Bolivia-The Peasantry and the Coup
Strug, Edward
For the third time in little more than two years, the Bolivian military has thwarted the will of the people to democratically elect a president. Under the command of Army General Luis Garcia...
...You're the ones who accept any politician who comes along-but *Juan Lechin has been one of Bolivia's most important labor leaders since the late 1940s...
...I know they were taking the money for themselves...
...They were taking money from their own people, and that hurt...
...Yet, two months after the coup, little has been reported on how the process has affected the majority of Bolivia's population, the peasantry...
...The peasant doesn't have the right to go to military technical schools...
...Still, it was too much...
...Our children, our young sons from 18-22 are being drafted...
...The peasants still don't have any farm machinery...
...Bodies of Argentine dissidents turned up in Lima and Madrid...
...The coup disrupted the first movement in many years toward democratic SeptlOct General Luis Garcia Meza rule in a Southern Cone country, an example which neighboring Argentina, among others, greatly feared...
...Quispe has been a community leader, worked in rural education and agrarian reform and was jailed by the political authorities on various occasions...
...They didn't tell us what they were looking for, they just asked for identity cards...
...out of straw...
...As of early September, the situation in Bolivia remained highly unstable...
...Whenever they saw roads, bridges or railroad tracks blocked, right away they began to abuse us...
...But look, sir," I said to him...
...It's sad...
...they wanted to find out...
...And stop talking for the sake of talking...
...0: What happened in your community after the coup...
...I saw that happen...
...what happened when you went yesterday to look for your son at the Waki army base, A. These last few days there's been the annual draft, the induction of conscripts...
...Mexican news sources reported that 50 Argentine army intelligence officers entered the country in the early weeks of August to advise the military on rounding up political opponents...
...narcotics official put it, "for the first time ever, the drugs mafia has evidently bought itself a government...
...I listened, too...
...The roofs are made...
...But those workers' and peasant union officials had better start worrying," he said...
...Edward Strug teaches Spanish at Queens College in New York and David Strug is an anthropologist at Rutgers...
...I saw how even pregnant women were being picked up by the soldiers...
...Q. Tell us...
...Why don't you drive the foreigners out of the country...
...After a little while some other major started talking...
...Yes, I saw that...
...And SeptlOct less-he said that, too...
...A: As soon as they saw the roads dug up, barricaded, the first thing they did was to start searching, urgently...
...This was because the peasants barricaded the roads after the coup.* Soon the military began controlling the road very strictly, day and night...
...They found out at five o'clock...
...there's no transportation...
...I had answered back a little...
...New instructors...
...Their actions are all the more important since sectors of the peasantry served as a key social support of the military governments of the late 1960s and early 1970s...
...And, well, you know, with something like this I have a right to find out, to see, listen, see things with my own eyes...
...While Brazil has been more measured in its support of the coup, the Brazilian generals are undoubtedly relieved that their colleagues' preemptive strike in Bolivia has prevented the installation of a popular, progressive government in the heart of the Southern Cone dictatorships...
...For 50 pesos you had to vote...
...Children, women, men...
...I went to see my son, to see how he was being treated...
...That's always important...
...Their relatives went looking for them, tears streaming down their faces...
...And the major said: "You supported Siles Suazo...
...Even former dictator, General Hugo Banzerseeking his own return to power which he couldn't find in the electoral process-has been barnstorming in neighboring countries, criticizing the "unnecessary" brutality of his colleagues...
...Then the major answered...
...As one U.S...
...Nobody knew where they were...
...I know those soldiers didn't have enough food to eat...
...For its part, Argentina lent its solid support to the military rebels and was the first country to recognize Garcia Meza's regime...
...But this cannot change the fact that, since the mid-1950s, the United States has been the main supplier, trainer and supporter of the Bolivian military, a role which continued unabated during nearly 15 years of military dictatorships beginning in 1964...
...They're going to stay in government for 10 years, more or The summer of 1980 was a bitter season for human rights in Latin America, kicked off by a military coup in Bolivia and capped by a phony plebiscite in Chile...
...About development, about the peasants...
...Q: How did they go about controlling the countryside...
...they have no toilets...
...There isn't any electric light...
...they told us...
...Some officer said: "Forty cadets are coming here...
...Some of those officers were talking to the conscripts' parents...
...I saw wounded people, too...
...they don't have the right training for agriculture...
...How they treat our sons...
...The road that goes from La Paz to the Peruvian border is just terrible...
...Without taking their blankets...
...And to kill people...
...You backed Juan Lechin Oquendo, too.* You're communists...
...That's what the major said...
...Women who were carrying their babies on their backs, young people who were walking along the street after 9 pm were stopped, arrested or shot, I think...
...It's going to be different...
...Well, yes, we need roads, schools, we need universities," he said...
...This sector is particularly 43update *update *update * update important since the rank and file of the military is conscripted from the peasantry and is often itself subject to the brutal treatment of the officers...
...The conscripts, all of them, went off just wearing light jackets...
...And, besides, they were taking money...
...It was very sad that afternoon when the peasants didn't know where their sons were going to be sent...
...They have known Antonio Quispe since 1975...
...I brought all those things up...
...The walls are made out of dirt...
...And at 6:30 or 7:00 pm, they're sending them to Potosi [high in the frigid Andes] in open trucks...
...But there was no way to argue about it, was there...
...Even diplomatic sources, however, questioned the General's rationale for seizing power...
...Claiming that the elections were rigged by "foreign intervention," Garcia Meza thi'eatened that the armed forces would remain in power until the "Marxist cancer is fully removed-be it five, ten or twenty years...
...it's pure dust, pure mud...
...Amnesty International reported a dramatic increase in "political arrests and systematic torture" in Chile...
...Under the command of Army General Luis Garcia Meza, the military again thrust its way into power on July 17, thereby cancelling the June 29 electoral victory of Popular Democratic Unity (UDP) candidate, Hernan Siles Suazo...
...we peasants who just had to travel from one town to another...
...Siles Suazo paid you all 50 pesos...
...And when I was on the way to La Paz we had to get off the bus nine times to pass through check points...
...He said that the peasant doesn't have any right to go to the university...
...A. We suffered in my community...
...We weren't allowed to walk around freely-couldn't even play soccer or get together with each other...
...His comments provide an important insight into the peasants' difficult position: they are brutalized by the military which is itself composed of their sons and brothers...
...Coke dealing alone, however, doesn't tell the whole story...
...Internally, Siles Suazo has established a clandestine "government in hiding" and the miners, industrial workers and civil servants have maintained a strong opposition to the military...
...Sometimes people were shot dead, never seen again...
...The majority voted for Siles because they were paid," he said...
...Claiming that the military command is nothing but a "group of thugs," diplomats have consistently pointed to its links to the highly lucrative cocaine trade-and their fear that Siles Suazo would quash it-as the primary reason for the coup...
...they didn't know before...
...Who is barricading the roads...
...He said military service in the barracks is going to be very different from other years when soldiers were beaten brutally...
...To provide a first-hand report on this sector, we are publishing excerpts of an interview with Antonio Quispe (a pseudonym), a peasant who lives with his family of eight in a traditional Aymara community between Lake Titicaca and La Paz...
...They don't have any safe water to drink...
...Look at how the peasants live in poverty...
...See how the peasants suffer...
...government has soundly denounced the coup and has called for a congressional investigation of the military's links to the international drug trade...
...Anybody they saw on the road they took away...
...they can't increase their livestock...
...there are no telephones...
...Their houses need improvement...
...Afterwards, I went to the city [La Paz] for awhile...
...NACLA Reportupdate * update * update * update it's not going to be that way any more...
...He talked to us about the Agrarian Technical University that they're planning to establish...
...The soldiers wanted to take in anybody who didn't have an identity card-their own brothers and sisters...
...But they must have been searching for political officials, union leaders in particular...
...You, you peasants get mixed up in politics...
...In the past three years, the workers' general slogan in the face of repression has been "general strike and blockade...
...Internationally, only a handful of nations have recognized the regime...
...After the coup we were strongly threatened here in Waki, Tiwanaku and the province of Ingavi...
...As for me, in particular, I think those high-ranking officers ought to come and visit, province by province, to find out for themselves how the peasants are living...
...The U.S...
...He spoke to us about many more things...
...An international consortium of banks headed by the Bank of America announced on August 23 that they were postponing further discussions on the renegotiation of Bolivia's whopping $3.5 billion debt...
...Because they were in power, and I was just listening...
...The Bolivian peasantry has often blocked the roads to prevent the military from moving...
...Our sons were suffering, but they said that it is going to be changed...
...But it's a lie, isn't it...
...Even some people who were grazing their animals near the roadside were threatened...
...Quispe was interviewed in Bolivia by David and Edward Strug one month after the coup...
...They threatened to burn our houses and eat our livestock...
Vol. 14 • September 1980 • No. 5
