace Colonel Ángel Rodríguez as chief of military operations, but Moscoso ended up taking charge of the Reserve Corps whose two well-equipped divisions with 10,000 men operated in the El Carmen.
On November 10, while Colonel Toro was trying to surround Colonel Franco's forces in Yrendagué, General Estigarribia began the best executed military maneuver in the entire Chaco conflict.
Three Paraguayan divisions surprisingly advanced on the 1st Bolivian Reserve Division under the command of Colonel Zacarías Murillo located in front of Cañada El Carmen, in the central sector, the weakest of the Bolivian line. The Paraguayan 1st Division attacked it frontally to fix it in position while the 8th and 2nd Divisions infiltrated its north and south flanks using previously relieved dives through distant patrols.
Despite the detection of enemy patrols on his northern flank and the Paraguayan ambush in which the Bolivian Major Celso Camacho of the General Staff died and who had important documentation in his possession, Murillo did not make any changes or attempt to withdraw as he would have left isolated the 18,000 men of the Bolivian First Army Corps defending the Ballivian fort south of El Carmen.
On November 11, I was invited to celebrate [sic] the birthday of Colonel Murillo with the usual serene of the eve where apart from the music, fire was nourished with all kinds of weapons available to the division. Edmundo Ariñez Zapata, surgeon at the Bolivian RC-20. (Ariñez Zapata, 1996)
Two days later, on November 13, 1934, forces of the Paraguayan 2nd Division appeared by surprise at the El Carmen fort, seizing the Division's ammunition park and almost capturing Colonel Murillo at his own command post. On November 16, his entire division was surrounded when the 8th Division, commanded by Colonel Garay, and the 2nd Division, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Rivas Ortellado, joined in his rear. Another Bolivian division also entered the trap, the 2nd Reserve Division under the command of Bolivian Colonel Walter Méndez, who came to the aid of the first without knowing the size or intention of the enemy.
As in the siege of Campo Vía, a year earlier, on November 16, 1934, the two divisions of the Bolivian Reserve Corps under the command of Colonel Óscar Moscoso, with more than 7,000 men, harassed by enemy pressure, the heat and the thirst, mixed and squeezed, and without any discipline, they began to give up. An important park of weapons and equipment was captured because these divisions were preparing to attack Colonel Rafael Franco's forces from the west in the Picuiba area.
The Teatro del cerco [...] could not be more desolate and sad. Forests in formation, with rachitic shrubs [...] with small leaves and thorny [...]. In this sad and hostile panorama the fences were grouped. Desperation reigned. They all had the semblant, the absent look, the dilated pupils, the sunk eyes, the dry and cracked lips, the vast majority suffered from hallucinations. Some were naked, digging with their hands deep holes where they penetrated, others crawled from one place to the other [...]. Report of the Director General of Paraguayan Health. (Querejazu Calvo, 1981, p. 379)
The Paraguayan army had to provide water and food, peremptorily, to that large number of prisoners that doubled its logistical capacity.
Many Bolivian prisoners were so weakened that by the outpouring of the trucks that led them to our rearguard they lost their balance and fell to the road, where no one picked them up. This is how the path of a tendal of corpses was filled, some killed by the thirst, others run over by the trucks that, due to the darkness or the dust, could not dodge them. General Estigarribia. (Estigarribia, 1950, p. 323-326)
Red: Bolivian forces.
Blue: Paraguayan forces.
As a consequence of this split in two of the Bolivian army, General Peñaranda ordered the immediate abandonment of the Ballivián fort to the south and the rapid withdrawal towards Villamontes before another 18,000 men could be isolated by the enemy. Thus, without fighting, the powerful Ballivián fort fell, which was a symbol of Bolivia's presence in the Chaco. This withdrawal was considered the best maneuver carried out by the Bolivian army during the war, favored by weakness, logistical problems and ignorance of the terrain that plagued the Paraguayan army.
On December 5, the Samayhuate facilities, the headquarters of Peñaranda's command since before the Battle of Strongest, were demolished and set on fire after being abandoned by soldiers, hospital personnel and civilians. Passing by, the demoralized and thirsty Bolivian soldiers retreating from Ballivián were able to see a mound almost 300 meters long of empty beer bottles, consumed by the Bolivian high command officers during their stay in the place. This confirmed that the abuse in the consumption of alcohol that Salamanca had denounced to Peñaranda in September 1934 was true and the name of "alto tomando" with which the soldiers called the Bolivian high command.
In a telegram, dated November 17, addressed to President Salamanca, General Peñaranda tried to justify the defeat of El Carmen:
Conclusion, fault material man the enemy possesses in first quality. We don't have enough officers or classes [our strength] is a soulless body [...]. The adversary, besides having initiative, [...] has in abundance official and classes [...] that gather their troops and guide their men. These facts [...] that were explained to V.E. verbally, have been confirmed in recent actions. General Peñaranda. (Arze Quiroga, 1974, p. 225 v. 4)
President Salamanca commented:
The defeat of Carmen came, which in my concept was inexcusable responsibility of the command. The most rude neglect or, little or less, knowing of the danger, caused this terrible disaster. I imagined that the command would be humiliated and that it was an occasion to renew it to save Bolivia. President Salamanca. (Arze Quiroga, 1974, p. 19 v. 4)
In his long struggle against what he considered the chronic ineptitude of Bolivian commanders, President Salamanca began searching for a replacement for Peñaranda, increasingly convinced that he lacked the knowledge and character to lead the Bolivian army.
"Corralito de Villamontes"
With enemy forces closing in on Villamontes, President Salamanca decided to personally travel to Villamontes to remove General Peñaranda and replace him with General José L. Lanza. Salamanca's relationship with Peñaranda was always harsh, bordering almost on insubordination. In a radiogram to Peñaranda, after the defeat at El Carmen and the withdrawal of Ballivián, Salamanca told him:
I let you know that the people no longer have confidence in command expertise. President Salamanca to General Peñaranda. (Querejazu Calvo, 1981, p. 363)
Peñaranda's response was no less violent:
Here on the line you think the same thing about your government and not why we are alarmed. General Peñaranda to President Salamanca. (Querejazu Calvo, 1981, p. 363)
It was Salamanca's mistake to leave La Paz and much more without proper custody. On November 27, 1934, politicized sectors of the Bolivian forces loyal to General Peñaranda and Colonel Toro, resisted the presidential order.
Troops led by Major Germán Bush surrounded the chalet of the Staudt house where President Salamanca had stayed. In the midst of the greatest force apparatus the president and captain of the Army [...] who did not even have a small escort was seized. (Urioste, 1940, p. 137)
Of all revolutions or coups in Bolivia, this was one of the most grotesque. Troops were extracted from the trenches and in the area of operations, 12 km from the enemy, the main leaders pointed cannons to the residence where the aged head of the Government was staying, surrounded her by soldiers armed with rifles and machine guns, and with Valencian attitudes, incited in some of them by the alcohol released during the night of vigil, demanded her and most demanding her. Salamanca signed the almost joyful document that the military, whom he had never estimated and those who blamed the disasters of the war, removed from their back a cross that had become too heavy and condemned themselves to the judgment of history, with an act that by the place and circumstances in which it was produced had the characteristics of a betrayal to the Homeland. Bolivian historian Querejazu Calvo. (Querejazu Calvo, 1977, p. 185)
Then the insurgents agreed with Vice President Tejada Sorzano to assume the first magistracy. It was the best encirclement that the Bolivian commanders managed to carry out in the entire war and Salamanca did not deprive himself of telling them.
Daniel Salamanca returned to Cochabamba by air. Eleven days later he would have had to endure the disaster of Yrendagué. In this way, he freed himself from the responsibility, but not from the fear that his illness had been increasing for a year: that Bolivia would have to sign peace in conditions of inferiority, with the Paraguayan army stepping on historically Bolivian territory because of the mistakes of the commanders. insurgents. Now that task was the responsibility of Tejada Sorzano, of Elio and his liberal co-religionists, or of the army that was beginning its march again to seize the Government of Bolivia.
Yrendagué Maneuver
Red: Bolivian forces.
Blue: Paraguayan forces.
Despite the Bolivian defeat at El Carmen (November 16, 1934) and the growing suspicion of many Bolivian officers about the inexplicable withdrawals of the Paraguayan Second Corps from favorable positions, Colonel Toro, after occupying Picuiba, continued advancing to evict him from La Faye:
[...] the troops of the Cavalry Corps, [...] exhausted in their stupid advance towards the Picuiba Desert, where it was far known by all, came skin and bones, were forced to work day and night in the forced services of exploration and security in the whimsical and triggered "offensive-defensive" device devised by Toro. Bolivian Lieutenant Colonel Félix Tabera. (Tabera, 1979, p. 408)
After equipping it again with the weapons captured from the Bolivians in El Carmen and a brief rest given to the soldiers, General Estigarribia returned the 8th Division to the Second Paraguayan Corps, so that at the beginning of December 1934 this he had 5,500 men. Even so his situation was difficult.
Before Toro concentrated more than 12,000 men on La Faye, Colonel Franco, true to his leadership style, planned the most daring and surprising maneuver of the war because it was almost impossible to carry out. The recently arrived 8th Division had to infiltrate between two Bolivian divisions towards the water wells of the Yrendagué fort. To do this, she had to travel 70 km of desert, in the middle of summer, with more than 45 degrees of heat in the shade, cross the mountains without opening a dive so as not to be detected by patrols and enemy aviation and take the fort to leave without water to the entire Bolivian Cavalry Corps deployed in the desert, between Picuiba and La Faye.
The 8th Paraguayan Division, under the command of Colonel Eugenio A. Garay, began the march on December 5, 1934 and with great effort and with its men on the verge of dehydration, it reached Yrendagué three days later, took the pillbox and wells, thus cutting off the enemy's water supply and communications.
The shocked Colonel Toro, his chief of staff, and the commanders of the two divisions were cut off in pleasant Carandaitý 100 miles away from their forces fighting in the desert opposite La Faye. Lieutenant Colonel Félix Tabera, circumstantially in charge of those units, ordered an immediate withdrawal to the 27 de Noviembre fort, assuming responsibility for that decision and against the orders that Toro sent by plane from Carandaitý without connection to reality. Without water, the Bolivian forces began to disintegrate. Many soldiers saved their lives by turning themselves in. On December 9 and 10, thousands of Bolivian soldiers, who had abandoned weapons and equipment, died of thirst or committed suicide scattered across the desert.
It was one of the cruelest battles of the war and produced a deep impression on the Bolivian people when they learned of the suffering suffered by the soldiers. Bolivian Colonel Díaz Arguedas estimated the deaths due to lack of water at several thousand, the prisoners at 3,000, and the loss of a large number of weapons abandoned in the desert: 60 Stokes Brandt mortars, 79 heavy machine guns, 498 light machine guns, 590 machine guns, 11,200 rifles and 200 trucks that went to the Paraguayan army. In the warehouses of Yrendagué, Paraguayan soldiers managed to rescue boxes with bottles of champagne, fine wines from the Rhine and an enormous amount of beer bottles from the flames.
Significantly, among the 3,000 prisoners captured were no Bolivian officers because they had abandoned their troops in the desert.
Toro—who at the time liked to call himself the "Bolivian Mussolini"—indicted his subordinates.
One should not finally take any consideration with the fatigue of the soldiers to whom it is of vital importance to demand maximum effort. One or two days of sacrifice can be enough to achieve the total annihilation of the enemy that has given us more than one example on this subject, showing that it is possible to live even months without the majority of resources (...) I demand greater decision and energy in the command. Message from Toro to Tabera. (Farcau, 1996, p. 215)
Colonel Ángel Rodríguez corporately justified the disaster by attributing it to a lack of officers, "bad luck", and Toro's "optimism". In the absence of an exemplary punishment by Peñaranda, officers of the Bolivian 8th Division tried to take justice into their own hands, they chose Lieutenant Gualberto Villarroel by lot to liquidate Colonel Toro for being the main person responsible for the Picuiba disaster, attempt that could not be carried out.
The American historian Bruce W. Farcau equated the driving of Colonel Franco with that of the American General George Patton in the Second World War: «Mobility depends more on the personality of the commander and his mental state than on the speed of the vehicles that they may have at their disposal."
Battle of Ybybobo
After the defeat at El Carmen and the abandonment of Ballivián, the Bolivian First Corps (4th and 9th Divisions) under the command of Colonel Enrique Frías established a new defensive line at Ybibobó, 70 km to the northwest from El Carmen, where the first Andean foothills begin. The 2,500 men of the 9th Division (commanded by Colonel Jenaro Blacutt), protected an 18km front.
Despite the fact that the Bolivian aviation discovered parts of a dive that the Paraguayans were building towards that place, the Bolivian command dismissed any possibility of an attack in that sector. On December 28, 1934, taking advantage of a storm, a Paraguayan division under the command of Major Alfredo Ramos infiltrated between the Bolivian 9th and 8th Divisions and cut off the 9th Division's path of retreat.
One night of rain, while our troops, because of the fatigue caused by the withdrawal, rested and slept covered with their tents, the enemy passes through our lines without firing a single shot, closing the Sucre and Aroma regiments, [...] The commands can do nothing if the troop does not sleep [...] and if there is a lack of officers that should monitor the troop. Bolivian military and historian Lechín Suárez. (Lechín Suárez, 1988, p. 395)
All lines of command collapsed in great confusion. The divisional artillery abandoned their positions at the beginning of the attack, many soldiers fled towards the Pilcomayo River, others broke the encirclement on their own initiative and the rest surrendered. In the first days of January, 1,200 Bolivian soldiers were taken prisoner and some 200 drowned at the Pilcomayo crossing. The 9th Division disintegrated, but Colonels Frías and Blacutt and other officers were saved.
Ybybobó was one of the three passes to access the first Andean mountain ranges and an important strategic point to attack Villamontes from the southeast.
Creation of the third Bolivian army and final battles
Battle of Villamontes
After the defeat of Ybibobó, the Bolivian command established a new line of defenses in Villamontes. With its arsenals, warehouses, and lines of communication, this town was Bolivia's last foothold in the Chaco. Its loss would have opened the road to Tarija, and taking into account the precarious Bolivian lines of communication, it would have left that entire area in the hands of the Paraguayans.
The task of defending Villamontes was entrusted to colonels Bernardino Bilbao Rioja and Óscar Moscoso. Supported by the large concentration of artillery and under the protection of extensive fortifications, the morale of the Bolivian army experienced an uptick. In the southern sector of the defensive system, the Pilcomayo River served as a natural defense for the Bolivian 4th Division, which entrenched itself along the southern bank of that river, which at that point no longer serves as the border with Argentina.
For his part, President Tejada Sorzano decreed, in December 1934, the mobilization of all Bolivians of military service age.
The Chaco war had been made for the Indians and the workers. The pariahs, who never enjoyed any right, are now overwhelmed by obligations; the homeland, which never gave them anything, now compels them to offer their lives in defence of national sovereignty. Once they are decimated, adolescents and the elderly, those who by their early or advanced age do not belong to that macabre amphitheater, are led to the forehead, to continue to give up their lives for a cause they do not know and understand. While the bourgeois, who previously sold health, now form legions of men afflicted by the most diverse diseases.Willy O. Muñoz,
in Muñoz (1986, p. 225-241)
This new Bolivian army, with its 36 regiments, doubled the previous one and, for the third time since the start of the war, Bolivia had a significant superiority of troops and means over Paraguay. But the problems remained the same: the massively conscripted soldiers, although well armed, lacked combat training and experience, coupled with very blatant defects in leadership. For this reason, and contrary to all expectations, the Paraguayan army, despite its numerical inferiority, scarce resources and long logistical line, maintained the initiative.
On January 11, 1935, two regiments of the Bolivian 3rd Division were surrounded in Capirendá, suffering 330 deaths and 200 prisoners, and the rest were forced to retreat towards Villamontes.
A Paraguayan detachment of 1,100 men, without artillery and reserve support, under the command of Major Caballero Irala, advanced almost 100 km from 27 de Noviembre towards the Parapetí river and after annihilating the Ingavi and Junín regiments and auxiliary battalions captured Amboró and Santa Fe on January 16 and 18 and advanced towards Casa Alta and Cambeití.
Red = Bolivian forces.
Blue = Paraguayan forces.
On January 23, Carandaitý fell into the hands of the Paraguayan DRG (General Reserve Division). From there the Paraguayan forces advanced on Boyuibé and on the 28th they dislodged the Bolivian divisions DC-1, DC-2 and DI-7 from that position, cutting the road that linked Villamontes with Santa Cruz de la Sierra.
Ten days later, in February 1935, the same forces surrounded the right flank of the Bolivian regiment RI-12 Manchego in Ñancorainza, in the middle of the mountains, but this, receiving help from the regiments of the 1st Cavalry Division (DC-1), could be saved and the Paraguayan forces had to withdraw again towards Boyuibé.
In a last-ditch effort to end the war, Paraguayan General Estigarribia decided to take Villamontes on February 13, 1935 with only 15,000 men and almost no artillery support. Colonel Bilbao Rioja with 21,000 men, not counting the officers and non-commissioned officers, air superiority, excellent fortifications and abundant artillery, was able to contain the successive Paraguayan attempts to widen the initial 3 km break that occurred in the Bolivian defensive line.. The attack failed with significant casualties for the Paraguayan attackers.
On April 5, 1935, a Paraguayan detachment of 2,600 men under the command of Colonel Garay, despite their inferior numbers and means, crossed the Parapetí River, evicting 5,000 soldiers belonging to two divisions from the west bank Bolivian forces under the command of Colonel Anze and after pushing them more than 50 km to the west, captured, on April 16 and for a few days, the Guaraní town of Charagua.
The political impact produced by the fall of Charagua and the threat it implied to the oil facilities of Standard Oil in Camiri and the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra forced the Bolivian command to prematurely launch its planned offensive to recover all the ground lost since January 1935. From April 14 to 16, the Bolivian army overwhelmed the Paraguayan lines in the central sector along the road to Camatindý. In the south, on April 19, 1935, the Bolivians retook Tarari, forcing Colonel Fernández and his forces to withdraw. Between April 24 and 27, two reinforced divisions firmly surrounded the Paraguayan 8th Division at Cambeiti:
Naturally that the future of Bolivian operations [...] and the pace to print the advance, depended [initially] on inflicting on the Paraguayan army a reluctant blow that would have stopped him traumatically [...]. And the Bolivian military thought and the country's cravings all settled in the Mount of Cambeiti, in which, for four days, an unknown febrile was held in suspense. Grande must have been the disenchantment when the Bolivian Superior Command [...] in a statement dated 28 April 1935 concluded with the hopes, very feasible by the way, that they had forged around the, until little, well anchored fence of the northern central sector.Lieutenant Colonel Vergara Vicuña,
in Vergara Vicuña (1944, p. 328 v. 7)
The Paraguayan 8th Division broke the encirclement at the strongest point and escaped through the labyrinthine ravines of the Aguaragüe mountain range.
In the north, the forces of Bolivian Colonel Anze slowly pushed the Garay Detachment towards the Parapetí River. The Bolivian counteroffensive recaptured the banks of that river but was unable to take the strategic Huirapitindí crossing from where Garay's forces could easily recapture the river.
The Bolivian offensive, despite the vast superiority in men and resources used, was limited in its results and was carried out at the cost of high casualties that reached 20% of the forces employed.
Two days had elapsed from the moment the Bolivian counter-offensive was unleashed [of April 14, 1935] and it could already be claimed that it had failed in its fundamental objectives [...] what had been seen in Carandaitý, Algodonal, Villazón and Picuiba during the counteroffensive of the Toro Cavalry Corps, September to November 1934, had repeated itself with mathematical precision.Lieutenant Colonel Vergara Vicuña,
(Guachalla, 1978, p. 201-202)
The Bolivian offensive stopped on May 16, 1935, when Paraguayan Colonel Rafael Franco retook the initiative with a surprise attack on the Bolivian Castrillo regiment that was guarding the strategic sector of Quebrada de Cuevo and recovered Mandeyapecuá, a town where it was presumed there were large oil reserves. Days later, the Paraguayan Valois Rivarola regiment tried to encircle two Bolivian regiments and smaller units, which hastily escaped towards Yohay.
Once again General Estigarribia thought of taking Villamontes but this time previously unleashing a real artillery attack on its defenders. To this end, it requested the Paraguayan navy to dismantle the forward binary cannons of 6 meters long and 120 millimeters in diameter each from the Humaitá gunboat to transport them 15 km from Villamontes and from that distance destroy their defenses. The railroad bridges were prepared, a means of transportation was designed to support the 5,500 kilos of weight, the construction of a cement support was planned to sustain the setback, and a large-capacity tractor was transported to Chaco to take it to the area of operations. The end of the war prevented the cannons of the Humaitá from acting on Villamontes.
Battle of Pozo del Tigre-Ingavi
At the end of April 1935, the 6th Bolivian Division, commanded by Colonel Ángel Ayoroa, made up of the RI-14 Florida regiments (under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Julio Bretel), and the RC-2 Ballivián (under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Julio Bretel) command of Lieutenant Colonel René Pantoja). With a total of 3,000 men, he began his approach to the Ingavi fort occupied by the 370 men of the López faction. The plan was to take Ingavi first and from there advance towards Fort Aroma (to the east) or Fort 27 de Noviembre (to the southwest). Estigarribia sent Lieutenant Colonel Cazal Rivarola with the order to prevent Ingavi from falling into enemy hands due to ongoing diplomatic talks and the strategic objective of keeping Bolivia as far as possible from the upper Paraguay River. Cazal Rivarola organized his force into three sparse regiments made up of veterans with years of combat.
The Bolivians captured Pozo del Tigre (Kilometer Fourteen), a forward position 14 km from the Ingavi fort and at the end of May they unsuccessfully attacked the fort, suffering some 100 casualties. While Colonel Arrieta replaced Colonel Ayoroa, Cazal Rivarola, with no more than 850 men, began to surround the RI-14 Florida regiment at Pozo del Tigre. On June 5, 1935, Paraguayan forces cut off the Ingavi-Ravelo road, in the rear of the RI-14. The RC-2 Ballivián regiment came to their aid and tried to open a breach without success. The support of the Bolivian 5th Division did not help either.
Between June 7 and 8, 1935, the battle of Ingavi ended with the capture of Lieutenant Colonel Bretel ―at that time commander of the surrounded Bolivian 6th Division―, of Majors Marcial Menacho Páez and Humberto Berndt Vivanco, a Chilean mercenary who was hired by the Bolivian army in January 1935, and who commanded the Ballivián regiment when he was taken prisoner.
2 chiefs, 7 officers and 361 soldiers were captured. The following days, the Paraguayan forces accelerated their advance towards Ravelo pursuing scattered Bolivian forces. The speed of the advance prevented them from being able to sustain themselves at Kilometer Twenty-five or at Kilometer Thirty-five (or Pozo del Bárbaro) where there was an important fortification. In the advance, prisoners were captured and especially trucks, weapons and provisions that facilitated the advance of Cazal Rivarola.
Colonel Toro blamed the result on the command of the Third Corps "for the misinterpretation" given to his strict directives. Nine years later, Colonel Ángel Rodríguez not only criticized Toro's attitude of shifting blame onto his subordinates, but also accused him of wanting to implement "pincers" in the Chaco and holding "Hinderburguian" ideas of cutting off enemy communications far away and with enough troops..
At that same moment, in Buenos Aires (Argentina), the parties agreed to sign, on June 12, 1935, a peace protocol. That day, Cazal Rivarola's troops, who had already advanced 32 km from Ingavi, were only 15 km from their new objective: Ravelo and the Bolivian oil installations. These facts influenced the Bolivian delegation to sign the peace protocol.
We practically lost the Chaco. Today the problem of war is linked to the disintegration of the departments of Santa Cruz and Tarija and the loss of our oil wealth. In the face of this situation we cannot cross our arms and speculate the drama, whose prolongation can cause the definitive ruin of the country.Tomás Manuel Elío (chief of the Bolivian delegation in Buenos Aires): Acts. Buenos Aires, Argentina, 5 June 1935;
(Guachalla, 1978, p. 207)
End of the war
The duration, the bad results and the list of casualties increased the discontent of the Bolivian people before the war. Only the military maintained that with time and resources victory could still be achieved. But this attitude was just to save face. In May 1935, in the middle of the Bolivian offensive on the Parapetí River, Colonel Ángel Rodríguez explained that to reach it, 50,000 men, 500 trucks, a large quantity of ammunition and sufficient monetary resources were needed to sustain the army's supplies for a long time.
If we do not have these elements, which are indispensable, peace should now be accepted that both armies are balanced.Bolivian colonel Angel Rodríguez,
in (Querejazu Calvo, 1981, p. 464)
On June 5, 1935, in Buenos Aires (Argentina), members of the Bolivian delegation that were analyzing the cessation of hostilities considered that the opinion of the army command, General Peñaranda and Colonel Toro should be sought. Faced with this request, the representative of the Bolivian army in the delegation, Colonel Ángel Rodríguez, stated: "I am the commando." Years later he would explain the reasons for that statement:
I was aware that this assertion could make it more entitled than any of the two that were left in Villamontes, planning shoots [refers to Peñaranda and Toro] [...] I immediately asked the Minister of Finance, Mr. Carlos Víctor Aramayo if there was money to continue the war. The Minister replied that there was no money. I immediately repuse, in my capacity as a military adviser and command person: "It is my opinion that the cessation of hostilities is accepted. As they look amazed at me by this statement, I go immediately to explain Colonel Toro's unsuccessful actions [...] and ended with this phrase: "I have the conviction that as we go, we will end up delivering our oil companies."Colonel Angel Rodríguez, head of Operations EMG Bolivian;
in (Vergara Vicuña, 1944, p. 672, v. 7) and (Querejazu Calvo, 1981, p. 463)
On June 12, 1935, in Buenos Aires (Argentina), the Peace Protocol was signed where the definitive cessation of hostilities was agreed on the basis of the positions reached up to that moment by the belligerents.
On July 18, 1935, at Puesto Merino, located in no man's land on the way to Villamontes, the first meeting between the commanders of both armies took place. The simplicity of the Paraguayan General Estigarribia contrasted with the decorations, belt and whip carried by the Bolivian General Peñaranda.
When making presentations the moment is exciting and solemn [...] The timely execution of the band, dissipated the tears that shone in the eyes of many of the present. Peñaranda, a reluctant man, trembles with emotion. Estigarribia has a sweet and quiet look.Uruguayan General Alfredo R. Campos,
en (Querejazu Calvo, 1990, p. 176)
Bordering Agreement
After long negotiations, the treaty to end the war was signed in Buenos Aires (Argentina) on July 21, 1938. Argentine Foreign Minister Carlos Saavedra Lamas, who had convened the Peace Conference in Buenos Aires, later obtained the Nobel Peace Prize in 1936 for his work in favor of peace and in particular for having inspired the Saavedra Lamas Antiwar Pact, signed by 21 nations and converted into an international legal instrument. He played an important role as a mediator to end the Chaco War.
The Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Limits, signed on July 21, 1938 in Buenos Aires, ended the war, granting Paraguay sovereignty over about 75% of the area in dispute, and giving Bolivia the remainder, including access to the Paraguay River.
On April 27, 2009, 74 years after the end of the war, Presidents Evo Morales (of Bolivia) and Fernando Lugo (of Paraguay) signed the definitive agreement on the territorial limits of the Chaco Boreal in Buenos Aires. The act was held in the presence of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (of Argentina), after acceptance by their respective foreign ministers of the Act of compliance and execution of the Treaty of peace, friendship and limits between Bolivia and Paraguay in 1938.
Bibliography Cited
Recommended bibliography
- Bejarano, Ramón Cesar (2010). Synthesis of the Chaco War. BVP.
- Salamanca Urey, Daniel (1976). Posthumous messages and memories. Cochabamba (Bolivia): Cinnamons.
- Salamanca Urey, Daniel (1951-1974). Documents for a History of the Chaco War. 4 vols. La Paz (Bolivia).
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