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The Ten Cents War: Chile, Peru, and Bolivia in the War of the Pacific, 1879-1884. By Bruce W. Farcau. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2000. ISBN 0275-96925-8. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. 214. $62.50.
The Atacama desert, an and and forbidding region of the central Pacific coast of South America, became an area of contention that led to the War of the Pacific (1879-84) with Chile-the victor-versus a Peruvian-Bolivian alliance. In the Bolivian littoral and the Peruvian provinces of Tacna and Arica vast and profitable nitrate deposits were developed in the mid-nineteenth century by Chilean capital and labor. By the late 1870s the overwhelming Chilean presence in this region so concerned Peru and Bolivia that those two republics entered into a secret alliance to forestall their southern neighbor's ambitions. A minor tax on Chilean nitrate exports from the Bolivian port of Antofagasta gave rise to a dispute between La Paz and Santiago. Diplomacy failed to resolve the matter and by February of 1879, Chile was at war with...