Bolivian Deputy Foreign Minister Juan Carlos Alurralde expressed harsh sentiments toward Chilean President Sebastián Piñera on Wednesday, comparing him unfavorably to former President Michelle Bachelet. The same day, American actor Sean Penn called for Chile to show more “solidarity” toward its Andean neighbor while meeting with the Bolivian President Evo Morales.
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The main dispute between Chile and Bolivia has its origins in the 1879 war of the Pacific in which Bolivia lost its coastal territory to Chile, making it a landlocked country. Desperate for access to the sea, Morales made renegotiating maritime access with Chile a cornerstone of his foreign policy.After Bachelet left office, these negotiations stalled, with both sides waiting for the other to make the first move. Bachelet was seen as more sympathetic to the more-leftist Morales, but the office of President is term-limited in Chile. Piñera has little incentive to make Morales look good by moving these talks forward, and both sides see this as an issue of nationalism. Bolivia needs little more than a strip of land to construct a highway and rail line. Morales, for his part, stands little chance of prevailing in the ICJ over a war that was fought more than 130 years ago.
In 2006, Morales and Bachelet agreed on a 13-point working plan to determine bilateral policy between the two countries. One point was the Bolivian petition for access to the Pacific Ocean.
Shortly after his election in 2010, Piñera created a bilateral body to address this maritime demand, but the body last met in February 2011. Then in March 2011, Morales announced his intention to bring the dispute to the UN’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague, due to the absence of “useful, feasible, and practical” solutions from the negotiations with Chile.
