Eduardo Abaroa

Eduardo Abaroa was a Bolivian civilian who died defending a bridge in 1879 and became the country's national hero. He was born in San Pedro de Atacama in 1838 and worked as a mining prospector and merchant in the Bolivian littoral — the coastal department the country held between Chile and Peru, with the nitrate deposits that were about to cause a war. The war began over a tax. Bolivia raised the export duty on a Chilean nitrate company in violation of a treaty, moved to confiscate the company when it refused to pay, and Chile landed troops at Antofagasta on 14 February 1879. The Bolivian force in the region amounted to a few dozen soldiers and a body of armed civilians. Abaroa was among some 135 men who took a position at the Topáter bridge outside Calama on 23 March against about 550 Chilean troops with artillery. The defence lasted a few hours. He was left holding the position with a handful of men and, called on to surrender, is reported to have answered with an obscenity to the effect that his grandmother might surrender, and was shot. Whether he said it is unverifiable and beside the point; the phrase is taught in Bolivian schools and the date is the Day of the Sea. Bolivia lost its entire coastline in the war and has demanded sovereign access ever since, taking the case to the International Court in 2013 and losing in 2018. Bolivia still maintains a navy on Lake Titicaca and on its rivers, with several thousand personnel and no coast to sail from. The statue of Abaroa stands in a square in La Paz named after him, facing west.

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