DEATH IN GREEN HELL
With the global economy reeling from the Great Depression that swept the 1930s, it seemed unthinkable for armed conflict to occur anywhere. But this is exactly what happened in different corners of the world, whether inflamed by imperial fascism or national pride. In the heart of South America, sovereignty over an uninhabitable wilderness drew two landlocked rivals to lengths neither foresaw.
Since gaining its independence in 1825, Bolivia suffered an extended run of misfortune that dashed whatever promise it once held. Named after the Venezuelan revolutionary hero General Simon Bolivar, whose wars of independence between 1810 and 1826 freed several Latin American countries from the Spanish Empire, the country had its start with an immense geographic advantage that was whittled away by aggressive neighbours. In 1884, for example, Chile seized Bolivia’s limited coastline and reduced it to a landlocked state whose politics were dominated by petty strongmen who strangled democracy.
Paraguay was no different. From 1865 to 1870 it fought a ruinous war against its much larger neighbours Argentina, Brazil and Chile only to be annihilated, its population reduced by at least a third. At the onset of the 20th century, Paraguay remained impoverished and underdeveloped. Yet for several decades it exercised nominal control over the Gran Chaco, a frontier region that Bolivia also coveted as
