"...geography made the avenue of attack straightforwardly obvious. The amphibious landings at Mejillones forty miles north of Antofagasta were thus some of the bloodiest of the war so far, but the lessons learned at First and Second Iquique gave the joint task force of Marines, AEF soldiers and crack Peruvian companies sufficient covering firepower over the beaches for them to establish sufficient beachheads on the first day of the attack and drive six miles southwards into higher ground, and had completed their task of marching south to cut the Antofagasta garrison off from the Morro Moreno escarpment that guarded the bay on which the city sat, thus preventing any potential land-based attacks on the second, larger task force that landed at Antofagasta proper the next day. The subsequent battle took nearly seventy-two hours, but by its end the city was securely in Axis hands, with Chilean forces fleeing south by rail while they could to avoid being sandwiched between the seaborne Amero-Peruvian divisions and the Bolivian Army marching in from the east. On January 17, 1915, the Bolivian flag was raised over Antofagasta after more than three decades since it had been lost in the Saltpeter War, and unbeknownst to those there, that was not the only immediately important event occurring on that date in Chile.
Antofagasta was a hugely symbolic target, perhaps even more so than Iquique due to its role in totally cutting Bolivia off from the ocean. It had been seen in Chile as the crown jewel of its conquests in 1881 - indeed, perhaps the reason the war had begun to begin with - and it had been the heart of the global nitrate industry that had built Chilean wealth since. With it in American hands, the ability to supply Argentina via the Pacific and then Trans-Andean routes, while not particularly efficient, was now possible, and every month grew more sophisticated particularly as planes and blimps began to be deployed alongside donkey trains. [1] It also allowed Bolivia to begin turning its attention towards probing in the Acre Department of Brazil, pushing into the lowlands on its far eastern frontier which it had been forced to concede to its larger neighbor and opening up an irritating new front for the continent's budding hegemon, which also served to benefit the Argentines.
The Chilean Army had been adamant to the civilian government before the Sanfuentes Cabinet's mass resignation that the AEF was no longer the red-headed stepchild of the American war effort it had been for the entire summer of 1914 and that having cut its teeth in the violent disaster on the beaches of Iquique in September, it had beefed up its numbers and weaponry and now was a formidable, veteran and battle-hardened cadre that seemed to relish in its status as the misfit on the uncelebrated "fourth front" of the Army. To that end, General Boonen's missives had described a severely outmanned garrison in Antofagasta, which both Sanfuentes and then Riesco after him had each ignored. News of the Mejillones beachhead arrived to Boonen and he thereafter resolved that there was, quite simply, no way for the civilian government to credibly defend the Chilean republic. Antofagasta may have been a great distance from the capital - everything in Chile is at a tremendous distance north-to-south, with the fallen city being nearly seven hundred miles away - but it was not inconceivable that the Axis forces would now be able to march down the National Railroad and take Copiapo with Argentine support across the Andes, and then stage another landing at La Serena, and with that a land campaign for Santiago was not out of the question. Boonen gathered his staff on the evening of January 16th and informed them that the Army was, as discussed, going to take control of the capital as news of angry riots over Antofagasta's looming fall spread across Santiago and her environs, including an armed peasant's commune in the eastern foothills that threatened the ability of the Army to supply its hardened positions in the Uspallata Pass. And so, on January 17th, the so-called Boonen Putsch was put in motion, with the Inspector-General of the Army declaring in his Plan de Cuartel at the Santiago Barracks the formation of the "Committee of National Defense," of which he was to be "President Officer." It was generally well understood by all present that the long and noble history of constitutional government and the rule of law in Chile was with this declaration of a new governing body for the Republic that would focus "exclusively" on the conduct of the war essentially dead..."
- War in the Cone
"...studied as much for its flailing incompetence in its tactical execution as for its quick success in meeting its immediate operational objectives. The soldiers who were dispatched by Boonen were disciplined and understood their mission largely as being to secure order in the capital as it threatened to sink into anarchy similar to the Christmas riots; however, chaos rapidly spread. As the Presidential Palace of La Moneda was surrounded, a scuffle broke out between the soldiers sent to secure it and the Presidential Guard, who were not part of the regular Army but rather an elite constabulary paid for by the executive branch's accounts itself. President Riesco, curious and alarmed, approached a window on the second floor to see what was the matter, and a stray bullet struck him in the throat through the glass and he immediately collapsed, dead within moments. The freak nature of Riesco's death is the subject of considerable controversy in Chile to this day; that only his private secretary was witness to it and he subsequently disappeared a few weeks later, along with the ability of a stray shot to strike him so precisely, has fueled nearly a century's worth of conspiracy theories about the events of January 17-18 in Santiago. The angle of the shot and the chances of Riesco standing at just that window at just that exact moment have, as forensic and ballistics analysis have repeatedly shown, strongly suggest against his assassination as part of a conspiracy, but nonetheless his untimely death whether by accident or by murder badly destabilized a situation already spiraling out of control.
Suggesting against Riesco's killing as part of Boonen's plot is the fact that news of the President's death seems to have given the new would-be dictator of Chile cold feet as the putsch was happening, and only the fact that La Moneda and the halls of Congress had been successfully seized prevented him from balking entirely. Boonen's plan, after all, had been not to overthrow entirely the constitutional structures of Chile but rather supplant it by force for the remainder of the war; he envisioned himself a Cincinnatus rather than a Caesar. This somewhat delusional distinction between an all-out putsch and simply prying the oversight of the conduct of the war from civilian authority may seem immaterial to modern analysis, but was crucial in understanding Boonen's behavior during those heady January days. News of Riesco's death and soldiers in Congress led not to some embrace of this now Council of National Defense, as Boonen had hoped, but rather most of Congress resigning on principle, one by one, rather than be bossed around by the Army or potentially arrested. By the end of the day, the President lay dead, and Congress was a shell of itself as both conservatives of the old Coalition and the opposition elected not to legitimize what they regarded as an extra-constitutional farce by dealing directly with this "Council." Boonen had, in a matter of hours, essentially decapitated the Chilean government in the middle of a war. As this was, from all accounts, not what he had intended to do, it ranks second in the monstruous blunders made by Chilean policymakers during the summer of 1914-15 to the abdication of the entire Sanfuentes government in the span of an afternoon mere weeks earlier..."
- The Prussia of the West
"...Boonen's rise to serve as de facto President of Chile positioned Jorge Altamirano as the new Inspector-General of the Army, for Boonen and his new junta all agreed no man should hold both offices. Altamirano was a very different breed from the aristocratic Boonen; he came from middle-class roots and had a more reformist streak, sympathetic to the radicals and progressives of the Chilean Congress who were now handing in their resignations en masse as the constitutional order collapsed in the capital. As such, his promotion to Inspector-General and the resignations of a number of senior officers appalled by the coup created space for him to promote a cadre of his personal proteges to important posts on his staff, overnight transforming the Army's senior echelon from an old boys' club of sons and cousins of the most important landowners and oligarchs to a young, semi-revolutionary body upon which served names that would be hugely critical in Chilean history such as Carlos Ibanez, Arturo Puga, and of course Marmaduque Grove. [2] Puga was placed in charge of directing security for the new Committee of National Defense, particularly in Santiago, and his hesitance to arrest what would immediately emerge as the nucleus of political opposition essentially set the stage for all of Chilean history to come.
The early afternoon of January 18th, 1915 thus saw a country that had been transformed overnight. In the space of thirty hours, the Chile that had been and the Chile that would be were entirely different places, worlds apart. Antofagasta had been lost, the President was dead, the Army appeared to be in charge and Congress had self-dissolved before Boonen had a chance to. Nobody knew what would come next, and into that fray stepped Arturo Alessandri Palma, a young progressive lawyer and Deputy from Longavi. Alessandri was of the opposition to Sanfuentes, a reformist liberal democrat opposed to the oligarchic Coalition, but hardly a radical's radical. He was of upper-middle class extraction, well-educated but not intolerant of the working classes and land tenants. He was Catholic and personally quite devout, but no clericalist. And he was boundlessly ambitious, having been eyeing a run for the Presidency as early as 1916 despite being quite junior within his party, and if not he would settle for the consolation prize of a seat in the Senate - and he was not even fifty years old yet. Alessandri thus recognized advantage in the moment and gathered a group of supporters to a square near La Moneda, where perhaps the most famous speech in Chilean history and one of the most impactful in South American history was given.
The date of January 18th is celebrated in Chile precisely due to the Grito de 18 de Enero, in which Alessandri's supporters dragged out hastily-made coffins on which had been painted the words Coalicion and Oligarca, and an actual priest (Alessandri's parish priest, incidentally) read "last rites for the Oligarchy." In the ensuing speech, Alessandri with great flair called for "a revolution of the middle class, a revolution of democracy, a revolution of integrity, truth and possibility!" As much as the day before had marked the violent end of the old constitutional order, the 18 de Enero is what is honored with public holidays and major thoroughfares because it represented the possibility of what could come after the fall of the old Duopolist Coalition of landed conservatives and wealthy nitrate industrialist liberals. It is the date of death of the Old Republic not because of what died but what could live after, a promise made by Alessandri that Chileans, whether via the Socialist Republic or today's open democracy, have sought to deliver upon, and a pledge that made Alessandri immortal in his native country despite his very real shortcomings and flaws as a leader.
Alessandri's speech and the fact that he was not immediately arrested was in part due to Puga and other left-leaning officers' sympathy for him but also because he did not directly threaten Boonen or propose an armed insurrection; by the standards of the Socialists who would soon spill onto the scene to add another wrinkle to Chile's unraveling mess, the Grito de 18 de Enero was fairly tame and really just a proposal to institute some level of Alemist radical reforms. It was also something of a recognition that the war was likely lost, and a demand that civilian leadership reconstitute itself around the idea that they needed to come to terms with this and find a way to rapidly exit the war before the mounting problems became worse. To this end, Alessandri was not alone, and though he immediately became the most public face of opposition to both the Coalition as well as Boonen's junta, he was still junior enough to not be the leader of this opposition quite yet. Some of the most prominent liberal politicians and friends of Riesco had already gathered the night before and all morning to hash out next steps; the strong reaction to Alessandri's address on the 18th and the days after persuaded them that, indeed, there was a platform to peacefully oppose Boonen without tipping the country into civil war. The Figueroa brothers Javier and Emiliano immediately set to work putting together something of a government in internal exile, casting itself as a group for advocacy of civilian concerns parallel to the junta in theory but quietly challenging it in practice; the Figueroas were to the right of Alessandri but left of the Coalition, ironically right around the position of Boonen's provisional government. They were thus well-positioned to be the beneficiaries of any transition from military to civilian rule, sufficiently based in the needs of the middle class to not throw in with the true revolutionaries but also not tied enough to the Oligarchy whose time had clearly come to an end.
Not wanting to overplay their hand, though, the Figueroas acted perhaps too conservatively and too clever by half. They pointedly excluded Alessandri until it was no longer possible, allowing him to build his own base with what was left of the Radical Party, as they built out a "Provisional Council of the Republic" to serve as an alternative to Boonen's Committee. Hoping to serve as the power behind the throne and not take too much blame should things go awry, they steered into the Presidency of this council the octogenarian Alliance Senator Ramon Lucos Barros, who quickly set about promoting his own confidants to positions of authority around him, most importantly his new Chief Minister, Eliodoro Yanez, one of the most respected attorneys and Senators in the country, and tasking him with drafting a Constitution for his Council - a document which it was broadly understood would serve as the governing law of whatever new Chile emerged.
The immediate response, then, to Alessandri's populist polemic was unintentionally but effectively a talking shop for reformist but old and uninspiring lawyers who while not part of the oligarchy were nonetheless part of the establishment, an establishment that before long Alessandri himself would in many ways have become part of, and as a talking shop for old and uninspiring lawyers this "Provisional Council" seemed fairly toothless in addressing any of Chile's problems, not least the Boonen junta that mostly just ignored them or the key figures of the Oligarchy, both civilian and military, fleeing South while the broad but thin center bickered in Santiago..." [3]
- Between Two Chiles
"...responsibility for the strategic planning of the war thus fell largely on Pedro Pablo Dartnell, a German-trained infantry officer who had been among those most adamant that Antofagasta needed stronger reinforcements. With the city's fall, however, he began to suddenly change his tune, now suggesting instead that the focus of the war be entirely on protecting the Central Valley of Chile - where, to be fair, the supermajority of the country lived and where its crucial agriculture that would feed the civilian population was from - to the extent that he advocated evacuating the Andean passes entirely and making Santiago's hinterland a fortress. The strategic soundness of such a maneuver was debatable, of course, but Boonen overruled him quickly in one of the Committee of National Defense's first meetings after the putsch. Despite the relatively quiet action on that front for much of the war, Chile had indeed advanced further into Argentinean territory than the other way around even if not by much, and he was not about to see the only gains Santiago had realized surrendered. Beyond that, Boonen remained fearful of an Argentine offensive into Chile should they sense weakness. The Chilean mountaineer corps remained thus in the Andes, leaving the most elite soldiers unavailable to Dartnell and Altamirano until they absolutely had to be brought down to Santiago when there was simply no other choice.
Ironically, Boonen had shot himself in the foot more than he realized. Even if he had pulled Chilean forces down from the Andes, Argentina had thinned their forces on their lines considerably to prepare for battles to come on their front with Brazil. He had thus left his best men "counting llamas," as the joke went [4], when Argentina would never have been in a position to take advantage of a drawdown anyways..."
- War in the Cone
[1] More on this later.
[2] The first but not last time you'll see these names, including that of Marmaduque Grove, arguably the best name in the history of names.
[3] Sustainable!
[4] A line from one of my favorite films, The Secret in their Eyes
en.wikipedia.org
