Josh Savala's succinct and snappy monograph deftly counters the dominant tendency among both popular commentators and scholars to start investigations of Chilean–Peruvian historical relations from the premise of conflict. This is not to say his book ignores the long history of conflict between these two neighbouring countries. Far from it. Instead, Beyond Patriotic Phobias shows us how even within a context of military and territorial conflict we find many stories of transnational collaboration, friendship and commonality.
In some cases, what we see is a shift from conflict to cooperation, or vice versa. For instance, the opening pages of the book introduce readers to essayist, poet and politician Manuel González Prada (1844–1918), and reveal how his growing ‘nationalist and patriotic vocation’ during the War of the Pacific (1879–83) had transformed – by the early twentieth century – into an appreciation that ‘the real conflict involved internal inequalities and hierarchies’ and that the ‘poor soldiers and marines’ in Chile and Peru would be better off fighting together against the elites that oppressed them (p. 2). In other cases, the two contrary experiences or views play out simultaneously. We see this in the epilogue, which begins with the lawsuit over maritime borders that Peru took to the International Court of Justice in The Hague in January 2008. This ‘confrontation with Chile in the courtroom’ received a lot of national and international press coverage, and yet, as Savala tells us, in many of the printed articles ‘key political figures emphasised the need to see Chile as more similar [to Peru] than different’ (p. 137).
The five chapters in between the introduction and the epilogue walk the reader through a vast range of friendly Chilean–Peruvian interactions. Chapter 1 focuses on daily labouring life in the maritime world, with Chilean and Peruvian workers coming together through cosmopolitan ship crews, and Chilean and Peruvian state bureaucrats observing and liaising with one another regarding legislation (on desertion, for example). The second chapter interrogates contested conceptions of masculinity and debates about sex work, with the port cities of Callao-Lima (Peru) and Valparaíso (Chile) similarly lived and represented as markedly homosocial spaces. The third chapter explores stories about and scientific investigations into the spread of cholera, with increasing state intervention and overlapping legislative reforms in both countries, and a notable sharing of reports and research between Chilean and Peruvian physicians, not least cuzqueño David Matto, who visits Chile in 1888. Chapter 4 analyses anarchist labour organising, with workers in Mollendo finding common cause and political practice with the Chilean branch of Industrial Workers of the World. This chapter also underscores the growing transnational circulation of pamphlets, newspapers and magazines. And, finally, Chapter 5 scrutinises the policing – archiving, surveillance and repression – of labour militancy, with parallel developments taking place in Chile and Peru, and noteworthy examples of cooperation between the states’ police forces.
One of the key strengths of Savala's book is the impressive range of source materials that it draws on and thereby shares with readers: ship records; government decrees; medical journals; scientific studies; international congress proceedings; population censuses; diplomatic reports; civil court records; police documents, journals and regulations; anarchist and leftist periodicals; mainstream newspapers; published essays; private letters written by workers on the ships; ministerial correspondence and reports; and literary works. Rather than racing through or merely skimming the surface of this treasure trove of documentation, Savala really digs into it and interrogates its multiple meanings. The extent of the detailed research undertaken for Beyond Patriotic Phobias is highlighted by the fact that it includes just over 50 pages of ‘Notes’ to support 143 pages of analysis.
Such detail allows us glimpses into many different people's lives and views of the Pacific maritime world: Manual Dávila, a day labourer in Valparaíso, in Chapter 1; Tomas Jhones tried for the crime of sodomy in Chapter 2; the above-mentioned David Matto in Chapter 3; Chilean anarchist Luis Toro in Chapter 4; Marino C. Alegre y Pacheco, in Chapter 5, who published a study of tattoos in Peruvian prisons in the late 1910s. All these individual stories – and there are many more – greatly enliven the narrative. We also get to see the diverse ways in which people interacted with the Chilean and Peruvian states. Sometimes Chileans and Peruvians connected precisely at state level. In other instances, the connections went beyond the state, and depended on specific individuals. There were also occasions when the connections occurred in the context of struggles against the state, anarchist activism for example. The state-level connections and the possibility of individuals moving in and out of the state apparatus – working for it, making demands of it, critiquing it – help to remind us that, neither in Chile nor Peru, has the state apparatus ever functioned as a monolithic, uniform whole.
The chronology of the book is worthy of note too. Broadly speaking, it takes us from the 1850s – long before the War of the Pacific, which, in line with Savala's main argument, means decentring war as a central organising component of Chilean–Peruvian relations – through to the 1920s. It was at the end of this decade that Chile and Peru signed the Treaty of Lima (1929), giving Tacna back to Peru but allowing Chile to retain sovereignty over the annexed province of Arica. As noted above, though, the chapters of Beyond Patriotic Phobias are organised thematically rather than following a strict chronological order. Some chapters are broad reaching and span several decades (Chapter 1, for instance, covers the whole period); others zoom in more exactly (Chapter 3 focuses on the 1880s). And then, to wrap up, the epilogue jumps to the twenty-first century, helpfully emphasising the contemporary relevance of the complex histories of conflict and cooperation mapped out so crisply in the preceding chapters.
Savala opens up our understanding of the South American Pacific in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century as a highly gendered and racialised space, where national borders were constantly being both reinforced and undermined. He also shows us how this maritime world functioned as a space of exchange, freedom and mobilisation, as well as of confinement and oppression. Herein lies the contribution of Beyond Patriotic Phobias, which is especially important and innovative when we are considering Chile and Peru.
