Chaco War - Cultural References

Cultural References

Augusto Céspedes, the Bolivian ambassador to UNESCO, and one of the most important Bolivian writers of the 20th century, has written several books describing different aspects of the conflict. As a war reporter for the newspaper El Universal Céspedes had witnessed the penuries of the war, which he described in Crónicas heroicas de una guerra estúpida ("Heroic Chronicles of a stupid war") among other books. Several of his fiction works, considered masterworks of the genre, have also the Chaco War conflict as setting. Another diplomat and important figure of Bolivian literature, Adolfo Costa du Rels, has written about the conflict, his novel Laguna H3 published in 1938 is also set in the Chaco War.

One of the masterpieces of Paraguayan writer Augusto Roa Bastos, the 1960 novel Hijo de Hombre, describes in one of its chapters the carnage and harsh war conditions during the siege of Boquerón. The author himself took part in the conflict, joining the army medical service at the age of 17. The Argentine film Hijo de Hombre, directed by Lucas Demare in 1961 is based on this part of the novel.

In Pablo Neruda's poem, Standard Oil Company, Neruda refers to the Chaco War in the context of the influences that oil companies had on the existence of the war.

Howard Chaykin's TV miniseries Dominic Fortune (2009) begins with the title character working as a mercenary pilot in the Chaco War.

The Chaco War inspired Lester Dent to write the Doc Savage adventure novel, The Dust of Death, also published in 1935.

The Chaco War formed the backdrop for the film Storm Over the Andes (1935) by Christy Cabanne, and for the film Hamaca paraguaya (2006) by Paz Encina.

Some aspects of the Chaco War are the inspiration for Tintin's comic book adventure The Broken Ear by Hergé, which began publication in 1935.

The Paraguayan polka, Regimiento 13 Tuyutí, composed by Ramón Vargas Colman and written in Guaraní by Emiliano R. Fernández remembers the Paraguayan Fifth Division and its exploits in the battles of Nanawa, in which Fernández fought and was injured. On the other side, the siege of Boquerón inspired Boquerón abandonado, a Bolivian tonada recorded by Bolivian folk singer and politician Zulma Yugar in 1982.