U.S. Military Intervention in Bolivia
Thirty years ago, on October 8, 1967, gunfire echoed through a steep ravine of the Andes Mountains in southern Bolivia. The guerrilla band led by Ernesto "Che" Guevara - a chief lieutenant in the Sierra Maestra, author of a book on guerilla tactics, one-time president of Cuba's National Bank and later Minister of Industries under Castro, and who renounced his Cuban citizenship and set off to devote his services to the revolutionary cause in other lands - was pinned down and surrounded by U.S.-trained Bolivian Army Rangers. Less than a year earlier, Guevara and a team of cadres had secretly traveled from Cuba to Bolivia to launch a guerrilla war, hoping to topple Bolivia's pro-U.S. military government. Guevara had gone up into the mountains with about 50 supporters. Within months they were discovered by Bolivian troops and an intense pursuit started. Trying to escape the government forces, Guevara divided his supporters into two groups, and was never able to reunite them. His diary records that, by late August, his group was exhausted, demoralized and down to 22 men. On August 31 the other group was ambushed and wiped out crossing a river. On September 26, Bolivian army units ambushed Che's remaining forces near the isolated mounta
Rodriguez emerged as the most important member of the group. After a lengthy interrogation of one captured guerrilla, he was instrumental in focusing the efforts of the 2nd Ranger Battalion on the Villagrande region where he believed Guevara's rebels were operating. Although he apparently was under CIA instructions to "do everything possible to keep him alive," it was Rodriguez who transmitted the order to execute Guevara from the Bolivian High Command to the soldiers at La Higueras - he also directed them not to shoot Guevara in the face so that his execution wounds would look like they were received in combat - and personally informed Che that he would be killed. It was Rodriguez who pocketed Che Guevara's wristwatch as a souvenir (which he often proudly showed to reporters during the ensuing years) and flew Guevara's body to the nearby military base at Vallegrande. Early on October 11, after cutting off Guevara's hands as evidence, the killers dumped his body in an unmarked grave near Vallegrande's airstrip where it was not discovered until June 1997. Publicly, the Bolivian government insisted his body had been burned. Although outlawed in Bolivia in 1946, the MNR continued to have many thousands of Bolivian adherents who demanded land reform, control of the rich tin-mining industry, and justice. In the Bolivian presidential elections of 1951, the MNR won a plurality victory with its candidate Victor Paz Estenssoro, founder and leader of the MNR and former professor of economics, who was in exile in Argentina. The government claimed Estenssoro did not have the required majority and the president must be chosen by the congress. In order to prevent the MNR from coming to power, Bolivia's outgoing president resigned and turned the government over to a 10-man military junta, whose rule was an outrage to many. On April 8-11, 1952, a popular revolt occurred in La Paz, Bolivia's administrative capital, and elsewhere; the MNR, supported by armed workers, civilians, and peasants and the national police, overthrew the military junta and recalled Paz Estenssoro from exile to take the presidency. As president he did what he said he would do: nationalized the tin-mining industry, raised miners' wages, liquidated the vast holdings of powerful landholders, and distributed acres to landless Indians. Universal suffrage was granted, but Paz Estenssoro was ruthless to his political foes, many of whom he imprisoned. In one of Latin America's major revolutions, Bolivia had "suddenly broken loose from the chains of serfdom," and its people, especially the Indians, had gained civil and political rights which subsequent governments would have to recognize. Historian Herbert S. Klein notes that a counterinsurgency policy to combat "internal subversion" became a major theme of United States training for the Bolivian army. In 1963 Argentine-trained Bolivian officers established the Center of Instruction for Special Troops (Centro de Instruccion par
Some common words found in the essay are:
Paz Estenssoro, Cuba Bolivia, Intelligence Research, Nacional ELN, School Americas, Latin American, United Argentina, Initially United, Gustavo Villoldo, La Higuera, paz estenssoro, bolivian army, bolivian officers, che guevara, 2nd ranger battalion, 2nd ranger, tin-mining industry, green berets, la paz, latin american, ranger battalion,
Approximate Word count = 1988
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)
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