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38-702: The Barrientista Revolutionary Party was founded by ex-minister of René Barrientos 's Government Enrique Gallardo Lozada in April 1978. In 1978, the Barrientista Revolutionary Party allied with the Christian Democratic Party and its candidate René Bernal Escalante . In 1979, the Barrientista Revolutionary Party allied with the Bolivian Union Party and its candidate Walter González Valda . After

76-454: A candidate for president in the general elections that were held in July 1966 . With the most important civilian leaders (Paz, Hernán Siles and Juan Lechín ) in exile, Barrientos was easily elected, and was sworn in during August 1966. General Barrientos was quite charismatic, and was throughout his presidency popular with ordinary Bolivians, aided by the fluency with which he spoke Quechua ,

114-626: A candidate. At that point Ovando became sole President, leading the country to the elections from which the popular Barrientos emerged victorious. With the new president having taken the oath of office in August 1966, Ovando returned to his post as Commander of the Bolivian Air Forces. Uncharismatic but tenacious, Ovando was biding his time, counting on the fact that he would be the logical choice to run for elections once Barrientos' term ended in 1970, perhaps with some electoral "help" from

152-706: A clandestine Marxist supporter, and denounced Barrientos and many of his aides as being on the CIA 's payroll. This event embarrassed US military School of the Americas (SOA) graduate Barrientos as a US-controlled puppet, and prompted Ovando to distance himself from the president with an eye to the projected 1970 elections. (The US SOA notoriously trained many Latin American dictators and death squads in counterinsurgency tactics and torture and disappearance techniques). The worries proved unnecessary, for Barrientos perished in

190-414: A clandestine Marxist supporter, denouncing Barrientos and many of his aides as being on the CIA 's payroll. The episode embarrassed the administration and cast doubts about the president's judgment (after all, it was he who was friends with, and had appointed, Arguedas to the most important ministry post in the government). In the aftermath of the mining massacres and anti-guerrilla campaign, Barrientos

228-617: A guerrilla force was discovered to be operating in the Bolivian southeast under the leadership of the Argentine-Cuban revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara in the Bolivian jungle. Barrientos was very concerned with Guevara's alleged popularity among the miners in the southwestern part of the country, and clamped down in the area with some very heavy-handed measures (such as the San Juan massacre ). Guevara felt that such an atrocity by

266-496: A new Marxist guerrilla movement emerged in the lowlands near La Paz, this time constituted mostly by Bolivian university students aligned with the outlawed Ejército de Liberación Nacional (National Liberation Army, or ELN). The new guerrilla outbreak was easily controlled, but Ovando's response had been rather vacillating and timid. He offered a generous safe haven to guerrillas who gave up the fight, for example, in contrast to Barrientos' call for "heads on spikes" in 1967. The forces of

304-477: A tragic helicopter crash on 27 April 1969. His vice-president, a little-known Christian-Democrat politician named Luis Adolfo Siles , was sworn as president soon thereafter, in accordance to the Constitution. Siles' poor relations with Ovando led Siles to support the candidacy of the popular Mayor of La Paz, Armando Escobar, as the true successor of the now-constantly eulogized Barrientos, threatening to spoil

342-414: The 15 parachutists fell to their death before a large crowd assembled to view the event. Recriminations flew as to who should be held responsible for the carnage. Barrientos, as Air Force commander, decided to put on a demonstration of his own, and jumped from an airplane himself using one of the parachutes that had failed to open during the earlier debacle. His point was that there had been nothing wrong with

380-519: The 30th vice president of Bolivia in 1964. General Barrientos came to power after the 1964 Bolivian coup d'état which overthrew the government of President Victor Paz Estenssoro . During his three-year rule, Barrientos and the army suppressed leftist opposition to his regime, including a guerrilla group led by Che Guevara in 1967. On 27 April 1969, Barrientos was killed in a helicopter crash near Arque , Bolivia. He may have been assassinated, but that has not been conclusively proven. Barrientos

418-496: The Army Commander Alfredo Ovando — toppled Paz in a violent coup d'état and installed himself as co-president in a Junta alongside General Ovando. His idea all along was to capitalize on his popularity and run for elections, with the full support of the Bolivian military establishment now in control of the country. To this end, he resigned his co-presidency in early 1966 and registered himself as

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456-543: The Bolivian Army Rangers captured Guevara and executed him in October 1967. Barrientos had directly ordered Guevara's execution after his capture. While temporarily enhancing the president's stature, this only started more troubles for Barrientos. While the army was fighting the guerrillas, the miners of Siglo XX (a state-owned Bolivian mining town) declared themselves in support of the insurgency, prompting

494-472: The Bolivian Army and Air Force would be the tipping point in his favour in rallying the miners to his communist cause, but eventually the miners signed an agreement with the government-owned mining company Siglo XX , which agreement Guevara felt undermined his reason for being there. The war between the national forces under President Barrientos and Che Guevara's militia did not end there, but eventually

532-574: The Bolivian military and failed to fully satisfy the increasingly more belligerent forces of the Left, especially the workers and students. Worse, the military (in whose name he served) had become polarized, with some sectors supporting the President and even calling for a further leftward turn (General Juan José Torres ) and others criticizing Ovando and urging a more conservative, anti-Communist, and pro U.S. stance (General Rogelio Miranda ). In June 1970,

570-506: The Bolivian operations of the U.S.-based Gulf Oil Corporation and called on known leftist intellectuals to become part of his cabinet. Ovando also announced his political adherence to the principles espoused by other so-called "leftist military" regimes then in vogue in Latin America, foremost of which were the regimes of Peru's Juan Velasco and Panama's Omar Torrijos . Ovando's populist stance surprised many conservative members of

608-482: The Bolivian political elites, many of whose members may have been waiting for their turn to occupy the Presidential palace for years. This was no exception, and Paz's controversial move would soon prove harmful to him. Paz, surprisingly to some, chose General Barrientos as his running mate in that year's elections, and the two were sworn in on 6 August 1964. Just three months later, Barrientos — in tandem with

646-508: The Constitution in 1964 in order to allow himself to run for re-election (a largely frowned-upon move in the largely personalistic world of Bolivian politics), General Ovando, along with the vice-president and former head of the Air Force René Barrientos , toppled Paz from power. They ruled together in a Junta (sometimes called "The Co-Presidency) until January 1966, when Barrientos resigned in order to register himself as

684-430: The carefully laid plans of Ovando. Furthermore, Ovando had been undergoing a political metamorphosis, and had come to conclude that he had to move to the Left in order to be acceptable as president in the ideologically super-charged atmosphere of the late 1960s. The changes he planned to institute could be difficult to enact in the presence of a potentially hostile Congress. For these reasons, Ovando decided not to wait for

722-636: The country to bring back the revolutionary leader Víctor Paz Estenssoro , then in exile, once the rebellion succeeded. In 1957, Barrientos was rewarded when he was named commander of the Bolivian Air Force. Known as a rather obsequious, sycophantic supporter of the MNR, he slowly became famous throughout the country for his uncommon, and very public, feats of valor. In 1960, for example, a live parachute jump demonstration by Bolivian Air Force soldiers ended in disaster when their equipment failed and 3 of

760-471: The coup d'état on 17 July 1980, the Barrientista Revolutionary Party disappeared. Ren%C3%A9 Barrientos René Emilio Barrientos Ortuño (30 May 1919 – 27 April 1969) was a Bolivian military officer and politician who served as the 47th president of Bolivia twice nonconsecutively from 1964 to 1966 and from 1966 to 1969. During much of his first term, he shared power as co-president with Alfredo Ovando from 1965 to 1966 and prior to that served as

798-553: The defeated Bolivian army during the early years of MNR rule. By the early 1960s, President Víctor Paz Estenssoro came to rely more heavily on the military in the face of growing political divisions among the governing elites. Equally as important in this rebirth was the considerable pressure exerted by the United States to modernize and equip the troops for a decidedly more political role: that of fighting possible Cuba-styled Communist insurgencies. When Paz Estenssoro amended

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836-471: 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 the MNR. Ovando lived through the relative deprivation, reduced budgets, and loss of prestige of

874-449: The elections (which no one could guarantee he could win, with the popular Escobar as candidate) and on 26 September 1969, he executed a coup d'état that overthrew Siles. Ovando's short (13 month) dictatorship was difficult and marked by political violence. Upon taking office, he declared himself in favor of fundamental changes aimed at enhancing the deplorable living conditions of the vast majority of Bolivians. To this end, he nationalized

912-509: The equipment or the training, simply bad luck; this incident cemented his popularity among certain sections of the population. Furthermore, the ruling MNR helped prop up his standing, as the MNR leadership constantly extolled General Barrientos' virtues, portraying him as a paragon of the new kind of military officer the revolution had fostered. By the early 1960s, while the ruling MNR party had begun to fall apart due to personal and policy differences between its leading members, Barrientos' stock

950-525: The leader of the small Christian Democrat Party of Bolivia, Dr. Luis Adolfo Siles . He was fiercely anti-communist and pro-free market. Accepting more military aid and acquiescing to the training of special forces designed to combat possible communist-inspired insurgencies (under the aegis of the Alliance for Progress ) made Barrientos particularly popular with Washington. Barrientos had ample opportunity to prove his anti-Communist credentials in 1967, when

988-505: The military academy in 1943 and earning his pilot's license in 1945. Later in the 1940s, he gravitated toward the reformist Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario, or MNR) party of Víctor Paz Estenssoro . Barrientos played a part in the Bolivian National Revolution of 1952, when the MNR toppled the established order and took power. In fact, he was given the task of flying out of

1026-401: The most important native language among the Bolivian peasantry. Barrientos was skilled at manipulating the masses with his oratory, which often allowed him to present himself as both a populist and conservative, a revolutionary and a "law-and-order" advocate. Purporting to be a staunch Christian, Barrientos actively courted the church, and in fact, chose as his running mate in the 1966 elections

1064-464: The outgoing administration. Soon, major differences emerged between Ovando and the president, however, especially in regard to the massacre of miners at Siglo XX in June 1967, and the so-called Arguedas Affair of 1968. In early 1967, a guerrilla force had been discovered to be operating in the rural Bolivian southwest under the leadership of the Argentine-Cuban revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara . While

1102-509: The past and Barrientos hoped to rebuild his political capital. However, on 27 April 1969, a Hiller OH-23 helicopter of the Bolivian Air Force (nicknamed Holofernes ) that was carrying him struck telephone cables near Arque , killing Barrientos, his aide-de-camp and the pilot. An assassination has been considered a possibility but never proven. Alfredo Ovando Alfredo Ovando Candía (6 April 1918 – 24 January 1982)

1140-589: The popular insurgency was eventually crushed by the US-trained Bolivian military troops under American CIA command, Guevara was captured and executed in October 1967. This event fostered a major spin-off scandal that surfaced in 1968. That year, Barrientos' trusted friend and Minister of Interior, Antonio Arguedas, disappeared with the captured diary of Che Guevara, which soon surfaced in Havana. From abroad, Arguedas confessed himself to have been all along

1178-610: The president to send troops to regain control. This led to the San Juan massacre, when soldiers opened fire on the miners and killed around 30 men and women on Saint John's Day, called Día de San Juan in Spanish, 24 June 1967. Further, a major scandal erupted in 1968 when Barrientos' trusted friend and Minister of Interior, Antonio Arguedas, disappeared with the captured diary of Che Guevara, which soon surfaced in, of all places, Havana . From abroad, Arguedas confessed himself to have been

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1216-492: The right had had enough. On 6 October 1970, an anti-government coup d'état took place via a junta of commanders of the Bolivian Military . However, the polarized forces of the military were evenly split. Much blood was shed on the streets of various major cities, with garrisons fighting each other on behalf of one camp or the other. Eventually, President Ovando sought asylum in a foreign embassy, believing all hope

1254-508: The role the new armed forces played in the national arena. The most popular of these military leaders was, of course, the dashing Barrientos. In 1961, Paz Estenssoro had the Bolivian Constitution amended in order to be allowed to run for consecutive re-election, feeling that only he had the standing to keep the crumbling MNR together. Traditionally, attempts such as these (known as "prorroguismo") have been strongly condemned by

1292-484: Was a native of Tarata , department of Cochabamba . His father was of Spanish ancestry while his mother was Quechua . After his father died when he was a child, Barrientos was sent to a Franciscan orphanage. He left the orphanage at 12 and attended a private high school while working odd jobs to pay the tuition. After graduating, he entered the military academy in La Paz . He was a career military officer, graduating from

1330-431: Was clearly on the rise. In addition, President Paz Estenssoro (elected to a second term in 1960) was leaning more heavily on military support to restore order to various parts of the country where rival pro-MNR militias had turned against each other, often on behalf of specific MNR leaders. Disarming the militias (who had been allowed to keep their weapons since the 1952 Revolution) became a priority to Paz, and this enhanced

1368-575: Was lost. But the leftist military forces re-asserted themselves under the combative leadership of General Juan José Torres , and eventually triumphed. Embarrassed by his quick abandonment of the fight, and worn out by 13 grueling months in office, Ovando agreed to leave the presidency in the hands of his friend, General Torres. The latter was sworn in and rewarded Ovando with the Bolivian ambassadorship to Spain . Ovando remained in Madrid until 1978, when he returned to Bolivia. In his latter years, he supported

1406-415: Was seen by some as a brutal dictator at the service of foreign interests while masquerading as a democrat. Eager to do some damage control and repair his once-excellent relations with the campesinos (Bolivian farm workers), the president took to traveling throughout the country to present his position, even to the smallest and remotest of Bolivian villages. It was a tactic that had yielded him good results in

1444-529: Was the Commander of the Bolivian Air Forces and ambassador who served as the 48th president of Bolivia twice nonconsecutively, first as co-president with René Barrientos from 1965 to 1966 and then as de facto president from 1969 to 1970. 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

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