The Sea Within Us: The Cultural Narrative of Bolivia’s Maritime Question

Abstract

This article analyzes Bolivia’s maritime claim as a long-term cultural and narrative construction, shifting the focus from historical and legal dimensions toward its symbolic character. Through a qualitative, interpretive, and hermeneutic methodology, it examines a corpus of monuments, music, literature, cinema, painting, and architecture linked to the maritime cause. The findings identify a recurring narrative matrix structured around categories such as grievance, sacrifice, heroism, mourning, and promise, which resignify territorial loss as a persistent symbolic presence. The article concludes that the maritime cause functions as a cultural device of memory, cohesion, and national identity, beyond the legal plausibility of the claim.