Roberto Querejazu Calvo

This is the standard one-volume work on the Chaco War of the 1930s, and the 1992 edition was the fifth, and, I believe, the last. An obituary of the author, who also wrote a credible history of the War of the Pacific in which Bolivia lost its ocean access, was blogged here: http://angelcaido666x.blogspot.com/2006/10/fallecio-el-historiador-roberto.html

The book (Masamaclay) is hard going for an intermediate Spanish linguist, with a few maps and pictures. Bolivian book manufacture is somewhat rough, reminiscent of the papers and bindings of the old Warsaw Pact.

The war itself was one of the sad conflicts of South America, with peasant draftees on both sides slaughtering one another on an industrial scale with the automated war machines delivered by cheery Northern Hemisphere salesmen. As in any war, there are stratagems, blunders and incredible feats of valor and endurance.

Querejazu Calvo was Bolivian and that point of view is evident in the book, but he gives the Paraquayans (the ultimate victors) a fair shake: fair enough that Paraguay's long-servibg dictator Stroessner blurbed the book.… (más)