Of Bolivia’s many domestic and international concerns, one issue has had a persistent, pervasive, and perennial influence on the country’s politics and psyche: the struggle for a sovereign outlet to the Pacific Ocean. Ever since Bolivia lost its coastal province in the 19th-century War of the Pacific, governments of every persuasion have promoted both bilateral and multilateral efforts to regain a sovereign seaport. The classic dilemma that has bedeviled every Bolivian government is how to negotiate from a position of strength with Chile and Peru when the government is weak and being assailed at home. In other words, internal weakness and instability translate directly into weak and ineffective seacoast diplomacy.
This domestic vulnerability has especially been the case for Bolivian governments since 2003. Nationalist anger over the lost seacoast brought down Sanchez de Lozada when his plans to export Bolivian natural gas via Chile became known. Nationalist xenophobia also unseated Mesa when he failed to insulate natural gas policy from the ongoing seacoast debate. Bolivia’s natural gas riches, which Chile has been anxious to import for its own use as well as industrialize for further export from its Pacific port, provided a strong economic incentive for favorable bilateral talks. However, Peru lobbied for its own interests and played the spoiler in any possible rapprochement between its neighbors.
The elections of Michelle Bachelet and Evo Morales provided another promising opportunity for dialogue—in a long line of bilateral talks held among democratic Chilean and Bolivian presidents since the 1980s. There was real potential that the two like-minded heads of state could make some progress toward an accommodation. Both presidents genuinely liked each other, but as the history of Bolivia’s seacoast diplomacy has shown, friendly personal feelings alone are not enough for a resolution to this perennial problem. Moreover, Morales was faced with the same dilemma of his predecessors. Bolivia’s internal violence from 2006 to 2009, which often skirted civil war, has severely undercut the Morales administration’s ability to advance on the issue of la salida al mar (the outlet to the sea).
Indeed, the tables have turned somewhat in Chile’s favor. As oil and gas prices have fallen precipitously from 2008 to 2009, both Brazil and Argentina, Bolivia’s main markets for its natural gas, are buying less and paying less for what they buy. This has greatly reduced Bolivia’s export earnings and increased the need to diversify its markets. Chile as a market for Bolivian natural gas is looking better every day. In early April 2009, Bolivia’s minister of planning floated the idea of future natural gas sales to Chile. Of course, a central element in the government’s proposal was the seacoast question. The bedrock Bolivian position, eloquently expressed by the Carlos Mesa government, had not changed: “Not a molecule of gas for Chile” without prior resolution of the seacoast issue. Unfortunately, this rigid position had been a nonstarter in the past and was unlikely to deliver different results for the Morales government.
World History
