Rodolfo Becerra writes in El Diario:
The terrible question of the confinement of Bolivia is a chapter that should shame America, because it is not alone in the dispossession of its ports, nor in the closure of its territory connected to the sea nor in the usurpation of its considerable natural resources or in confinement of the Bolivian people behind the Andes. The confinement came deeper, to the psychological confinement of the Bolivian people, to their asphyxia and isolation from their peers.
If at the beginning of the brutal Chilean aggression to the Bolivian coast, Peru was called to defend Bolivia, this situation changed the initial effects when Chile declared war on Peru. Then it is Bolivia that goes to Peru, where Bolivia acted as an ally by virtue of the Defensive Treaty of February 6, 1873, defending Peruvian soil. The strife against Bolivia was practically non-existent. Chile carried out an invasion and a de facto occupation against Bolivia, in which the most scandalous plunder and most outright robbery was practiced, imposing historical falsifications that served as pretexts for the Chilean ambition to seize the nitrate territories of Peru and Bolivia.
The fraudulent procedure with which Chile has deceived the world to seize large territories of Peru and Bolivia is frightening, to the point of amputating the latter from its most vital part and turning it into a tributary with ruinous purposes. The frauds we will refer to in the following notes, which for more than a century the eminent personages of the countries involved did not perceive to denounce them:
The fraud of the Law of October 31, 1842.
The fraud of 10 cents and the nonexistent violation of Art. IV of the Treaty of August 6, 1874.
The fraud of the declaration of war from Bolivia to Chile.
Fraud of the Treaty Resolution of August 6, 1874.
The fraud of the claim of the territory of parallels 24 to 23.
The fraud of war indemnities against Bolivia.
Fraudulent boundaries of the border between Chile and Bolivia.
The nullity of the protocol of November 15, 1904.
The fraud of the Peace and What won Bolivia with the Peace?
THE FRAUD OF THE CHILEAN LAW
OF OCTOBER 31, 1842
The neighborhood of Chile with Bolivia was ungrateful since the early Republicans and even from colonial times. Speaking only about the Republican era, it began with illegitimate meddling in the internal affairs of the Bolivian Peru Confederation, invading Peru on two occasions, the first with Blanco Encalada, whose final, generous on behalf of Marshal Andrés de Santa Cruz, was answered with the lack of knowledge of the Capitulation that he granted him, becoming defeated in the second, with the help of the disaffected Peruvians, in Yungay, where many Bolivians perished under the inclemency of the rotation. If on that occasion, Santa Cruz had destroyed the invading army, the Pacific War would never have occurred.
Discovered the wealth in the Atacama Desert, the Chilean invasion of Bolivia begins, by enacting the law of October 31, 1842, declaring Chilean ownership of the guards of Atacama, of full Bolivian sovereignty, no matter how many lies the Chilean people make; to Bolivia’s claims they delayed with dilatory responses.
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Bolivian Thoughts 