Mariano Ignacio Prado
Mariano Ignacio Prado led Peru into the War of the Pacific and left the country in the middle of it. He first took power in 1865 by leading a revolt against a president who had signed a humiliating treaty with a Spanish squadron that had seized the guano islands. As dictator he formed an alliance with Chile, Ecuador and Bolivia, and Peruvian shore batteries drove the Spanish fleet off Callao in May 1866. It was the most popular thing any Peruvian government did in the century. He was elected president in his own right in 1876, into an inheritance of debt. The guano was running out, the state had borrowed against it in London, and Peru defaulted in 1876 with the largest debt in Latin America. The nitrate fields in the south were the remaining asset, and Peru had a secret defensive alliance with Bolivia over them. When Bolivia taxed a Chilean nitrate company in the Atacama in 1879, Chile occupied the port and then declared war on both. Peru had two ironclads and no army worth the name. Its navy fought well and lost, and after the capture of the Huascar in October the coast was open. In December 1879 Prado sailed for Europe, announcing that he was going to buy arms. Nicolas de Pierola took power in Lima within days. Peru lost the war, the nitrate provinces and a generation, and Prado's departure became the symbol of the whole disaster whatever his intention was. He returned in 1887, was tried and acquitted, and died in Paris.
- Lived: 1825 CE – 1901 CE
- Nationality: Peruvian
- Roles: head_of_state, politician
