Gran Chaco - History

History

Prior to national independence of the nations that compose the Chaco, the entire area was a colonial region of its own, named by the Spaniards as Chiquitos.

The Gran Chaco had been a disputed territory since 1810. Officially, it was supposed to be part of Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay, although a bigger land portion west of the Paraguay River had belonged to Paraguay since its independence. Argentina claimed territories south of the Bermejo River until Paraguay's defeat in the Paraguayan War in 1870 established its current border with Argentina.

Over the next few decades, Bolivia began to push the natives out and settle in the Gran Chaco while Paraguay ignored it. Bolivia sought the Paraguay River for shipping oil out into the sea (it had become a land-locked country after the loss of its Pacific coast in the War of the Pacific) and Paraguay claimed ownership of the land. This became the backdrop to The Gran Chaco War (1932–1935) (though violence started as early as December 5, 1928) between Paraguay and Bolivia over supposed oil in the Chaco Boreal (the aforementioned region north of the Pilcomayo River and to the west of the Paraguay River). Eventually, Argentine Foreign Minister Carlos Saavedra Lamas mediated a cease fire and subsequent treaty signed in 1938, which gave Paraguay three quarters of the Chaco Boreal and gave Bolivia a corridor to the Paraguay River with the ability to use the Puerto Casado and the right to construct their own port. In the end, no oil was found in the region.

Mennonites came into the Paraguayan part of the region from Canada in the 1920s; more came from the USSR in the 1930s and immediately following World War II. These immigrants created some of the largest and most prosperous municipalities in the deep Gran Chaco.

The region is home to over nine million people, divided about evenly between Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, and including around 100,000 in Paraguay. The area remains relatively underdeveloped, however; to help address this, in the 1960s the Paraguayan authorities had the Trans-Chaco Highway built and the Argentine National Highway Directorate, National Routes 16 and 81. All three highways extend about 700 km (430 mi) from east to west and are now completely paved, as are a network of nine Brazilian highways in Mato Grosso do Sul State.