Hilarión Daza

Hilarión Daza Groselle (January 14, 1840 – February 27, 1894) was President of Bolivia from 1876 to 1879.

Daza Groselle was born 1840 in a family of Italian emigrants from Piedmont. His father surname was Grossoli (later changed to Groselle), but he preferred the surname of his mother, Daza. His father was very poor, but with hard work and sacrifices was able to maintain the military studies of Hilarion, who since young showed great intelligence and ambitions and was able to successfully reach the top of Bolivian society.

A career military officer and native of Sucre, Daza came to power on May 4, 1876 in a coup against the constitutional president Tomás Frías. He was supported by much of the country's financial elite because of his avowal to maintain order and stability.

To a large extent, Daza Groselle entered the Palacio Quemado with a desire to create Bolivian control over the remote, sparsely-populated maritime province of Litoral. By the late 1870s, the latter was already settled mostly by Chileans, who found access to the region much easier than did the highland Bolivians. Predictably, a corollary of this growing physical and economic Chilean presence in the region was its irrendentist claim by Santiago, especially when rich deposits of guano were discovered near the Bolivian port of Mejillones.

To make matters worse, Daza was facing an ongoing recession and the effects of the most severe drought in Bolivian history up to that point. Daza hoped to gather the support of nationalist Bolivians to strengthen his internal position from insurrections, a massive demonstration by artisans in Sucre, and widespread opposition. For these reasons, he rescinded the treaty (quite favorable to Chile) that had been signed in 1874 by President Frías freeing from Bolivian taxation all Chilean citizens living and working in the now disputed Litoral region. Chile threatened war, and Daza immediately invoked an existing self-defense pact/alliance with Peru. Daza Groselle thought that for such a minor reason the Chilean government was not going to start a war against the allied Bolivia and Peru, but in February and March 1879 Chilean troops invaded and occupied the "Bolivian Litoral" around Antofagasta, sparking the War of the Pacific.

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