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Chaco War: Gran Chaco War
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Political leaders from Argentina and Bolivia are shown signing the peace treaty in Buenos Aires that brought an end to the Chaco War between Bolivia and Paraguay. More than 100,000 lives were lost during the Chaco War (1932-35), fought over a disputed territory called the Gran Chaco -- a desolate, semi-arid desert that contains the navigable Paraguay River. The river is a particularly strategic boon to South America's only landlocked nations, where oil was discovered in 1928. Paraguay received by far the largest share of the disputed territory, though the concessions to Bolivia included a corridor to the Paraguay River. Though not directly involved in the fighting, Argentina was a signatory to the peace treaty because of its status as a regional power. Other nations present at the Chaco Peace Conference were Brazil, Chile, Perú, Uruguay, and the United States.
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The Gran Chaco war was fought between Bolivia and Paraguay between 1932 and 1935. Paraguay being one of the most poor nations on earth could barely afford to equip her self adequately with small arms, aircraft and artillery never mind something as exotic and expensive as tanks or state of the art aircraft. Bolivia on the other hand had considerably better credit ratings abroad and could afford such luxuries. Consequently it was Bolivia that dominated the skies above the Gran Chaco and it was to her that the dubious honor fell of being the first (and to this day only) S-American country to use tanks in battle in a fully declared war against another nation on S-American soil.
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Chaco or Grand Chaco is a low, flat, alluvial plain northward from Asuncion, on the other side of the Rio Paraguay river. It is a very sparsely settled territory, three times bigger then the whole Czech republic. Chaco covers about 60% of the Paraguay and there live only3% of Paraguayan inhabitants. Chaco extends to Argentina and Bolivia. There is an unbelievable rate between the cows and people, which is 20:1. In the Chaco, there are several German colonies with modern factories, Indian colonies and otherwise nothing.
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Paraguay won almost all the battles of the Chaco War, often by encircling numerical and materially superior Bolivian units. Superior leadership and better familiarity with the country proved decisive. Paraguay's army was, in fact, limited only by her relative poverty and consequent lack of materiel. After 1932, almost all her trucks, artillery, machineguns, and small arms were obtained from captured Bolivian stocks. Paraguay's armies finished up outside the Bolivian fortess of Villa Montes, astride Bolivia's oil fields. By 1935, she had conquered all of the disputed territory in the Gran Chaco.
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The League failed to prevent the Chaco War between Bolivia and Paraguay in 1932 over the arid Gran Chaco region of South America. Although the region was sparsely populated, it gave control of the Paraguay River which would have given one of the two landlocked countries access to the Atlantic Ocean, and there was ... speculation, later proved incorrect, that the Chaco would be a rich source of petroleum. Border skirmishes throughout the late 1920s culminated in an all-out war in 1932, when the Bolivian army, following the orders of President Daniel Salamanca Urey, attacked a Paraguayan garrison at Vanguardia. Paraguay appealed to the League of Nations, but the League did not take action when the Pan-American conference offered to mediate instead.
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This article provides an assessment of how Paraguay, the weaker power, managed to defeat Bolivia in the 1932-35 Chaco War, fought over the disputed and remote Gran Chaco region that separated the two countries. The article argues that Paraguay’s logistical superiority was a decisive factor leading to victory in 1935. It uses a broad definition of logistics to include the acquisition of matériel before the war as well as the establishment of national and international supply lines during the war. Comparing and contrasting Bolivia and Paraguay in the period from the early 1920s to 1935, this article suggests that the preparation and development of an effective logistical infrastructure by Paraguay in the late 1920s and early 1930s were vital for the operational success that it had achieved on the battlefields of the Chaco by late 1933.
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Gran Chaco War