Peru was heavily indebted, and political in-fighting was again on the rise. Peru embarked on a railroad-building program that helped but also bankrupted the country. In 1879, Peru entered the War of the Pacific which lasted until 1884. Bolivia invoked its alliance with Peru against Chile. The Peruvian Government tried to mediate the dispute by sending a diplomatic team to negotiate with the Chilean government, but the committee concluded that war was inevitable. Chile declared war on 5 April 1879. Almost five years of war ended with the loss of the department of Tarapacá and the provinces of Tacna and Arica,
First Upper Peru campaign decline, mainly due to the favourable treatment of natives and the determined opposition of the church, which attacked Castelli through his secretary Bernardo Monteagudo and his public atheism. Both royalists in Lima and Saavedra in Buenos Aires compared them both with Maximilien Robespierre, leader of the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution. Castelli also abolished the mita in Upper Peru, a project that was shared by Mariano Moreno, but Moreno had been removed from the Junta by this point. Without Castelli being in Buenos Aires to mediate between them, the disputes between Moreno and Saavedra had worsened. The Junta