Nevertheless, the Chilean Army saw itself successful in the battles of San Juan, Chorrillos and Miraflores, razing the towns, and allowing for an easy occupation of the Peruvian capital.

As the war progressed in Chile's advantage, the Chilean Army liberated thousands of Chinese coolies who had agreed to come to work in Peruvian haciendas, escaping from the harsh conditions in their own homeland and seeking a better future in Peru.

The Chinese also fought alongside the Chileans in the battles of San Juan–Chorrillos and Miraflores, and there was also rioting and looting by non-Chinese workers in the coastal cities.

[6] On January 14, the Chilean minister of war in campaign José Francisco Vergara sent his secretary Isidoro Errázuriz in the company of Colonel Miguel Iglesias, who had been captured by Baquedano, to talk with Piérola to avoid more bloodshed.

However, Vergara's attempt was closely followed by the diplomatic corps of Lima, whose dean by seniority was the consul of Argentina and Bolivia, Jorge Tezanos-Pinto y Sánchez de Bustamante (1821-1897).

After the battles of Chorrillos and Miraflores, the Secretary of the Navy, Captain Manuel Villar Olivera, ordered the destruction of the coastal batteries and the ships of the Peruvian squad.

[7] Chilean Rear Admiral Galvarino Riveros Cárdenas noted in a long testimony: [...] at 4 a.m. it was noticed in that port that a fire was declared in all the enemy ships sheltered in the dock and moments later, a series of explosions began to be felt that lasted all day and part of the next, produced by the fire of the powder magazines of the forts the charges of gunpowder and dynamite with which the enemy tried to explode their cannons.

[9][10] In the meetings held at the Chilean barracks in Miraflores to carry out the military occupation of the Peruvian capital, General Manuel Baquedano met with representatives of the diplomatic corps and with Admirals Bergasse du Petit Thouars and J.M.

Baquedano requested that Torrico first disarm the batteries of the "Ciudadela Piérola", located on the top of San Cristóbal Hill, to avoid fighting between Peruvians and Chileans in the city.

In this way he added new fuels to the bonfire of communism and new actors who took part in the carnival of vice and crime that had already begun and that spread terror in Lima and Callao until the next morning, when foreigners of all nationalities went out to meet them and revealed their strength and their purpose to not let the scandals continue.Saturday night passed tolerably quiet; On Sunday the storm was brewing and, during the day, General Astete tried to make a revolution in view of the fact that General Suárez wanted to give in to the conditions of the Chileans, while the first of those named was about to continue the fight.

In the city, there were both the dissolved rearguard from Callao and the Peruvian soldiers retreating from Miraflores, who committed assassinations and looting mainly against Chinese coolies, in revenge for their cooperation with the Chilean Army and perceived betrayal as a result of their participation against Peru, such as in the Blockade of Iquique.

A rumor spread that coolie spies in Lima had provided information to the Chileans, indicating the convenient routes for the capture of the city; however, the latter has not been proven.

[16] To stop these excesses and prevent others, Mayor Torrico handed over arms to the Dársena dock fire chief, Mr. Champeaux, to form an Urban Guard made up of foreign firefighters belonging to the companies Roma, France and Británica Victoria, which aimed to protect the city and disarm the scattered Peruvian bandits who attacked Chinese and foreign merchants, and raided their stores.

[18] During the occupation of Lima, Chilean military authorities pillaged Peruvian public buildings, turned the old University of San Marcos and the recently inaugurated Palacio de la Exposición into a barracks, raided medical schools and other institutions of education, and carried away a series of monuments and artwork that had adorned the city.

The Chilean Army recorded sending a total of 103 large crates and another 80 parcels, to Ignacy Domeyko and Diego Barros Arana, at the University of Chile.

[24] An extreme example of this journalism is Revista del Sur that wrote that firearms obtained in Peru, while useless in the hands of Peruvian "fags" (Spanish: maricas), would be useful by Chileans to "kill indians" (Mapuches).