Prisoners of the Chaco: The Bolivian Experience of Captivity

Introduction

Scholarship on the Chaco War unfortunately presents more questions than it answers despite it being one of the most important events in reshaping and advancing Bolivia’s social, political, and economic transformation in the twentieth century. Set against the background of a long-standing frontier dispute, Bolivia – like much of Latin America – had been experiencing dramatic political transformation in the first decades of the twentieth century, including responding to global economic forces. ¹ While numerous memoirs and observations of the war have been written, the important issue of captives reveals surprisingly little information. ² By better understanding the experience of captivity and war in the Chaco we can continue to elaborate on the larger history of the conflict and how it transformed the respective societies. ³ After all, Bolivia and Paraguay battled between 1932 and 1935 in what unfolded as an epic struggle over land that had limited usefulness and potential, described even at the time as ‘inhospitable’. ⁴

One aspect that makes the Chaco War so interesting and demands further attention is the sheer quantity of people who took part in the struggle. More than 200,000 Bolivian soldiers fought in the war out of a total population of less than 2.5 million, which compares to the rate of conscription in the American Civil War. ⁵ At least 50,000 Bolivians died, almost 10,000 went missing, and another 20,000 were taken prisoner. ⁶ Some battles saw the capture of almost a thousand men, including at Boquerón, where 844 Bolivians fell into captivity, including two lieutenant colonels, two majors, and three captains. ⁷ Fighting took on epic proportions owing in part to the extreme climate in the Chaco, which made potable water a constant problem for the Bolivians who were forced to transport it along their extended network. ⁸ On the Paraguayan side, fewer numbers of soldiers fought and died but proportionally to the population it was even worse than Bolivia. The biggest difference, though, was that only 2,000 Paraguayans were taken prisoner. Therefore, if we focus on prisoners of war, the difference in the numbers begs some important questions. While we see causality of this imbalance in the fighting readiness, logistical networks, morale, and combat effectiveness of each army the experience of captivity in war was itself different than any front-line combat. The first aspect of this inquiry is to understand the nearly 20,000 Bolivian captives held in Paraguay. Second, considering the fundamental weaknesses of both states, how could they each at once support the war effort and at the same time meet international standards to support the prisoner population? This was again especially important with respect to Paraguay; Asunción had slightly less than 100,000 people in 1931 and yet it was the first port of entry and main hub for the approximately 20,000 Bolivian prisoners. ⁹ With fewer people and resources such a presence strained the Paraguayans to a point where they could not house prisoners of war in a traditional camp-like environment. This article will present largely archival evidence alongside other contemporaneous reports that help us better understand the Bolivian experience in Paraguayan captivity and will include an overview of international intervention on behalf of prisoners. This evidence then will come following a review of some key historiography on the world wars, which shows that belligerents faced dilemmas with respect to captives. Literature on the First World War, for instance, has shown how wealthy states struggled to care for prisoners. As a result, we can see how that war caused the growth of international and domestic relief societies that aided the state in dealing with captives. Additionally, the problem of prisoners caused them to move from being housed at the host’s expense to forming an integral part of the labour force. A short examination on the literature of captivity during the world wars shows that the Bolivian experience was an integral piece of this broader history.

Historiography of Modern Captivity

Warfare in the twentieth century has produced some truly horrific acts of death and destruction across the globe. By the closing hours of the First World War some 9 million soldiers had died out of the total of 71 million mobilized during the fighting. While 1.2 million former POWs, including mostly invalids, medical personnel, and priests, had been repatriated during the war, another 7 million were waiting to go home at the end of fighting. ¹⁰ Such tremendous sacrifice while in the service of the state compares well with the Chaco experience as it relates to the nature of soldiers’ welfare and how that fits within the larger narratives of the respective wars. ¹¹ As civic-minded Swiss elites gathered in the mid-nineteenth century to discuss the horrors witnessed at the 1859 battle of Solferino, they began a conversation that set into motion the beginnings of an international system whereby human rights, laws, and mediation would be institutionalized. ¹² The foundations of that system had been expanding in the years prior to the First World War, but that conflict’s massive mobilization and rapid movement in the autumn of 1914 created the need for a more robust system. Institutional infrastructure grew within international relief societies such as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), but alongside that established effort various domestic associations arose whose mission was to care for prisoners of war. The proportion of the society conscripted and the large numbers of prisoners taken, especially on the Russian fronts, brought about the creation of a multinational prisoner tracing service, which by the end of the war had more than 2.5 million people recorded in its database. ¹³ Furthermore, beyond simply working with local Red Cross societies or other relief groups, the ICRC created an inspection regime in January 1915, which served to report on the plight of captives thanks to the cooperation of belligerent parties. ¹⁴

Despite any international treaties and legal protections afforded them, prisoners have seldom been in an enviable position. Literature on prisoners in the twentieth century is continually growing and a focus on the two world wars gives some clues into what emerged as norms around the world, which were replicated in the Chaco War. ¹⁵ Prisoners seemed to have figured last in the calculations and war-planning on all sides as none of the combatants was prepared for the receipt of prisoners and simply improvised, looking to past practice for guidance. ¹⁶ Prosecuting the war while housing thousands of prisoners further taxed the system, which was clear in the German case as by 1918 no resources existed to provide for Reichswehr soldiers, ‘let alone provide the bare necessities of life for hundreds of thousands of prisoners’. ¹⁷ This is where international associations such as the Red Cross and local groups such as the Prisoners’ Fund in Great Britain made such a difference in providing the sorts of human resources to track, inspect, care for, and repatriate prisoners. ¹⁸ Sometimes, as in the case of the Ottoman Empire, it was not enough to rely on the deeds of its primary organization, the Ottoman Red Crescent, the Hilal-i Ahmer Cemiyeti, but also to include the neutral nations such as the United States to aid the Ottoman soldiers held in the Russian Empire. ¹⁹ Likewise, Japan’s short battles against the German colonial forces in China also highlighted this twofold dilemma. First, the Japanese government had no idea what to do with prisoners and relied on substandard, ‘ramshackle’ buildings ‘unsuitable for the housing of prisoners’. ²⁰ Second, until Washington’s entry into the war, the Japanese allowed the American government to inspect German prisoners and relay messages to the German Foreign Office. ²¹ The growth of the idea of prisoners’ relief continued during the Chaco War, as both belligerents recognized and worked with prisoner inspection regimes and were aided by civilians whose work sought to improve the plight of the captives.

Additionally, recent scholarship has begun to examine the idea of labour from the perspective of economics to understand the usefulness of prisoner labour. ²² Not surprisingly, in his study of the Allied POWs who worked in the Ruhr coal mines during the First World War, Tobias A. Jopp has found that the employment of prisoner labour resulted in a ‘loss in productivity’. ²³ Such an analysis takes into account the handicaps of the host state in properly feeding, caring for, and guarding prisoners and the results can predict just how effective prisoner labour would be in other contexts, at least in terms of non-atomized agricultural settings. In addition to prisoner labour, the First World War also saw the widespread use of civilian internees, especially in Germany. With more than 1.2 million foreign workers in the German Empire in 1914, the outbreak of war saw the expulsion of most except for those directly related to key industries or who held citizenship in belligerent nations. For example, the 300,000 people with Russian citizenship were forbidden to leave. These were likely seasonal agricultural workers who worked on the large farms in the East and, because of the need for labour and the fear that if allowed to go home they would be drafted into the Russian Army, the Germans kept these civilians and forced them to work. ²⁴ These civilians formed the first forced labour force in the First World War but soon after Germany’s devastating victories at the battles of Tannenberg and Masurian Lakes in the opening weeks of the war, the influx of prisoners – almost 100,000 men – emphasized the shortage of housing and supplies. Once a quick victory over France seemed unlikely, the Germans began to reconsider ways to use the men at their disposal. Therefore, in 1915 the vast numbers of POWs entered service as labourers, with most through 1916 going to farms to aid in agricultural production. ²⁵ By the summer of 1916 almost 80 per cent of POWs in German captivity were put to work. That increased following the battle of Jutland as the German forces expanded the labour regime and forced Belgians, Poles, and Lithuanians to work inside Germany under harsh conditions. ²⁶ The type of work done by prisoners and civilian internees then shifted from agriculture and forestry to manufacturing and mining, which put them in closer contact with urban centres throughout Germany. ²⁷ Fifteen years later prisoners in the Chaco War would face a similar history as their comrades from the First World War, as they moved from a security risk to a labour force and welfare concern.

The Face of Bolivian Captivity

Given Bolivia’s large indigenous population it would seem likely that most prisoners were also indigenous. Yet, recent research by Elizabeth Shesko shows that categories of race and class were blurred. ²⁸ In fact, the Bolivian Army was a diverse institution shaped largely by the weakness of the state, and its composition thereby changed over time. Weakness ensured that initial calls for reservists and new volunteers drew men from the cities of Bolivia such as Sucre, Oruro, Cochabamba, and La Paz. These cities were home to recent indigenous migrants from rural areas and more established communities of mestizos as well as Europeans. ²⁹ Demographic growth over the prior quarter century had given rise to a small manufacturing economy alongside one based on commerce and service. As a result, the cities were home to more people who were multilingual – Spanish and Aymara and/or Quechua – and multicultural, or rather a fusion of indigenous and European cultures. While the faces of the men might have pointed to indigenous roots, the reality was more complicated and personal definitions reflected a complex construction of identity. Importantly, though, this pool of recruits from urban areas ran dry by late 1933. ³⁰ Thereafter, squads of soldiers roamed the Andean countryside to forcibly enlist indigenous men who had little knowledge of the Spanish language and even less interaction with the state, having led most of their lives on large, rural haciendas. ³¹ These men would have become prisoners in the later stages in the war and would have clearly influenced perceptions of Bolivians owing to a large indigenous element. The registers of prisoners in Paraguay show that the soldiers were not simply illiterate peasants who would return home to their villages after the war even if they supposedly looked indigenous.

Documents in the Paraguayan Ministry of Defence have detailed information on those Bolivians taken prisoner on forms otherwise used to capture details of those who enlisted in the Paraguayan armed forces. Despite these forms being repurposed, authorities filled out the forms largely in their entirety, including birthplace, birthdate, names of parents, status, name, height, eye and skin colour, and characteristics of nose, hair, mouth, beard, and ears. They also asked the prisoners their so-called aptitudes regarding reading, writing, the ability to drive a car, ride a horse, and to list their profession. For example, soldier Aniceto Rojas from Cochabamba was a tailor who knew how to read, write, and ride a horse while soldier Cirio Medina worked previously as a shoemaker from Oruro and did not know how to read and write. Antonio Ciguante, a miner from Potosi, was also lacking in reading and writing abilities, but Luis Reyes, a student from Sucre, was literate. ³² Literature has argued that students such as Reyes represented a new generation of Bolivians who grew increasingly engaged in politics prior to the war and were more likely to have understood the war as not between the Bolivian and Paraguayan peoples but rather a result of ‘capitalism’, which they wrote about and agitated over before, during, and after their captivity. ³³ The Paraguayan authorities issued identity cards to the prisoners with similar information, which were necessary for keeping track of the men within Paraguay; furthermore, these cards were also used during the repatriation process, which superseded any other travel documents needed to cross either Argentina or Brazil on the way back to Bolivia. ³⁴

Experience of Captivity

Because of the large number of prisoners, the Paraguayan government faced tremendous challenges in prosecuting the war, feeding its population, and maintaining the prisoners according to accepted standards during wartime. Prisoner camps per se did not truly exist on a scale that included everyone. Instead, Bolivians upon capture were gathered together, removed of much of their property, and divided into groups of soldiers and officers – the latter more likely interrogated – and then marched to transit points such as Camacho before heading elsewhere such as Asunción. From the initial capture at the front line, the Bolivians had opportunities to escape; one story tells of how a group of recent captives ‘employed their native tongue’ and remained nervous all night, without sleeping. When an opportune time came, the men escaped as a group, despite some shots from the guards, which were ineffective given the small numbers of Paraguayans. The officer in charge felt the captors had been too ‘lenient’ but also failed to prevent the escape because of a lack of training. ³⁵ Records of the number of escapees likely do not account for all of these activities as Paraguayan field commanders would have had little incentive to report on their failings. Paraguayans tried various techniques to cope with a lack of men to both guard the captives and prosecute the fighting at the same time, but they found ways to minimize escapees near the front. At the battle of Boquerón in 1932, the Paraguayans transported Bolivian prisoners to nearby Arce, which would allow the Paraguayan Army to maintain fighting strength and reinforce the positions at Isla Poi. Here too, the Paraguayans described the Bolivians as ‘desperate’, which helped precipitate attempts to escape. ³⁶ Logistical demands placed on Paraguayan forces meant that some prisoners faced ill treatment. For instance, Bolivians in this early stage complained of being stripped naked and marched through awful terrain. Because of the shortage of guards and restraining equipment, the Paraguayans stripped the Bolivians of most of their clothes in order to inhibit any attempted escapes. Reports of murder and abuse filled the newspapers in Bolivia, including reports of the assassination of a captive by Paraguayan Sergeant Pedro Aguilar. Bolivian press outlets used such stories to argue a so-called ‘undeniable history’ of Paraguayan brutality. ³⁷

Without a camp-like system to incarcerate the prisoners, the opportunity for escape was a reality beyond the initial period in captivity near the front lines. Official Paraguayan documents noted that more than 3,000 prisoners escaped but beyond that number little was mentioned. Were the men successful or were they later found dead or otherwise caught? News articles spoke of spectacular escapes and openly wondered why the Bolivians would escape the opportunity to eat well and get ‘restful sleep’. Yet outside of the propaganda value of such stories, the sheer number of them – almost 15 per cent of the reported total – spoke to a real problem of how to keep track of Bolivians who otherwise desired to take their chances and flee. ³⁸ An article from early in the war noted how escaping prisoners were captured when their canoe was spotted by a guard along the river, who ‘fired two shots in the air’ to stop the men and apprehend them on the river bank. This event called into question the policy then in place in Paraguay whereby prisoners were held with minimal security. The resulting policy meant that the Bolivians would be transferred from the Chaco to Asunción and then deeper inside Paraguay where escape would be unlikely. ³⁹

Those thousands of Bolivian prisoners who remained in Paraguayan hands travelled to Asunción on foot, but a great many also went on board transport ships (see Fig. 1). ⁴⁰ From there they might go to points further into Paraguay, or be regrouped at or near the front lines to help construct infrastructure for the Paraguayan forces, aiding the work brigades already building roads and moving materials to the front. ⁴¹ Officers were housed in residential areas around Asunción such as the ‘Revisadora’ where they would be later questioned. ⁴² Officers enjoyed a better status as prisoners, evidenced by their ability to participate in social events during the war such as a show by the theatrical group Karr-Prandi, where a number of Bolivian officers were allowed to be in the audience, albeit dressed in ‘civilian clothes’. ⁴³

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Fig. 1.

Bolivian prisoners on board Paraguayan transport vessel.

Among the men taken prisoner by the Paraguayans, there were hundreds of officers, some of them of quite high rank. One such officer, Lieutenant Colonel José Capriles Lopez, 48 years old, had risen to his current rank in 1929 and had been in the military since 1912. ⁴⁴ Second Lieutenant Abelardo Broggini Rodrigo, 28 years old, had been a reserve officer before the war but clarified his rank when he declared that ‘in Bolivia there are no reserve officers, and those with that name rose from the rank of sub-officials’. Second Lieutenant Justo Larrea had a similar story but was a farmer in civilian life and mobilized in September 1932. Second Lieutenant Humberto Vazquez M. was the same – reserve officer – but had been an ‘estudiante de Comercio’. ⁴⁵ As with the soldiers, there existed a diversity in the officer corps, which brought together careerists, former non-commissioned officers who served their mandatory conscription duty, and appropriately qualified men who only began service with the Chaco War. This variability helps explain the large number of officers (see Fig. 2) because of the differences in training and experience, but also speaks to the ways that the Paraguayans could gain intelligence from this cohort of captives.

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Fig. 2.

Bolivian aviation officers in captivity.

Officers and soldiers provided a wealth of information to the Paraguayans in terms of information related to the battlefield and regarding other aspects of the war, including feelings towards commanders, opinions popular in society at large, and so on. One longer declaration from Second Lieutenant Felix Reyes Laguna, from 21 July 1933, spoke to these issues. Born in Sucre in 1908 and raised with only his mother, Reyes was a reserve officer. He entered the Military Academy in La Paz in 1920, at only 12 years of age, and finished four years later. He left military service two years after that to pursue work as a merchant. In August 1932, Reyes was called up and he reached the front on his own, crossing Argentina, where he joined the ‘Perez’ Regiment. He told his interrogators that not all reservists had been called up but he did inform them of the commanding officers and names of the regiments that had gathered along the front at Nanawa. The entire II Corps had 4,000 trucks, he said, and rations consisted of jerky and bread, and he reported that the mission was to ‘attack Nanawa’ with the help of the 38th Regiment. The Bolivians, he reported, had over 70 artillery pieces at their disposal but ‘not all were functioning’. He could not envision how the troops were ‘still fighting’ given the poor training and bad morale that he observed before his capture. He reported that all of the Bolivians hated General Hans Kundt and that President Daniel Salamanca was worried that he was losing the confidence of the people and the army, since he had not fulfilled the promises that he had made; as a result, the president felt it urgent to try to terminate the Chaco question. The lengthy interview with Reyes yielded a bounty of intelligence and aided the Paraguayans on the battlefield and in terms of negotiation and propaganda. ⁴⁶

Other officers, including Major Jose Mejia, who was interrogated on 12 June 1933, were not as forthcoming with information. With two superficial wounds, Mejia, a native of Cochabamba (b. 1882), had completed training in the Military Academy in 1901 and retired in 1919, at the rank of major. After being called up he went to Villa Montes to join his unit. While he gave some information about the Bolivian forces, including that the main airbase was in Muñoz, he declined to give further details about the state of the Bolivian forces, except that they had ‘plenty of collected rainwater’ in Plantanillos and that they had sufficient petroleum to run their equipment. Regarding the sanitation, he said that the Bolivians were doing fine but that the ‘transition of region and climate’ was hard on the men. Regarding morale, he declined to give any information besides saying that the men were ‘very enthusiastic’ and that he did not know the opinions of his fellow officers since they were forbidden to speak about that. ⁴⁷ Overall, the differences between Reyes and Mejia in terms of their declarations to the Paraguayans might have simply represented their individual realities, but they also might have differed because Reyes was a much younger man who was more likely to be disillusioned by the entire war effort and was not as developed an officer to restrain himself under interrogation.

Owing to the large number of Bolivian prisoners, captivity for regular soldiers consisted of mainly menial labour throughout Paraguay. David Paredes Alba worked at the Botanical Gardens while others cleaned the streets of Asunción and nearby towns such as Luque and worked as domestic servants. ⁴⁸ Bolivians decried the possibility for poor treatment in private hands, as the Paraguayans had ‘rented’ out the men for private work, where they were treated as ‘beasts’ (see Fig. 3). ⁴⁹ Into 1934 prisoners had been used for labour for so-called ‘necessary tasks’ but were primarily requested by private individuals or companies for their labour. In Asunción, captives were employed to cut the grass but some saw this as a waste of resources. Instead, calls came to find better uses for the Bolivian labour, including the consolidation into groups of labourers to build important roads in the country. The call was to use the ‘necessary number of prisoners to realize intense and continuous work’. ⁵⁰ This service further put them into contact with the general population and enabled civil society to interact with prisoners and at the same time grow more influential in Paraguayan society.

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Fig. 3.

Bolivian prisoners working as labourers.

Distributed throughout Paraguay because of labour needs and an inability to feed such a large group of captives in Asunción itself, Bolivian prisoners also went to the countryside to work on public works projects and private farms (see Fig. 4). ⁵¹ Agricultural labour was not only a practical result of the inability of the Paraguayan government to construct camp facilities for thousands of Bolivian captives but it was also a necessity throughout the war to ‘borrow their help’, to feed not only the Paraguayan population but also to ‘share’ in the upkeep of their own livelihood given the ‘enormity of their numbers’. ⁵² The offices of the respective ministries of defence coordinated messages to inform the whereabouts of prisoners. Bolivians, for instance were spread across dozens of locations across Paraguay, including Concepción, Yuquyty, Bahia Negra, Luque, Pineza, and Tacumbu. ⁵³ Second Lieutenant Jorge Villanueva Asturizaga, for instance, was assigned to work as a sanitarian in Carapegua, 84 km southeast of Asunción, while records show soldier Teofilo Murillo worked in Ypane, some 31 km from the capital. ⁵⁴ Other prisoners went further afield, with some, including Felix Andrade Perez, serving in Sapucai, more than 100 km away. Such a distance hindered the collection of reliable and regular information and put Bolivians deep within Paraguayan society. ⁵⁵ When the Bolivian Red Cross wrote to Archbishop Juan Sinforiano Bogarín in Asunción to obtain his help in communicating with the prisoners, he replied that communications with the prisoners were tardy because they were ‘distributed in numerous locations, which made it difficult to determine what they needed’. ⁵⁶ In one case, outside of the town of San Lorenzo, a group of 500 prisoners lived and worked in isolation in buildings that they themselves had constructed. Bolivian officers of lower grades accompanied and helped direct the men in their labour. ⁵⁷ Beyond knowing the initial cohort of captives sent to a locale to perform some work, it was difficult to keep tabs on changes in their health or whereabouts. Similarly, once assigned to work duty it was a lengthy process to reassign the men to other projects, which likely resulted in poor efficiency and morale.

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Fig. 4.

Bolivian prisoners labouring in the Paraguayan countryside.

When not in use on farms, another large group of captives was used as zapadores, or workers for the army building infrastructure in the Chaco and across Paraguay. ⁵⁸ For instance, the military authorities had worked in tandem with Dr D. Luis A. Riart, who was in charge of labour issues. One memo detailed what work brigades looked like across the country. In June 1933 prisoners were sent to the colony ‘New Italy’ to lay telephone wires and build or repair roads between the colony and nearby towns such as San Lorenzo. These prisoners consisted mainly of regular troops, but included a non-commissioned officer and one junior officer, who were all under the command of the local authorities and not the regular army chain of command, which included the equivalent of the mayor’s office and local police force. With only a handful of troops who served under the police or political authorities, the Paraguayan guards were outnumbered by at least 4 to 1 during most of these stages of the war. ⁵⁹

While the Bolivian press spoke of abuses of prisoners at Paraguayan hands, the authorities in Asunción took pains to quiet any sense of undue or extreme abuse. Telegrams to Bolivians, such as Teresa Capriles in Cochabamba, from the Ministry of War and Marine in Asunción stated clearly that her husband was ‘found in Isla Poi treated perfectly, just like his comrades’. ⁶⁰ Yet, such language could have misrepresented the situation, as orders from the Army Chief of Staff dictated a ‘double-blind censorship’ over telegrams to families in Bolivia, not only dealing with ‘information of interest’ but also with respect to the ‘employment of disciplinary action’ taken by the Paraguayans. All telegrams and messages were to undergo censorship with respect to those issues. ⁶¹ In a different way, though, since work in Paraguay was so important, captives who were chronically ill or unable to work because of wounds were in a special position because they could be repatriated while the war was still ongoing. This happened as early as August 1933 when a group of prisoners, who had been concentrated in the Hospital Militar Central and deemed ‘incapable of work’ in part owing to ‘mutilations’ or severe war wounds, were slated to board a river vessel to Formosa, in Argentina. From there, the men would be transported into Bolivia. ⁶²

While Bolivians claimed abuse and censorship existed to hide any real instances that occurred, that did not mean that the Paraguayans took such accusations lightly. Bolivian officers complained to the Office of Information on Prisoners of War, which had men tour various locations throughout the country in September 1933. ⁶³ A memo from the Army Chief of Staff’s office to the section director in charge of prisoners noted that they had investigated allegations and found no corroborating evidence. For instance, they investigated the case of Bolivian Sergeant Julio Campere Davalos, who was found with a weapon and punished with ‘a piece of tacuara [bamboo equivalent]’ for insolence. Allegations that Paraguayans borrowed money from the prisoners was also found to be false and, perhaps most importantly, the notion of ‘cruel and inhumane’ punishment was absent. But the memo did recognize that some prisoners were ‘severely reprimanded for refusing to return to work’. ⁶⁴ Because of the broader lack of manpower to prosecute the war and run the economy at the same time the Paraguayans took prisoner labour seriously.

The Paraguayan government also saw the prisoners as a means to enhance their war effort and work took on diverse meanings. Asunción’s leaders took advantage of the general fear in Bolivia of political subversion among soldiers. First, the Bolivians themselves saw communist revolutionaries in the country as a threat and they sought to control any threat of subversion by groups with Marxist connections. ⁶⁵ One such prisoner, Ricardo Valle Closa – using his alias of Gastón del Mar – conducted clandestine work during the Chaco War for the Communist Party when he was taken prisoner and later went into exile in Argentina. While serving as a prisoner in Paraguay, he worked with soldiers to organize talks against the dominant classes in Bolivia. ⁶⁶ He wrote prolifically for Asunción dailies, including one article that spoke of the lack of choice in Bolivian politics. There was no difference, he argued, between Liberalism or Saavedrismo, because both acted in the ‘interests of foreigners’, and sold the state to banks such as ‘Morgan and Dillon & Read’ in New York. ⁶⁷ Such a political message served to justify the war to Paraguayans but also helped drive divisions among the Bolivians themselves along regional or ideological lines. ⁶⁸

Paraguayan forces also sought to benefit from the regional animosities present in Bolivia, primarily between those in the lowlands of Bolivia and the Andes. Paraguayan news articles asked surreptitiously through Ñuflo de Chavez, Santa Cruz de la Sierra’s colonial founder, ‘My sons [Cruceños], why are you fighting against your brothers [the Paraguayans]’, instead of the ‘collas who are disgracing my memory’. ⁶⁹ Another article mocked the celebrations of 24 September in Santa Cruz and noted that despite niceties towards the government, ‘an intimate party’ had ‘ratified the decision to continue fighting until the total liberation from the ominous power of the collas’. ⁷⁰ Such propaganda continued with articles written by prisoners from Santa Cruz, including one that recounted the recent 1924 rebellion whereby troops under General Hans Kundt marched into Santa Cruz to reclaim government authority. The soldier, Jorge Abuna, claimed that not only did La Paz ‘ignore us’, but they also did something ‘much worse’, namely, the popularization of gossip that called the cruceños ‘stupid’ and ‘imbeciles’. ⁷¹ These prisoners served an important role in working for the Paraguayan press beyond base propaganda that worked to subvert the Bolivian war effort. Articles also told of decent treatment in captivity, such as when a group of Bolivian officers publicly thanked the Paraguayan authorities for allowing for a section of a local cemetery in Cambio Grande to be set aside for prisoners who died in captivity. ⁷² For Paraguayans who consumed domestic press, they were clearly on the better side of the war.

Interactions with Paraguayans: Civil Society, Church, and the State

One of the powerful aspects of the Chaco War was just how much civil society developed during the war, in both Bolivia and Paraguay. Part of this was the result of a desire by people in urban centres to contribute to the war effort. Various groups identified with the scope of the contribution and desired to show their patriotic colours. The Rotary Club was one institution that mobilized the business community, and the club in Asunción remained closely tied to the international branches such as Chicago throughout the war. ⁷³

Articles in newspapers and in archival documents show that during the war the Rotary Club was keen on helping soldiers through donations of material and lobbying the governments; it was also one tool that allowed Bolivians to communicate with prisoners in Paraguay outside of the official channels set up by the respective ministries of defence. ⁷⁴ It also facilitated, through the office in Buenos Aires, the delivery of monies on behalf of prisoners’ families, including one delivery of $33.75 USD, $29 destined for Luis Castro Linto, who worked at the Military Academy in Asunción, and $4.75 for Cirilo Gutierrez, who worked in Asunción. ⁷⁵ At one point in 1934, the Rotary Club in each country sent delegates to Buenos Aires to devise a method towards solving the problem of coping with the prisoners. The representatives from La Paz proposed to exchange prisoners after identifying the wounded and ill and those capable of work. The aim was to repatriate all of those incapable of work. This request was in addition to ongoing deliberations over the repatriation of wounded men. It coincided with the work of the Red Cross in Paraguay, whose people had recently met with Minister Riart in Asunción to coordinate a visit to inspect Bolivian prisoners. ⁷⁶ The Bolivian Red Cross argued that ‘the doors needed to be opened’ to inspect the conditions of the prisoners and work out a humanitarian solution to caring for these men. ⁷⁷ In Bolivia too, the two organizations – the Rotary Club and the Bolivian Red Cross – were deeply connected with members in both groups and they cooperated with international members in Buenos Aires and Geneva. During the change of government in late 1934, these organizations declared their support for the Bolivian cause and were determined to continue helping the prisoners. ⁷⁸

Telegrams show that in both countries the Rotarians were active in assisting the troops but they were not alone. The Catholic Church played a large role in the war effort, including a presence with the troops through an active chaplain unit, a provider of patriotic support to the civilian population, an institution that oversaw prisoner labour and one that served as a conduit for Bolivians to learn about the plight of soldiers missing or captured during the war. ⁷⁹ Members of the Paraguayan clergy had been called to aid the war effort, by comforting soldiers and serving medical functions, which included treating the numerous wounded Bolivian prisoners. ⁸⁰ Father Vicente Musa, from Asunción, served in this role, comforting troops and helping at the hospitals, and he did so in such a profound way that the official records show that despite the ‘disgrace’ of captivity Bolivian Major Lairana was so moved by the ‘big heart’ of Musa that he publicly acknowledged the priest’s service. ⁸¹ Clergy augmented the services for the troops in important ways but also saw themselves as diligent proponents of the national idea. One priest noted how at Camacho he spoke to the wounded and ill in terms of how they could rebuild the ‘Patria’ and how it was their Christian mission to fulfil the needs of the state. ⁸²

This growth of civil society was not just a domestic phenomenon. Instead, both countries were aware of international norms and global foreign policy. For instance, the International Red Cross sent missions to both countries to witness the conditions of the prisoners and intervened when conditions seemed to contradict norms such as proximity to services. ⁸³ In 1933, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent a note to the Office for Prisoners of War that they were to receive Drs Emmanuel Galland and Rodolfo Talica, who were bound to arrive in Asunción on 18 May 1933 with orders to inspect areas with concentrations of Bolivian prisoners. These delegates of the International Red Cross, who travelled from Geneva, were to be taken to the men but the memo noted that some prisoners, who were ‘concentrated in the forests’ ostensibly on work brigades, were in ‘a terrible state of hygiene and poorly clothed’. The ministry was concerned that the Red Cross should not find the prisoners in such a state so as to bring negative attention on Paraguay and thereby help Bolivian propaganda efforts. ⁸⁴ News stories in both countries riled public opinion with stories of cruelty. On the Bolivian side, La Paz’s La Razón ran a story that told of how prisoners were ‘famished’ and as a result, their condition ‘could not be any worse’. ⁸⁵ Paraguayan papers did the same, by reporting the death of prisoners owing to malfeasance and neglect. One story reported how Mauricio Soto died in the ‘inhospitable zone of Uyuni’ near Potosi because his captors constantly moved him against his will. ⁸⁶ Such stories though would have been given extraordinary credibility had the International Red Cross agents vindicated such malfeasance by the Bolivians.

While stories were common, it is likely that mistreatment was not deliberate, but were instead a testament to the weakness of the respective state and military bureaucracies. Fighting for the Chaco tested each government’s ability to mobilize society and collect sufficient monies and bodies to prosecute the war. Dealing with prisoners extended these limits of the state’s abilities and so the other institutions evolved or came about to fill the gaps. One petition by the Bolivian Red Cross denounced the capture of the wife and children of soldier Hilarión Ríos. The Bolivians claimed this act was a ‘crime against humanity’ and asked the Foreign Ministry in La Paz to forward the claim to the ICRC in Geneva. ⁸⁷ The memo that officials in Geneva received a week later on 21 February 1935 reinforced the notion that the incident required attention. By taking Eloisa Soruco, the wife of Ríos, and their two children prisoner they violated the rules of war. Especially relevant in this case was that the youngest child was reportedly paralysed, which gave the Bolivians the impetus to ‘energetically’ call for their ‘immediate liberation’. ⁸⁸ Paraguayan authorities similarly used international associations to lodge complaints, with one reported incident of the Bolivian use of dum-dum bullets in battle, which was so ‘inhumane’ as to merit ‘condemnation’. ⁸⁹

When peace negotiations began, the Paraguayan government used the opportunity to request money from Bolivia to pay for the food and services needed to maintain the prisoners. This last aspect grew into a point of protracted negotiation between the various ministers involved and was subject to drastic change over time. ⁹⁰ At the peace conference the third act declared the intent to repatriate the prisoners and vowed to do so under the approval of the Military Commission of Neutrals, while the fourth act declared that the commission observe the entire process to ensure a correct procedure. ⁹¹ It was noted during the deliberations that the prisoners were, according to international standards, deserving of the same ‘food’ and ‘services’ as regular troops and were entitled to work and to use tobacco while forbidding any punishment to include restrictions on diet. ⁹²

Beyond the funds that were needed to sustain most of the prisoners, a few prisoners benefitted from receiving money and goods from home. Julio Beltrán Galegillos, a Bolivian prisoner, received a total of 9,550 Paraguayan pesos from 7 June 1934 until 18 April 1936, all but 300 of them in cash. This came through the Office of Prisoners but the money reached Galegillos through the Catholic Church, presumably because Galegillos worked somehow with the Metropolitan of Asunción. ⁹³ The Paraguayan Church also sent goods to its prisoners in Bolivia, including sweaters to prisoners held in Sucre. Those materials had been locally distributed by Sucre’s Comite Pro-Prisioneros de Guerra, led by Mrs Maria Pacheco de Marion. ⁹⁴ Daniel Rivero, Bishop of Santa Cruz, sent a note to Archbishop Juan Sinforiano Bogarín of Asunción in May 1935 explaining how numerous families from Santa Cruz were concerned that they could not rely on any monies being delivered to prisoners in Paraguay. Rivero asked if Bogarín could provide assistance and possibly give him the contact information of an additional source whereby funds could be transferred between the branches of the church. ⁹⁵ The church’s role was influential for other reasons. Bogarín had been a supporter of the Paraguayan war effort and spoke publicly of how he was proud of how the ‘citizens converted into a single force’ working for the ‘Patria’, from all sectors to defend their ‘inheritance’. ⁹⁶ Much of his activities for the war centred on responding to the hundreds of telegrams from clergy in Bolivia who sought information and forwarded monies on behalf of captured troops. Mostly, his responses would indicate if he could gain information on the whereabouts and condition of prisoners. For example, he generally responded to the numerous requests from bishops in Bolivia, including those from Dr Francisco Piernini, Archbishop of La Plata (Sucre). ⁹⁷

Additionally, he worked under the auspices of the church to communicate appeals on behalf of certain prisoners for special requests. On one occasion, he received a personal note of help from the Diocese of La Paz, when Felipe Lopez Menéndez asked for help on behalf of his nephew, a wounded prisoner held in a ward at Asunción’s Military Hospital, Anibal Alaiza Soria. Menéndez asked on behalf of Soria’s mother, who was in ‘anguish’ wanting ‘nothing more than to see her son again’, if Bogarín could arrange for an early repatriation back to La Paz. ⁹⁸ Another personal request came on behalf of Eliseo Altamirano, who had been a student at the University of La Plata and had been incarcerated since almost the beginning of fighting three years earlier. When the peace talks began a request came to the archbishop to use ‘his great influence’ with his government to petition for the early release of the soldier because of his studies, especially as a few others had been dismissed from captivity early upon special request. ⁹⁹ To that petition Bogarín wrote that ‘it looked promising that a positive result would happen’ and that ‘Paraguayan students’ were ‘in contact with the Bolivians’, and as a result the prognosis for this decision was to benefit other prisoners as well. ¹⁰⁰

Conclusions: Consequences of Captivity

Three principals were taken in consideration at the end of the war when it came to demobilizing the prisoners and preparing to send them back to Bolivia: the first group readied consisted of the men employed in posts similar to their civilian lives before the war, the second group would be withdrawn from those persons who received prisoners as day-labourers, and the last group would be withdrawn from agricultural work. ¹⁰¹ The process of repatriation, though, took months even after deliberations between the powers in Buenos Aires were settled. One under-researched feature of the treaty was that prisoners could choose to go home or remain in either Brazil, Argentina, or the country of captivity. ¹⁰² Observers at the peace conference noted that this was unusual and could create problems, for the Bolivian side at least, as not all of the prisoners wanted to return home. Some of the Literature spoke of such cases whereby Bolivians preferred Paraguay. One example is Amado Silva Lara’s El infierno verde, which claims that Bolivians stayed because of the ‘mujeres encantadoras’. ¹⁰³ Fraternization between Bolivians and Paraguayans was real since so many Bolivian prisoners lived outside of the war zone and engaged in jobs such as domestic labour in the cities or agricultural or infrastructure work in the countryside. Archival documents in Paraguay mentioned ‘three classes’ of Bolivians who desired not to return to Bolivia: ‘those with military or political reasons’ such as Ricardo Valle Closa; those who ‘sought to make roots in Paraguay’; and finally those who ‘sought to establish roots in neighbouring countries such as Argentina’. ¹⁰⁴ The actual records of these men who stayed in Paraguay are unavailable for viewing, but from anecdotal notes in various sources it seems that some men – perhaps several hundred – remained in Paraguay to start fresh lives.

The Chaco War then serves as an interesting case in what is still an emerging literature on prisoners of war in the twentieth century. The bitter contest between Bolivia and Paraguay pitted two poor and undeveloped states against one other for almost three years and influenced how each state could provide for the welfare of its prisoners. Both states were ill-prepared to meet the demands of a protracted struggle and required the intervention of international agencies and domestic relief agencies. As Paraguay tallied almost 20,000 Bolivian soldiers under its charge, the state and its resources were severely challenged. Leaders had to decide on an alternative way of using the prisoners and dispersing them to serve as domestic labourers in cities such as Asunción. This was one piece of the larger problem. The sheer numbers necessitated that the Bolivians were relocated to the hinterland of Paraguay and build roads, lay telegraph wires, and grow food. Because the state remained weak, various civic-minded groups formed and worked with other more established actors such as the Rotary Club, the Catholic Church, and the Red Cross committees to care for prisoners. Overall, because the Bolivian experience in captivity resembled the larger histories of both World Wars, this article hopes that further research will continue to place the Chaco War in a global conversation of war and society.