Word: chiles
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Chile, with 79,600 men under arms (v. 63,000 for the Peruvians), would be the underdog in any set-to with its northern neighbor, partly because it has found modern weapons almost impossible to buy. Reason: the U.S. and Britain have imposed tight embargoes on sales of arms to General Augusto Pinochet's regime because of its callous record on human rights. Although Chile has begun receiving about 50 American F-5E and A-37 warplanes, ordered before the embargo, they may not be a match for Peru's Russian-made Su-22s, especially if Soviet training...
American-made F-4 Phantoms, which can easily handle the Su-22s and are eagerly sought by Chile's air force, are barred by the embargo. Chilean commanders also feel that they desperately need better tanks and more antitank and antiaircraft missiles. While Santiago has been able to make some purchases from private arms traders, the weapons acquired have been relatively unsophisticated and expensive. Moans a senior military analyst in Santiago: "Chile gets less for more...
Rich Deposits. The issue inflaming the Chilean and Peruvian nationalism, which is pulling the two countries to the brink of war, is possession of the Atacama Desert's rich deposits of copper, silver and nitrates. Peru lost the land to Chile during the War of the Pacific (1879-1883). Since then, Peruvian leaders occasionally have talked about regaining the lost territory, hinting that this would be accomplished by the war's centenary-now only two years away...
Some of the recent increase in bellicosity on both sides may reflect calculated attempts by both Chile's Pinochet and Peruvian President Francisco Morales Bermudez to take their countrymen's minds off the soaring inflation and unemployment that plague both nations. Yet the Peruvians' century-old bitter hatred toward their southern neighbors is real and runs deep. To this day, for example, misbehaving Peruvian children are disciplined with the threat: "You'll be given to the Chileans." The anti-Chilean mood has intensified with the approach of the centenary...
...further recent irritation in Peruvian-Chilean relations has been the two countries' inability to agree on a formula for giving the Bolivians the access to the sea they lost when, as an ally of Peru, they were also defeated in the War of the Pacific. Chile recently offered to cede a strip along its border with Peru to Bolivia as a corridor to the sea. But Peru objected and invoked its right, obtained under a 1929 treaty, to veto any further change in status of territory that had once belonged to it. One reason for its objection is that...