Día del Mar (''Day of the Sea'') is an annual celebration in

Bolivia Bolivia, officially the Plurinational State of Bolivia, is a landlocked country located in central South America. The country features diverse geography, including vast Amazonian plains, tropical lowlands, mountains, the Gran Chaco Province, w ...

that observes the loss of

Litoral Department The Department of the Litoral, also known as the Atacama Department and commonly known as the Bolivian coast, was the description of the extent of the Pacific coast of the Atacama Desert included in the territory of Bolivia from its inception in ...

during the 1879–1883

War of the Pacific The War of the Pacific (), also known by War of the Pacific#Etymology, multiple other names, was a war between Chile and a Treaty of Defensive Alliance (Bolivia–Peru), Bolivian–Peruvian alliance from 1879 to 1884. Fought over Atacama Desert ...

with

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in western South America. It is the southernmost country in the world and the closest to Antarctica, stretching along a narrow strip of land between the Andes, Andes Mountains and the Paci ...

. The day is celebrated on 23 March, at the conclusion of the week-long ''Semana del Mar'', with a ceremony at La Paz's Plaza Abaroa in honor of the war hero Eduardo Abaroa and in parallel ceremonies nationwide. Bolivia considers the Día del Mar an opportunity to reiterate its claims for access to the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five Borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is ...

that was lost when the country became

landlocked A landlocked country is a country that has no territory connected to an ocean or whose coastlines lie solely on endorheic basins. Currently, there are 44 landlocked countries, two of them doubly landlocked (Liechtenstein and Uzbekistan), and t ...

following the war. The 1963 iteration of the event was marked by chants and songs against Chile by worker and student groups.

References

{{Irredentism Anti-Chilean sentiment Public holidays in Bolivia March observances Bolivian irredentism

See also

References