Is the notion of nationhood built into our cultural identity? Is it received or rather created by historical circumstance and deliberately crafted by action and design? Nations, the author responds, possess a constructed nature; they are invented.

The aftermath of the War of the Pacific (1879–83) saw Chile as a victor over Peru and Bolivia and possessor of vast territories formerly belonging to its foes. The peace accord of 1883 left the Peruvian territories of Tacna and Arica to be held by Chile for ten years when a plebiscite was to determine whether they would remain Peruvian or whether they would rather belong to Chile. In fact, the plebiscite never took place and the famous Question of the Pacific was solved by a bilateral treaty in 1929, leaving Arica to Chile and handing over Tacna to Peru. The rich array of social interactions in the period between the end of the war and the signing of this treaty forms the central argument for Skuban's study of nationalism and identity on the Peruvian-Chilean frontier. It is an intricate argument and the author does not avoid its complications and lucidly delves into the various social conflicts resulting from the Chilean occupation. There was not only the Chilean/Peruvian dichotomy but also the domestic and conflictive interaction between the Arica/Tacna region and the national central powers in each of the two countries. Both the race for Lima to preserve loyalty to a Peruvian historical identity and for Chile to chilenise the new territories clashed with the peculiar distinctiveness of a region inimical to the designs of a central Peruvian authority and simultaneously unwilling to fall prey to Chilean persuasion. In addition to the region/central power dichotomy there was also the deep social cleavage within the disputed region with the popular sectors and the indigenous populations confronting the uncertainties of an outcome that – whatever its course- would be harmful to their welfare. It is precisely this intricate nature of social conflict in the Arica/Tacna region that poses a formidable challenge to historians and finds a cogent response in the analysis presented by the author.

Both the theoretical framework and the vast historical context for the book are succinctly set out in the introduction and in chapter one. The second chapter details the various tactics used by Chile to impose Chileanisation by counting, monitoring and displacing people or by attempting to neutralise the main public expressions of Peruvian identity, namely church, schools and the press. The next chapter gets into the vicissitudes of the frustrated plebiscite during 1925–26, a momentous period when nationalistic passions prevented its peaceful and normal completion. Chapter four looks into the response of the Peruvian elites to the challenge of cultural preservation, providing a splendid account of the role played by women in the safeguarding and enrichment of a Peruvian identity. Chapter five is devoted to the contradictory behaviour of popular sectors entangled in a confused mixture of class solidarity and nationalistic fanaticism reaching a violent stage through the notorious ligas patrioticas. The last chapter is devoted to the intricate matter of the Indian question within the context of the Arica and Tacna dispute. Murra's model of pisos ecologicos entailed the existence of a large number of small human settlements spread over a vast Andean territory which, to a large extent, still subsists today. The Tarata and Ticaco incidents discussed in this chapter provide a good indication of Aymara national feelings but it is not sufficient, as we still ignore the nature of national allegiances in the other numerous Indian communities, particularly those in the Andean hinterland of Arica (Belen, Putre, Socoroma, etc.).

One general aspect that remains unknown is the economic infrastructure of the period since we are only fragmentarily informed about the way in which Tacna and Arica survived during 1880–1929 and no reference is made to the pre-existing complex triangular articulation between Bolivian trade, Tacna's import/export houses and the Arica sea outlet. Whatever happened to foreign merchant houses in Tacna? Were they just bemused spectators or actors in the drama? The houses were mainly British and some, like Frederick Huth, used to play a fundamental role in this entrepôt trade of Tacna and Arica. This is one of the various challenges calling for further fruitful research projects and, no doubt, a Spanish version of this book would produce healthy incentives for local Peruvian and Chilean researchers.

There were already a good number of studies dealing almost solely with the diplomatic implications of the Tacna/Arica question. This study gets well into a host of deep seated social contradictions exacerbated by post war uncertainties and is well guided theoretically by Gramsci's notion of subaltern social groups. Habermas and Anderson provide additional frameworks of reference and the analysis is enriched with thorough referencing to the state of art debate on nationalism and frontier in Latin America. Additional value is added by resorting to balanced archival sources in Chile and Peru and, most importantly, using hitherto untapped sources from the very local area of the conflict which are handled with the healthy detachment of an impartial foreign observer, with eyes not tinged with chauvinistic animosity. If anything, the book is thin in references to dissent amongst Chilean intellectuals. Vicente Dagnino, the Chilean surgeon-historian who chose to disobey authorities' restrictions by serving the Peruvian poor and bravely fighting the outbreak of bubonic plague in Tacna, is mentioned only in the bibliography. Carlos Vicuña Fuentes and his criticism of Chilean official policy on Tacna and Arica merited more than the single footnote allocated to him. His dismissal from the Instituto Pedagogico and Instituto Nacional because of his anti-patriotism elicited the support of the Teachers' Society and the Federation of Students who rallied in the streets of Santiago.

In sum, Chile was determined to stay in Tacna and Arica and convert pre-existing Peruvian loyalties into a newly acquired Chilean nationality simply because, as Luis Ortega has posited in a recent book, the newly acquired territories represented a definitive solution to the structural crisis of the 1870s. At the onset of the Pacific War, in July 1879, the Chilean envoy Alberto Blest Gana in Paris wrote to his friend Aníbal, the president of Chile: ‘[… in this war] not a single means should be avoided to achieve the end we are aiming for: not only victory but the salvation of our country’. Presented with the choice of either winning over the hearts and minds of the local population or imposing a new allegiance sometimes by coercion, as occupying powers usually do, Chile tended to opt for the latter. Peruvian resistance, crushed by the long War of the Pacific, reinvented itself in admirable cultural expressions in which women played a fundamental part. This is one of the finest elements addressed by Skuban.

The lines on the sand were finally fixed but the story has not yet finished: as this book hits the market, Chile and Peru are again at loggerheads disputing the way in which those lines should be projected into the territorial waters. One wonders how far in the future lies the end to these deep seated intermittent animosities and when those lines in the sand and in the sea shall be gone with the wind of Latin American integration.