Bolivia wants its coastline back

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It's officially the holiday season, and Abercrombie's new collection has outfits for everything on your calendar. It's the busiest time of year, and between shopping and party invites, I don't have time to plan every look. But Abercrombie's always got me covered. Their sweaters are the perfect easy layer for low-key plans, and on a nice night out, I'm reaching for their classic trousers. Fill your closet with the pieces you'll need all season long. Have a very Abercrombie holiday. Shop in the app, online, and in stores.

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And my coffee-obsessed bestie?

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Nations suffer more often in imagination than in reality. Bolivia is an exception. The country is a resource powerhouse with extensive deposits of oil, gas, tin, silver, gold, tungsten, and iron ore. It is also home to one quarter of the world's lithium deposits. Yet, there is a problem. In the 1880s, the country's coastline was cut off following a bitter conflict with neighboring Chile. As such, being landlocked has severely hampered Bolivia's export-oriented economy, costing it an estimated one-fifth of the overall GDP.

There is a lot at stake, and La Paz has pursued many strategies to get its coastline back. From negotiation to litigation at The Hague, to mitigation strategies like a transcontinental corridor. Bolivia's search for ocean access is relentless. So much so that, even though it has been landlocked for well over a century, Bolivia still maintains a navy, and commemorates the loss of its coastline annually. So, what's the story here? How did Bolivia became landlocked, and why does it still claim a corridor to the Pacific Ocean?

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Bolivia has given much to the world, but has very little. Nested on the Andean Plateau, the country's alpine climate sheltered indigenous peoples from tropical diseases. Harsh conditions on the Atacama Coast and the inland Chaco meant settlements were few and far.

So, when the Spanish colonized the area, they set up shop in the mountains. Over the following centuries, the new rulers extracted around 85,000 tons of silver from the town of Potosí at the cost of 7 million lives. Thus, upon independence in 1825, Bolivia inherited an economy built on resource extraction. And though it had a coastline in the Atacama littoral, the area was depopulated, leaving its border with Chile vague. This hands-off attitude changed with the discovery of nitrates and copper near Mijliones in the mid-19th century. Though Bolivia had a better claim to the region, Chilean mining interests had British diplomatic and financial backing.

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It's officially the holiday season, and Abercrombie's new collection has outfits for everything on your calendar.

It's the busiest time of year, and between shopping and party invites, I don't have time to plan every look. But Abercrombie's always got me covered. Their sweaters are the perfect easy layer for low-key plans. And on a nice night out, I'm reaching for their classic trousers. Fill your closet with the pieces you'll need all season long. Have a very Abercrombie holiday. Shop in the app, online, and in stores.

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