Amusing (and Hopefully it Will Stay That Way)

Bolivia's land-locked navy dreams of leaving Lake Titicaca

From the shores of Lake Titicaca high in the Andes, you can still see the Bolivian navy puttering around, in the hope thatthey may, one day, see the bright blue ocean to the west once again. While La Paz stands on the abyss of civil war, its population starving and its economy in free fall, its leaders are strangely preoccupied with rectifying what has long been relegated to the history books.

It has been 100 years since landlocked Bolivia lost its sea access to Chile, following the War of the Pacific. But every year since then, Bolivians celebrate "Bolivian Sea Day". This 23 March will be like the others, when the navy obsessively salutes the remains of Eduardo Avaroa, an officer killed by the Chileans in a battle in 1879.

I honestly don't expect much of anything to come from this, as the blustering has gone on for so long. However, it is somewhat unsettling when a country that is undergoing severe political and economic crises starts to make nationalistic noises that specifically deal with territory held by a neigbor.