Bolivia Fought -- And Lost -- A War For Bird Poop

Most people associate think of bird poop as an annoyance -- it can gunk up sidewalks and windshields, and, occasionally, even splat on an unlucky person walking by. But in the late 1800s, guano was a hugely important resource. In today's episode, Ben, Noel and Max take a closer look at the 'white gold' of guano... and how it led to one of 19th-century South America's deadliest wars.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome

(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. Let's give a big shout
out to our one and only super producer. You know him,
you love him, the man, the myth a legend, Mr
Max Williams. They called me ben Nol. Today's episode is
about bird poop. Yeah, and I think it's not the
first time we've talked about bird poop on this show.

(00:48):
That's correct, I'm not mistaken. There was another episode about
bird poop when we when this topic came up from
our incredible new researcher Jeff, I had to do a
double tay. That's where we've on this. But no, in fact,
we did another episode that involved guano, which is a
catch all terms not just for bat poop, for any

(01:08):
avian creatures poop, and and it's very useful stuff and
often the subject of not only intense debate, you know
as to what creatures quote qualified for guano, but you know,
bloody wars over the stuff because it's like good for
lots of things, including making bombs. Yep. Agreed, guano is
a resource all its own. Often underestimated because it is

(01:30):
in fact poop and people have their own, uh somewhat
prejudicial views about feces. Yes, big announcement, Max, if we
could get some sort of big announcement music perfect. This

(01:53):
is the first time we're working with a good friend
of the show, longtime fan, Mr Jeff Bartlett, a research associate.
Not the only new addition to our crew. You'll learn
more in the next episode, but Jeff absolutely wowed us
with this story that I believe neither of us had

(02:14):
heard before. It's about how Bolivia lost a serious war
over bird poop. That's right, and you might also if
you're interested in bird poop and you want mean I
have to tell you this, Ben. I used to have
a boss who is from like the Midwest, and he
introduced me to the term which I would never use
in conversation, the straight poop. Well, if you want the
straight poop on bird poop, we're gonna give you some

(02:35):
of that today. But you can also get it from
an episode that we did about when US farmers went
nuts about bird poop. And it's actually a good primer
for this episode because of the reason for this bloody
conflict was an explosion no pun intended in the demand
for bird poop, and a large part of that was
because of agriculture. Yep, that's correct, So we know since

(02:57):
before the dawn of the written word, wars have often
been the result of disputes over territory and more pointedly,
the resources those territories contain. We're talking today about something
that you would call the War of the Pacific or
la Guiartra del Pacifical. It took place from eighteen seventy

(03:19):
nine to eighteen eighty three, and this was an international
conflict involved Chile, Bolivia and Peru, and it started as
a beef that Chile and Bolivia had over who controlled
part of the Atacama Desert. This is something that is
known historically. You can see it in Britannica. We also

(03:44):
like to recommend an excellent source that our our guy
Jeff found, the National Interest why Bolivia and Chile once
went to war over guando parentheses bird droppings. So the uh,
this is by Peter Seucy so shout out to him.
But the spoiler, there's a reason that they were fighting

(04:05):
so ardently over this poop, and it's not They weren't
just super into poop for poop's sake alone. If you
look at the desert, it's between the twenty three and
parallels on the Pacific coast of South America. I visited.
It's lovely and you should check it out if you're

(04:26):
the chance. But they were thinking in particular of something
called sodium nitrate. Yeah, that's right, um. You know, bird
poop isn't just the stuff that you you know, are
disgusted by and angry at birds when you shake your
fists at the heavens when you see it on your car,
God forbids you have a black car, because it's just

(04:46):
the most you know, obvious thing in the world, sticks
out like a sore thumb, and it's gross, so you
gotta scrape it off or like go to a car wash.
But then you can have the car wash and one
inevitably happens another bird poops on your car. What can
happen with this stuff? Though? In times remember their work
cars parked everywhere. Instead of that stuff landing on your car,
it would end up in the ground or in the soil,
and there would be large deposits of it, specifically on

(05:09):
coastal areas where seabirds, you know, are always pooping that's
what we're dealing with here is a coastal region that
contained significant deposits of guano, which is an incredible source
of nitrogen, phosphate, and potassium, which are all materials that

(05:30):
can be used to make gunpowder and you know, things
that go boom. Yeah, And for a little bit of background,
this was an area that was ripe for this sort
of territorial dispute. The countries involved, Chile and Bolivia had
earlier negotiated a treaty that recognized specifically the twenty four

(05:51):
parallel as their international boundary, and it gave Chile also
the right to share in export taxes on the mineral
resources of Bolivia's territory in this area, just in general,
the general mineral resources. But Bolivia was increasingly less happy

(06:13):
with this relationship. You know, they thought, they thought, well,
Chile is big and um and they're parasitic. It's a
parasitic partnership, they were thinking. So they thought, you know,
Chile might try to take over our coastal region because
from a business perspective, they already have their creepy tentacles

(06:34):
and the mining industry. But in addition to that, excellent
Spanish produnciation to give Earlier, the War of the Pacific
was also called the Saltpeter War, which referred to the
stuff in the guano, which we're going to get to,
that whole side of things that was so sought after
and used to make explosives and gunpowder. So here's the

(06:54):
root of the conflict. Chilean and British businesses in the area.
They've got their tax regimes set out, and if you
asked those folks, they would say that Bolivia was the
parasite in the relationship or in the interaction, because as
these businesses began to make more money in the region,

(07:17):
the Bolivian government, controlling the territory UH in practice at
this point, said we're going to increase the taxes. We're
going to get more of a big off the work
that you are doing. And since the border treaty that
they had signed earlier back in eighteen seventy four did
not allow for this tax increase, and these private companies

(07:41):
felt the tax was unfair. They started going They're very
powerful people, they started going to the Chilean government and
they said, hey, you guys have to get involved. We
are taking a bath on this. It's unfair because we're
doing all the work and they're just sort of taking
money from us, or you know, taking what we have

(08:01):
done and for their own. And then this led to
a diplomatic crisis, it led to a war, and because
it led to a war, the Chilean government officials learned
that the whole time Bolivia had been secretly booed up
with Peru. They had a kind of alliance that said,
you know, somebody starts to fight with you, they start

(08:23):
a fight with me, that's right. And then in eighteen
seventy eight, the Bolivian government under President Hilarion Daza put
out a decree that announced a backdated eighteen seventy four
tax increase on Chilean companies. And the Chilean companies were
not happy about this. Their government under President on About Pinto.

(08:45):
So this was not in step with the border treaty.
So then one of those companies meant that you mentioned, uh,
the Anna Fagasta Nitrate and Railway company. They just flat
out refused to pay. And at that point the Bolivian
government says, okay, then we're going to confiscate your property.
So that's not cool. At that point, Chili responded by

(09:07):
this this is the war that you're talking about, just
some of the details as to like how it kind
of began. At this point, Chili respondent as you should,
as you must. You know, if your government you got,
you can't be flexed on without flexing back in return.
Uh decided to take it to the next, you know,
highest level of flex by sending a warship to the area.
Pretty pretty serious escalation and going from threats about taxes,

(09:28):
confiscating property to full on warship invasion, and that was
in December of eighteen seventy eight. Bolivia then announced that
they were going to seize and auction the entire company
that and IF and if Agasta Nitrate and Railway company,
and that was going to happen on on Valentine's Day
of February fourteenth. So then Chile, you know, not to

(09:50):
be outdone, once again threatened that if they did that,
it would render the border treaty null, which was all anybody,
which is all they wanted in the first place. So
at this point it's become a pretty nasty back and
forth that is on the verge of an explosion, like
literally like a like a diplomatic explosion, a real powder Kang,
which is appropriate considering the materials we're talking about today. So,

(10:11):
in the day of that auction, which ended up being
the high water mark, uh you know, match strike day
of this conflict, two thousand Chilean soldiers poured into the country,
got off their boat and claimed the ports city of
Antifagasta without a fight. It was a bloodless takeover, thankfully

(10:32):
at the time. Now we have a massive border dispute,
massive territorial dispute. Yeah, it only took about a week
for Bolivia to declare war. And then say, oh, you've
triggered my trap card. And my trap card is this

(10:52):
secret alliance with Peru? Is that a magic thing? Trap
card is my attempt to reference a meme that comes
from a card game called u g O, which some
of our fellow ridiculous historians may remember probably, So yeah,
Ugo is like kind of the poor man's Pokemon, and
which was like magic for kids. I always loved playing bookmon,

(11:14):
but I've never gotten the gumption to get into magic.
I really want to. It's a lot of fun. I
got two things for us right here. One, I have
a buddy who dreamed of being a professional Ugo player,
I don't know if that actually exists, but he dreamed
Number two dreams bring it out a couple of feet away.

(11:37):
I got a giant desk that I do all my
stuff on, and no joke, I have an entire drawer
just dedicated to childhood, you know, um fun items. It's
the biggest drawer of my desk. I I mean, I
really should grow up already. Will you teach me how
to play? Of course? Yeah, we will walk together. I mean,
I don't know. I don't have that any good cards.
I think, like my holographic charts are not first edition,

(11:58):
but just holographic charts. You got a few of those
metallic e ones. Me and my kid were into and
she was little. We had the matt and everything, and
I really liked playing. I think I liked it more
than she did, so Max, I fully am on board
with this and Ben. It's a super fun game and
very quick to pick up, and I think I have
about as many as you do in a couple of
big freezer bags. Let's all go hang on to this
guy right on, because I still have a secret thing

(12:21):
for you. Max. I. I had left it at the
office and I took it back because we're in the
midst of a move, but so is Bolivia at this
time their secret alliance. Its official name is the Defensive
Tree of eighteen seventy three. And then Peruvian government wants
to stay true to their words, so they say, not
only are we gonna make good on our agreement with Bolivia,

(12:45):
but in the great geopolitical game and the long term chess,
this matters to us because we believe Chile is expansionist,
and we're also kind of worried that not everybody's in
the best shape to face the Chilean army. So Peru
at first counsel's a peaceful resolution. They say, all right,

(13:08):
we're gonna send one of our top guys, one of
our top men shout out to Indiana Jones to negotiate
with the government of Chile. Chile says, we need you
to make a statement of neutrality, and Peru says, I
can't really do that because we just went public about
our secret relationship with Bolivia. And then Chile says, all right, well,

(13:30):
we're not talking diplomacy at all. We're declaring war on
both of you. And they do this on April five,
eighteen seventy nine, and so even though Peru was not
involved in this guano conversation at all, they got sucked in,
kind of like if you've ever been in a in
a bit of a brew haha with your friends or

(13:51):
a hullabaloo, and then you hear one of your friends say, oh,
you've got a problem with me, You've got problem with
all of us, And then you look around and you're like,
why is this guy pointing at us? Oh? Boy, here
we go. So Peru lost thousands of of troops and
a lot of property during the war. At the end
of the war, there was a seven month civil war.

(14:13):
Love that when one one war between you and another
country lead to a war within your own borders amongst
your own people. And a lot of this has to
do with the fact that the nation was economically destitute
after all of this, and continued to be uh for
many years to come. So finally, in eighteeny four, there
was a truce between Bolivia and chile Um and Chile

(14:38):
was given as a condition of this truce, control over
the entire coast of Bolivia that included the h that
Um city of Anti Fagasta or the province within and
all of that good stuff and that was the good
stuff that was the area with a nitrate and the
copper and all of these other minerals that were very

(14:59):
very precious and very very mindable, so that the nineteen
o four a treaty was established that made this you know,
I guess temporary truce permanent the law of the lands.
M hmm. Yeah. And at this point, ridiculous historians, if you,
like the rest of us, are living not in the

(15:19):
eighteen hundreds, then you may rightly ask yourself, what's the deal?
Why all this bird poop? We have the answer. Wuanna,
like we established earlier in this episode, has nitrogen, phosphates,
a lot of other stuff that is super valuable in
the industrial age. It works in both agriculture and economic development.

(15:44):
And we know, thanks to Gregory Cushman, the author of
Guana and the Opening of the Pacific World, a Global
Ecological History, that guana was a huge, huge deal. It
could be used to produce things or be part of
the production process of goods like glass, bleach dye, color glazes.

(16:06):
Pushman even says it tells us quite a lot about
the historical circumstances that have enabled us to grow to
become so numerous as a species, and he particularly believes
that fertilizer has played this role in supporting the growth
of large concentrated populations. So, in a real way, modern

(16:29):
civilization owes a lot to burp poop or bat poop
wana nember that. Remember that Ace of Ventura sequel when
Nature calls the Big Twist, and that one is that
it's like all about the evil Americans just want the
guano that like the indigenous people have because of their
like giant sacred bats or something like that, really really

(16:51):
problematic if you go back and watch it now, is
that the one where he comes out of like a
fake rhinos but or something? He does do that thing? Yes,
it's uh, it's a genius disguise apparently, And I think
it was kind of parodied in an episode of Always
Sunny in Philadelphia where where Frank pops out of like

(17:11):
a couch like a weird baby seal being born. He's
all sweaty and covered in slime. I think it's a
reference to that, but I could be wrong. But yeah,
I guano is the kicker of that timeless piece of
of American cinema. So well, Guano is kind of a
catch all for you know, the excrement of avian creature.

(17:31):
Just like we said at the top of the show,
the word guana is obviously a South American word. It
has come sort of like xerox or coke, you know,
to become a catch all because of the most popular
version of a thing for all of the things. You know,
coke represents all soda, unless you're from the Midwest, in
which case it's like pop. God forbid you're from the

(17:52):
Carolinas and call it pepsi because that's a horrible drink.
But the most important part of the stuff, whatever you
want to call it, is all of the mineral nitrates
that are found in the Attacama Desert. Because of this,
the South American sea birds, specifically their variety of guano,
happens to be the richest source of this kind of

(18:12):
nitrogen on the entire planet. Even though any any bird
poop or avian poop is pretty rich in this stuff.
Because of specifically the mineral content of the environment that
these birds find themselves in, there's is the best. That
is the best poop you can get. Not to mention
that the climate of the Pacific coast of Chile and

(18:33):
the chemical balance of you know, the ocean water in Peru.
They all of these things combined to create this ecosystem
that creates like the perfect combination of circumstances for an
incredibly rich environment for fish as well as of course
the seabirds that eat them. So at all in turn
goes to create the highest quality guana that you can imagine,

(18:53):
which would make the boomiest of boom stuff. So there's
copious amounts of gauan know rich in this phosphates, nitrates,
and potassiums that are um deposited in this coastal region.
Not to mention the agricultural angle. These are the three nitrate, phosphate, potassium,
most important components of any fertilizer. And this wasn't always

(19:18):
a thing that people were aware of. And because there's
so little rain in this area, the stuff stays where
it is, so it can be mind essentially because of
the dry climate. So it creates these very very rich
and dense deposits of this stuff. And like I said,
this wasn't always a thing. There was a revolution going on.
Ben you mentioned how guano essentially was a huge part

(19:40):
of the industrial revolution. This was also a huge part
of industrialized farming. Yeah, this is weird because guana was
sort of an unsung hero. I would call it of
the industrial age. Look, I get it for bird poop

(20:01):
looks gross, right, And if you are familiar with the
history of fertilizer, you know that feces has played a
big role at agriculture. Even today, UH, some agricultural communities
engaged in the practice of night soil, which is using
human feces to uh, to provide fertilizer for crops. But

(20:22):
despite bird poops really gross appearance and it's not great smell,
back in the eighteen hundreds, it was sold around the
world and it was the number one agricultural fertilizer in
the US. I mean, even before the war in Bolivia

(20:43):
we're talking about today, the very first American ships that
were mining guano. We're doing it in the eighteen thirties
off the coast of Peru a place called the Chincha Islands,
and there was a large population of various birds. I
always love how ridiculous bird names can sound. So let's
all be adults here. There were pelicans, there were cormorants,

(21:06):
and there were of course boobies. We can say that
because it's a family show and it's the actual bird's name,
but we can still chuckle. Right, Max is tickled by
that one. It's also a bird called it. Yeah, oh yeah,
the great bush tit is that one? Am I just
making it up? I can't. You might have made that

(21:26):
one to take it to the next floor. There are
probably tips of different varieties from different regions. I imagine. Yes,
there is a bird called the bush tit. It is
not necessarily great, so I guess that part was my opinion,
But the actual name is bush tit. Anyhow, Off the
coast of Peru, these American ships find islands that are
covered in guano almost two hundred feet deep, and this

(21:51):
Peruvian guano gets popular in the US, and then, like
you had alluded to earlier, knowl a lot of other companies,
private interests are searching other parts of the Pacific, in
the Caribbean to find the better guado. And it really
all depended on rainfall, because when it would rain on

(22:11):
these islands or these sources, the nitrates would be sapped
out of the guano, and so places with relatively dry
climate like this area of Bolivia slash Chile and the
Chincha Islands off the coast of Peru because they didn't
have a lot of rain. They had really superpowered, like

(22:32):
high grade Guando, the best in the world, no hyperbole.
And as soon as people heard about the beauty of Guado,
Americans became super super eager. They were feending for it,
even though various South American governments were selling it at
a premium. And as crazy as it sounds, the US

(22:56):
president of the time, Millard Fillmore, even talked about Guando
in public and it was like a policy issue. It
was a big, big deal nationally. Millard Fillmore one of
the nerdiest president names of all time. I don't know why.
I just think when I hear Millard, I just think
of Millhouse and this bad things happening to poor Millhouse.

(23:16):
But then there's that one episode where everything's coming up Millhouse.
It always makes me happy. Um. Yeah, he said it
was quote the duty of sorry, it's the duty we're
talking about poop. Never mind, um, the duty of the
government to employ Max. I didn't even get a chuckle
out of you. Good lord, you're letting me down, but
you're letting It's okay. It's the duty of the government

(23:37):
to employ all means properly in its power for the
purpose of causing that article. You know, in that article,
we're talking about Peruvian guano to be imported into the
country at a reasonable price. So even Millard Fillmore is
concerned about the price, I mean, the the taxation. You know,
that's a that's a big part of uh. You know,
fair trade between nations is like having a reasonable bill

(24:00):
and predictable import or export attacks and now hopefully ridiculous historians,
it seems a little bit less strange that there was
a war over the poop of flying animals, which is
guana was just the excrement of pretty much any flying animal,
from bird to bat. We know that this led to

(24:22):
other international conflicts. The Cincha Islands became the subject of
the Cincha Islands War, also related to bird poop, and
we mentioned this in a previous episode. The US even
passed legislation eighteen fifty six that said, hey, if you're
a U. S citizen and you find an unoccupied island

(24:42):
iguana on it, stick a flag in it, baby, say
that that's property of the US, because we're not playing
around and we know no and that and that was
a big that was a big feature of the previous
episode that I mentioned at the top of the show,
when US farmers went crazy for a bird poop. It
was all about claiming islands that had these deposits. So
this is an international affair, right And part of the reason,

(25:05):
again going back to the excellent work of this historian Pushman,
part of the reason this war spiked was because the
trade was in danger of being disrupted. There was a
huge earthquake in eighteen sixty eight, a nine point zero
magnitude quake that generated a tsunami. And this even back

(25:26):
in the late eighteen hundreds or mid late eighteen hundreds,
this earthquake was a big enough deal that people felt
it in New Zealand, in Japan, in Hawaii. And this
earthquake struck the Atacama Desert right in the middle of
this guano nitrates boom. So it put pressure on these countries.

(25:47):
And it's a good you know, it's fair to ask
whether this war would have occurred without that earthquake, if
we would have even had the Salt Pire War or
the War of the Pacific. I think it's here to
say that eventually some kind of conflict would have would
have occurred because people were just gaga for guano. It's

(26:08):
probably the silliest way to put it. It's a perfectly
delightful way of putting it, if you ask me. All
this to say is that there's probably sillier things that
wars have been waged over. But you know, look, it's
only silly because we're children, and um, we think poop
is funny. But you know, it doesn't matter where it
comes from if it serves as an important component in
all of the you know, chemicals that drive the industrial

(26:32):
world and also you know war itself, so war over
war stuff that makes sense, even though it's just the
white stuff you know that ends up on your car.
It's gross, but it's it's it's an important commodity. And
Bolivia found that out the hard way when they were
robbed of a lovely stretch of coastline. Um that that

(26:53):
rightfully belonged to them, but um, they were outclassed in
war and it was taken from them, and it was
what's the status of that situation today, I imagine, I
mean there's probably still you know more about South American
diplomacy and um, you know, affairs than I do, Ben,
and there's still tension between these nations, right well, there. Yeah,
there's always gonna be a some amount of tension between

(27:15):
nations over various things. But that nineteen oh four treaty,
as far as I know, made a permanent the um
one you mentioned earlier. Still, this gives us an opportunity
to mention something that is not pleasant but is important.
It's a phenomenon known as the resource curse. Some of
the most resource rich areas and countries in the world

(27:40):
are struggling under crippling inequality because they have been, you know,
victimized through one international conflict or another, such that private
companies and other countries can extract whatever valuable things they have.
And the past really the past. There's a conversation, of course,

(28:01):
but the past also sets important precedents. And recently Olivia
has been learning about another resource immensely valuable to the
modern world that is in its possession, and it's been
trying to avoid being exploited in that regard. Bolivia, as
we record today, has about a quarter of the world's
known supply of lithium. Olivia, by the way, it's not

(28:25):
a huge nation in terms of population. It's about twelve
million people, and multiple foreign companies are trying to get
lithium projects going there, because you guys know, lithiums like
a rare earth metal. It's used in tons of electronic applications.
So we're going to see what happens. But I would

(28:46):
also not to be too conspiratorial. That's for stuff they
don't want you to know. I would also keep an
eye on any conflicts in Bolivia in the near future
and checked to see whether or not they're related to
mining rights. Absolutely, it's often something very much at play
in these kind of situations. So on that note, we

(29:07):
will leave you for today. Thanks to new researcher Jeff
to super producer Max Williams. Alex Williams composed this banging track,
thanks also, of course to Christopher Haciotas, thanks to Eve's
Jeff co. Thanks to uh yeah, our brand new super
research associate Jeff Bartlett. Will have to have him on

(29:28):
the show soon and we'll introduce you to our second,
brand new, straight out the box super research associate, one
and only, Zach Williams later this next episode, so tune
in in the meantime. I guess what we can take
away from this is that the weirdest things and maybe

(29:49):
the most insignificant seeming things can lead to great and
sometimes violent change. No truer where it's were ever spoken.
See you next time, folux M. For more podcasts from
My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,

(30:10):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.