It might be a strip of sand without even a jetty but a small stretch of the Pacific coast now harbours Bolivia’s dream of regaining a coast and becoming a maritime nation.The landlocked Andean country has won access to a desolate patch of Peru’s shoreline, fuelling hopes that Bolivia will once again have a sea to call its own.President Evo Morales signed a deal yesterday with his Peruvian counterpart, Alan García, allowing Bolivia to build and operate a small port about 10 miles from Peru’s southern port of Ilo.The accord, sealed with declarations of South American brotherhood, was a diplomatic poke at Chile, the neighbour that seized Bolivia’s coast and a swath of Peruvian territory in the 1879-84 war of the Pacific. is unjust that Bolivia has no sovereign outlet to the ocean,” said García, flanked by Morales in front of lapping waves at Ilo. “This is also a Bolivian sea.”Bolivia’s leader said if he ever got married he would spend his honeymoon at the port and holiday resort to be built on the 1.4 square mile patch of sand that La Paz will lease from Lima for 99 years.”This opens the door for Bolivians to have an international port, to the use of the ocean for global trade and for Bolivian products to have better access to global markets,” said Morales. “Bolivia, sooner or later, will return to the sea.”
The agreement, a modest step towards Bolivia’s maritime dream, marked a reconciliation between Peru’s conservative, pro-business leader and Bolivia’s outspoken socialist. Morales once called García “fat and not very anti-imperialist”. The deal allows Bolivia to build a dock, moor naval vessels and operate a free trade zone, in theory giving it an alternative to shipping exports such as zinc, tin and silver via Chile. Some doubt, however, whether Bolivia will follow through with the necessary investment. A similar, albeit more limited, accord in 1992 was trumpeted by Bolivia’s then president, Jaime Paz Zamora, but the promised infrastructure never materialised, leaving the sands outside Ilo untouched.
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