"to a succession of weak governments. Alarmed by the rising Popular Assembly and the increase in the popularity of President Juan José Torres, the military, the MNR, and others installed Colonel (later General) Hugo Banzer Suárez as president in 1971. He returned to the presidency in 1997 through 2001. The United States' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had been active in providing finances and training to the Bolivian military dictatorship in the 1960s. The revolutionary leader Che Guevara was killed by a team of CIA officers and members of the Bolivian Army on 9 October 1967, in Bolivia. Félix Rodríguez was"
"to break the norm of what a Bolivian military leader was supposed to be like. His body was eventually repatriated to Bolivia (in 1983), where it received a massively-attended state funeral. Juan José Torres Juan José Torres González (5 March 1920 – 2 June 1976) was a Bolivian socialist politician and military leader. He served as President of Bolivia from October 7, 1970 to August 21, 1971. He was popularly known as ""J.J."" (Jota-Jota). Juan José Torres was murdered in 1976 in Buenos Aires, in the frame of Operation Condor. Torres was born in Cochabamba to a poor family of"
"Juan José Torres Juan José Torres González (5 March 1920 – 2 June 1976) was a Bolivian socialist politician and military leader. He served as President of Bolivia from October 7, 1970 to August 21, 1971. He was popularly known as ""J.J."" (Jota-Jota). Juan José Torres was murdered in 1976 in Buenos Aires, in the frame of Operation Condor. Torres was born in Cochabamba to a poor family of Mestizo heritage with mainly Aymara ancestry and joined the army in 1941. He served as military attache to Brazil from 1964 and as ambassador to Uruguay from 1965 to 1966, when"
"to the smallest and remotest of Bolivian villages. It was a tactic that had yielded him good results in the past and Barrientos hoped to rebuild his political capital. However, on April 27, 1969, when flying into Arque Municipality, Cochabamba Department, he was killed in a helicopter crash. René Barrientos René Barrientos Ortuño (30 May 1919 – 27 April 1969) was a Bolivian military officer and politician who served as his country's Vice President in 1964 and as its President from 1966 to 1969. General Barrientos came to power after the 1964 Bolivian coup d'état which overthrew of the government"
"the officer who had captured and executed Che Guevara in Bolivia. On June 1, 1968, João Lucas Alves, Severino Viana, José Roberto Monteiro, and Amílcar Baiardi shot and killed an officer in the neighborhood of Gávea, Rio de Janeiro, believing he was the Bolivian officer, when in fact it was Edward Ernest Tito Otto Maximilian Von Westernhagen, a German Army Major. Given the misunderstanding, Colina refused to take responsibility for the attack. Baiardi, the only of the four militants who survived the dictatorship, revealed Colina's involvement in the attack on 1988. On November 1968, João Lucas was arrested and tortured"
"Mario Terán Mario Terán (born c. 1940) is the Bolivian Army sergeant who was chosen to carry out the execution of Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara as a young man on October 9, 1967. Mario Terán was born around 1940 and is married with five children, and covertly lives in Bolivia's largest city Santa Cruz under the alias of ""Pedro Salazar"". Some speculate that he has an agreement with the U.S. CIA, who is said to be protecting him, while others theorize that he is afraid of a Cuban unit seeking revenge. In 2006, Terán was treated for free under a"
"later, on 11 October 2003, the Bolivian army forces, on the orders of the Government of Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, fired on an angry crowd from the city of El Alto. The crowd had been trying to stop a convoy carrying fuel and food into the City of La Paz, which needed these supplies after several days of blockages by social movements unified around the premise of the nationalization of hydrocarbons and the convening of a new Constituent Assembly to refound Bolivia. The shooting left 29 people dead and countless wounded. In reaction to these events, Ana Maria Romero led"
"as Tamara Bunke, were ambushed and killed by Bolivian soldiers while they were attempting to cross the Rio Grande in Bolivia. On October 8, 1967, most of Guevara's surviving soldiers were surrounded and destroyed as a fighting force. Still, some were still active across Bolivia during the rest of October and November 1967. Barrientos was very concerned with Guevara's rising insurgency there, and clamped down in the area with some very heavy-handed measures (such as the Massacre of San Juan). Guevara felt that such an atrocity by the Bolivian Army and Air Force would be the tipping point in his"
"Gualberto Villarroel Gualberto Villarroel López (December 15, 1908 – July 21, 1946) was the head of state of Bolivia from December 20, 1943 to July 21, 1946. A reformist, sometimes compared with Argentina's Juan Domingo Perón, he is nonetheless remembered for his alleged fascist sympathies and for his violent demise on July 21, 1946. Villarroel was born in Villa Rivero, Cochabamba Department, on December 15, 1908. He participated in the Chaco War (1932–35) against Paraguay. After Bolivia's disastrous defeat in that conflict, he became convinced that Bolivia needed profound structural changes and supported the progressive Military-Socialist dictatorships of David Toro"
"resented the key role of United States officers in the capture and killing of Ernesto ""Che"" Guevara in 1967 in Bolivia, where he had tried to start a guerrilla movement. The death of Barrientos in a helicopter crash on April 27, 1969, initially left control in the hands of his vice president, Luís Adolfo Siles Salinas (1969). Real power, however, remained with the armed forces under its commander in chief, General Ovando, who took power on September 26, 1969, in a coup that was supported by reformist officers. Ovando (co-president, May 1965 – January 1966, and president, January–August 1966 and"
"some factions of well-to-do Bolivian political elites. Óscar Únzaga Óscar Únzaga de la Vega (19 April 1916 – 19 April 1959) was a Bolivian political figure and rebel. Most significantly, he founded the Bolivian Socialist Falange (FSB) movement in 1937, and ran for President in the 1956 elections, when his party became the main opposition movement to the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (MNR). In 1959 Únzaga was one of fifty who died during an attempted coup by the FSB, with government forces reporting that he committed suicide. Supporters disputed the official version and stated that Únzaga had been assassinated. He is"
"René Barrientos René Barrientos Ortuño (30 May 1919 – 27 April 1969) was a Bolivian military officer and politician who served as his country's Vice President in 1964 and as its President from 1966 to 1969. General Barrientos came to power after the 1964 Bolivian coup d'état which overthrew of the government of Paz Estenssoro. During his five-year rule, Barrientos and the army suppressed leftist opposition to his regime, including a guerrilla group led by Che Guevara in 1967. Barrientos was a native of Tarata, department of Cochabamba, and was of mixed Quechua and Spanish descent. He was a career"
"History of Bolivia (1964–82) The history of Bolivia from 1964 to 1982 is a time of periodic instability under various military dictators. On November 4, 1964 power passed from the elected leader of the Bolivian National Revolution, Víctor Paz Estenssoro to a military junta under vice-president General René Barrientos. Barrientos was elected president in 1966, but died accidentally in a helicopter crash in 1969, leading to a coup in September 1969 by General Ovando, who was overthrown in October 1970 by General Rogelio Miranda who was overthrown a couple of days later by General J.J.Torres, who in turn was overthrown"
"the presidency of Gualberto Villarroel, Villa heard an announcement on the radio pleading for medical supplies for people wounded in the rebellion. She organized supplies and medical aid to be shipped to citizens in La Paz over the Bolivian Railway system. Villa died on 11 May, 1947, in a car accident when returning from the dedication of a monument to the victims who died in the revolt of 20 November 1944, in Oruro and a tribute in her honor was held at the La Paz Cathedral. Esilda Villa Esilda Villa (18 December 1909 – 11 May 1947) was the first"
"to Congo-Kinshasa to train revolutionaries against the Western-backed government. Castro was personally devastated when Guevara was subsequently killed by CIA-backed troops in Bolivia in October 1967 and publicly attributed it to Che's disregard for his own safety. In 1966 Castro staged a Tri-Continental Conference of Africa, Asia and Latin America in Havana, further establishing himself as a significant player on the world stage. From this conference, Castro created the Latin American Solidarity Organization (OLAS), which adopted the slogan of ""The duty of a revolution is to make revolution"", signifying Havana's leadership of Latin America's revolutionary movement. Castro's increasing role on"
"Óscar Únzaga Óscar Únzaga de la Vega (19 April 1916 – 19 April 1959) was a Bolivian political figure and rebel. Most significantly, he founded the Bolivian Socialist Falange (FSB) movement in 1937, and ran for President in the 1956 elections, when his party became the main opposition movement to the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (MNR). In 1959 Únzaga was one of fifty who died during an attempted coup by the FSB, with government forces reporting that he committed suicide. Supporters disputed the official version and stated that Únzaga had been assassinated. He is revered as a hero and martyr by"
"of Bolivia paid tribute to him in September 2017. He died on November 17, 2017. The government of Tarija announced a 90-day mourning period after the news of his death broke. President Evo Morales expressed his condoleances. Óscar Zamora Medinaceli Óscar Zamora Medinaceli (a.k.a. 'Motete', 'Comandante Rolando', January 20, 1934, Tarija – November 17, 2017, Tarija) was a Bolivian politician and lawyer. A communist student activist in his youth and leader of a failed Maoist insurgency in the 1970s, Zamora Medinaceli went on to become a senator, minister, mayor, ambassador and prefect. Zamora Medinaceli entered politics through activism in the"
"the winner, despite the fact that under the law only about 200,000 privileged, educated, and propertied Bolivians could vote. Urriolagoitia refused to give power to Paz Estenssoro. Instead he installed the head of the Bolivian military, General Hugo Ballivián Rojas as President on May 16, 1951 thus inflicting a coup against the democratic order. This came to be known as the ""Mamertazo"" of 1951. With the elections annulled and Ballivián firmly installed in the Palacio Quemado, Urriolagoitia left the country. Retired from politics, he returned in later years and died in his native Sucre on June 4, 1974, at the"
"1964 Bolivian coup d'état 1964 Bolivian coup d'état in Bolivia was a coup under the leadership of Vice-president René Barrientos and Bolivian Army commander-in-chief Alfredo Ovando Candía against the President Víctor Paz Estenssoro, leader of the Bolivian National Revolution of 1952, who recently had been re-elected for his third term in office. Between 1960 and 1964, the United States increased its aid to Bolivia under the Alliance for Progress by 600%, giving 205 million USD in economic aid and 23 million USD in various loans. The first 35 Peace Corps volunteers arrived in early 1962. The increase in world tin"
"capture. On October 7, 1967, an informant apprised the Bolivian Special Forces of the location of Guevara's guerrilla encampment in the Yuro ravine. On the morning of October 8, they encircled the area with two battalions numbering 1,800 soldiers and advanced into the ravine triggering a battle where Guevara was wounded and taken prisoner while leading a detachment with Simeón Cuba Sarabia. Che biographer Jon Lee Anderson reports Bolivian Sergeant Bernardino Huanca's account: that as the Bolivian Rangers approached, a twice-wounded Guevara, his gun rendered useless, threw up his arms in surrender and shouted to the soldiers: ""Do not shoot!"
"Tamara Bunke Haydée Tamara Bunke Bider (November 19, 1937 – August 31, 1967), better known as Tania or Tania the Guerrilla, was an Argentine-born East German communist revolutionary and spy who played a prominent role in the Cuban government after the Cuban Revolution and in various Latin American revolutionary movements. She was the only woman to fight alongside Marxist guerrillas under Che Guevara during the Bolivian Insurgency (1966–1967) where she was killed in an ambush by CIA-assisted Bolivian Army Rangers. Bunke was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the daughter of German communists Erich Bunke and Nadia Bider (who was of"
"Alfredo Ovando Candía Alfredo Ovando Candía (6 April 1918 – 24 January 1982) was a Bolivian president and dictator (1964–66 and 1969–70), general and political figure. Ovando was born in Cobija from an upper-middle class family of immigrants parents from Extremadura, Spain and Piedmont, Italy. He started his long military career in the early 1930s, when he served in the Chaco War against Paraguay. Originally rather apolitical, he was chosen (among others) to lead the reconstituted Armed Forces of Bolivia in the aftermath of the 1952 Revolution that installed in power the reformist Revolutionary Nationalist Movement party, better known as"
"age 87. Bernardino Bilbao Rioja Bernardino Bilbao Rioja (20 May 1895 in Arampampa – 13 May 1983 in La Paz) was a Bolivian officer who served during the Chaco War (1932–35). He pioneered the use of air forces in combat (the first to be used in this capacity in South America). Bilbao had already made enemies among his cohorts when he refused to participate in the 1930 coup against President of Bolivia Hernando Siles Reyes. This enmity led him to be vetoed for most major promotions within the military, both during the war and after. One of the reasons for"
"of Bolivia. Cundeye campaigned for the Chiriguanos to reclaim land from the missions. However, the Chaco War (1932-1935) resulted in the dispossession of much of the remaining land belonging to the missions and the Chiriguanos. The Chiriguanos largely became migrant, landless workers, many in Argentina. The missions were finally dissolved in 1949. Communist revolutionary Ernesto ""Che"" Guevara was attempting to foment revolution among the Chiriguanos when he was captured and executed by Bolivian soldiers on October 9, 1967. Guevara and his Cuban followers had studied Quechua to communicate with Bolivian peasants, but the Chiriguanos spoke Guarani. In 2005, to attract"
"response to protests from human rights organisations and victims. García Meza died in La Paz on April 29, 2018, of a heart attack at the age of 88. Luis García Meza Luis García Meza Tejada (8 August 1929 – 29 April 2018) was a Bolivian dictator. A native of La Paz, he was a career military officer who rose to the rank of general during the reign of Hugo Banzer (1971–78). Between 1980 and 1981 García Meza was the dictator of Bolivia. García Meza graduated from the military academy in 1952, and served as its commander from 1963 to 1964."
"Vega Yapura's remains and information on who had ordered that attack on the Central Obrera Boliviana office in 1980. On July 17, 2010 Bolivian president Evo Morales honoured Vega Yapura and other victims of the July 17, 1980 massacre at a ceremony in the Palacio Quemado. At the same function, Vega Yapura's widow Isabel Mena urged Morales to bring the perpetrators of killings of the military regimes to justice. Gualberto Vega Gualberto Vega Yapura (d. July 17, 1980, La Paz) was a Bolivian trade unionist. Vega Yapura was the head of the FSTMB miners' union. Vega Yapura was shot down"
"Arce, who cautioned that all Bolivians who opposed the new order should ""walk around with their written will under their arms."" The most prominent victim of the dictatorship was the congressman, presidential candidate, and gifted orator Marcelo Quiroga, murdered and ""disappeared"" soon after the coup. Quiroga had been the chief advocate of bringing to trial the former dictator, General Hugo Banzer (who was in power from 1971 until 1978), for human right violations and economic mismanagement. The García Meza government's drug trafficking activities led to the complete isolation of the regime. In contrast to his position regarding the other military"
"base camp in Ñancahuazú in November 1966. Primarily he was chosen for logistic tasks, on 25 January 1967 he was transferred to leading the forefront. Ensuing a gunfight with the Bolivian army on 22 April 1967, he was wounded and taken prisoner. According to the Bolivian Army Jorge Vazquez Viana was hospitalized with a stomach wound in Camiri on 22 April 1967 after being captured. There is no record of him after 30 April 1967 ... he just ""disappeared"". Cuban sources confirm that following his incarceration Jorge was tortured, murdered and his body thrown out of a helicopter above the"
"seven years. As for Torres, he fled the country and settled in Buenos Aires, Argentina remaining there even after the March 1976 coup that brought to power General Jorge Videla. In early June 1976 Torres was kidnapped, shot and assassinated, most likely by right-wing death squads associated with the Videla government but also — it has been argued — with the acquiescence of Hugo Banzer. His murder was part of Operation Condor. Despite the short duration of his government, Torres' memory is still revered by the poorest strata of Bolivian society. He is remembered as the smiling general who dared"
"in 1809, 16 years of war followed before the establishment of the Republic, named for Simón Bolívar. Over the course of the 19th and early 20th century Bolivia lost control of several peripheral territories to neighboring countries including the seizure of its coastline by Chile in 1879. Bolivia remained relatively politically stable until 1971, when Hugo Banzer led a coup d'état which replaced the socialist government of Juan José Torres with a military dictatorship headed by Banzer; Torres was murdered in Buenos Aires, Argentina by a right-wing death squad in 1976. Banzer's regime cracked down on leftist and socialist opposition"
"he was appointed Labor Minister. He became the reform-minded dictator Alfredo Ovando's right-hand man and commander-in-chief of the armed forces when the latter came to power as a result of a coup d'état in September 1969. Torres became one of the more left-leaning officers in the Bolivian military, urging Ovando to enact more far-reaching reforms and to stand up to the more conservative officers. On October 6, 1970, an anti-government coup d'état took place, led by right-wing military commanders. Much blood was shed on the streets of various major cities, with military garrisons fighting each other on behalf of one"
"attempted to dislodge Busch from power a year after his ouster, but his coup attempt failed and he sought exile in Chile, where he died in 1977, at the age of 79. David Toro José David Toro Ruilova (June 24, 1898 in Sucre – July 25, 1977 in Santiago de Chile) was the 35th president of Bolivia, a colonel in the Bolivian army and member of the High Command during the Chaco War (1932–35). He was one of the leaders of the coup that deposed President Salamanca in November, 1934 and became President of the Republic in May 1936 as"
"in Vallegrande, including Björn Kumm of the Swedish ""Aftonbladet"", who described the scene in a November 11, 1967, exclusive for ""The New Republic"". A declassified memorandum dated October 11, 1967, to United States President Lyndon B. Johnson from his National Security Advisor Walt Whitman Rostow, called the decision to kill Guevara ""stupid"" but ""understandable from a Bolivian standpoint"". After the execution, Rodríguez took several of Guevara's personal items, including a watch which he continued to wear many years later, often showing them to reporters during the ensuing years. Today, some of these belongings, including his flashlight, are on display at"