Prepared for the Worst

Air Force General Rene Barrientos is a swinger who flies his own DC-3, likes the girls so much that until very recently he maintained two families at once. Barrientos also has the kind of charisma that wins votes, and last week he was elected in a landslide as Bolivia's 47th President.

Barrientos had been boss before: 20 months ago he overthrew a civilian President, promised that elections would follow. As the campaign began, he made it clear that he was his own favorite candidate. To improve his image he shed one of his wives, toned down his mercurial ways, and surrounded himself with topnotch advisers. Over the months, he went on to build a reputation as a firm-minded reformer by cleaning up the Communist-run tin union and creating a rare political stability.

When he was not running the government, Barrientos was off piloting his rickety DC-3 to every corner of the country, visiting as many as twelve towns a day. Through swirls of confetti, he pumped hands, sipped the peasants' bitter, beery chicha and traded quips with campesinos in their native Quechua. As the elections drew near, Barrientos resigned as a member of the ruling junta and mustered a mixed-breed coalition of leftist and rightist groups into a party he called the Bolivian Revolutionary Front (F.R.B.).

When he takes office Aug. 6, Barrientos may find that being a civilian President is far tougher than being a military strongman. Though his F.R.B. holds 100 of Congress' 129 seats, the front is badly split, which could endanger his legislative program. And it is out of such havoc that Bolivia's coups are made. Having made one himself, Civilian Barrientos is prepared for the worst. "If the government does not work," he shrugged to reporters on election clay, ''the military should intervene."

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