STATUE OF BOLIVAR—LIMA, PERU
Don Manuel Pardo, Peru's first civilian president, had already been constitutionally selected as Balta's successor, and the latter was within a few days of the end of his term, when a terrible catastrophe happened. Among the poor relations whom the luckless president had preferred to positions in the army were four brothers named Gutierrez—the sons of a muleteer near Arequipa. Suddenly one brother appeared at the head of his battalion and took possession of the great square in the centre of the capital, while another forced his way into the president's study, revolver in hand, arrested the chief of state, and locked him up. Warned in time the president-elect escaped on board a man-of-war, and the eldest Gutierrez was proclaimed supreme chief. The people of Lima soon recovered from their stupefaction and a scene of terrific street-fighting followed. One of the conspirators was shot by the mob as he went to the railway station on his way to Callao. His brothers retaliated by murdering the captive president, but they soon fell before the rifles of the populace. Their bodies were hung up in the cathedral by the infuriated people, while the president-elect returned and assumed his functions.
Pardo's four years were one continual struggle against impending bankruptcy. Though he brought some order into public accounts, it was only by all sorts of expedients that he managed to keep up interest payments. He easily suppressed an insurrection led by Pierola in 1874; his intellectual and moral force united about him the educated and property-holding classes in a party which survives to this day; and he left the reputation of having been the best president who ever ruled Peru. However, no efforts could avail more than merely to put off the evil day of reckoning. The rapid exhaustion of the guano deposits precipitated the disaster. Payment of interest was suspended in 1876 and the same year Pardo turned over the government to General Prado with the currency at fifty-per-cent. discount and Peruvian bonds selling in London at twelve.
CHAPTER VII
THE CHILEAN WAR AND LATTER-DAY PERU
The nitrate region extends along the narrow desert coast of the Pacific for three hundred and fifty miles. Peru owned the northern one hundred and fifty, and prior to 1866 Bolivia claimed the remainder. After the discovery of the precious mineral the industrious and energetic Chileans crowded up the coast, while the Bolivians were shut in behind their high Andes. Chile insisted that her true boundary lay as far north as the 23d degree, and took vigorous measures to safeguard the interests of the Chilean nitrate companies. In 1866 Bolivia reluctantly made a treaty by which the 24th degree was agreed upon as the formal boundary, although the Chilean miners were allowed to continue their operations in the productive regions north of that line and their taxes were not to be increased without their government's consent. This treaty gave rise to constant disputes, and as the nitrate, silver, and copper business of the neutral zone became more profitable, the Bolivian government pressed harder for a larger revenue. The Peruvian government had planned to secure a control of the output by the state purchase and operation of nitrate properties, and such a trust would prove ineffective unless the Bolivian government had a free hand with the Chilean companies. In 1872 Peru and Bolivia made a secret treaty of alliance. Its provisions soon became public, and Chile not unreasonably believed it to be aimed especially at her miners' operating on Bolivian soil. She promptly began purchasing iron-clads. It was a favourite saying of old Marshal Castilla that when Chile bought a battle-ship Peru should buy two, but the Lima government was too poor to follow the good advice, and the fatal year of 1879 found her naval force inferior to that of her rival.