Why does landlocked Bolivia have a navy?

Bolivia has a navy for two reasons: it has real water to patrol, and it has a lost coast it refuses to forget. When Bolivia became independent in 1825, it controlled the Atacama Desert and reached the Pacific Ocean. In the War of the Pacific (1879–1883), Chile conquered its entire coastline, and since a 1904 treaty Bolivia has been landlocked.

Yet in 1963 the country created a River and Lake Force, starting with four American boats and 1,800 men borrowed mostly from the army. Today the navy has about 5,000 personnel. Their practical job is real: they patrol the great rivers that flow into the Amazon to fight smuggling and drug trafficking, and they keep a presence on Lake Titicaca, shared with Peru and often called the highest navigable lake in the world, at 3,812 metres.

But the deeper reason is memory. Bolivia has never made peace with losing its coast, and its navy exists partly to keep the hope of getting it back alive by cultivating a "maritime consciousness". Every year, on the Day of the Sea, sailors parade as Bolivia restates its claim to the ocean. The country even took Chile to the International Court of Justice, which ruled in 2018 that Chile was not obliged to negotiate. The sailors keep training anyway, some of them learning ocean sailing on Argentine ships.