War of the Pacific: The Battle of Topáter, the first battle of the war is fought between Chile and the joint forces of Bolivia and Peru.

The first battle lasted twenty minutes and decided almost nothing, but it started a war that reshaped the western coast of South America. At Topater on March 23, 1879, a force of 135 Chilean soldiers clashed with 548 Bolivian and Peruvian troops near the oasis town of Calama in the Atacama Desert. Chile won the skirmish easily, but the War of the Pacific would drag on for four more years. The underlying cause was bird excrement. The Atacama Desert contained enormous deposits of guano and sodium nitrate, essential fertilizers in an era before synthetic alternatives existed. Bolivia controlled the coastal territory where most deposits lay, but Chilean companies did the mining, and Chilean workers vastly outnumbered Bolivians in the region. When Bolivia raised taxes on Chilean mining operations in violation of an 1874 treaty, Chile seized the port of Antofagasta. Bolivia invoked its secret alliance with Peru, and the three-way war began. Chile's navy dominated the Pacific coast, allowing it to land troops at will while Bolivia and Peru struggled to coordinate their forces across the vast desert interior. The decisive naval battle at Angamos in October 1879 gave Chile unchallenged control of the sea and the ability to strangle its enemies' supply lines. Chile's victory was total. By 1883, Chilean troops had occupied Lima, and both Peru and Bolivia were forced to cede territory. Bolivia lost its entire coastline, becoming the landlocked nation it remains today. Peru surrendered the nitrate-rich provinces of Tarapaca, Tacna, and Arica. Bolivia has pursued access to the Pacific through diplomacy and international courts ever since, making its lost coastline one of the longest-running territorial disputes in the Western Hemisphere.