One More Time

Soldiers stage another coup

The latest chapter in Bolivia's sad political history began almost routinely in the northern city of Trinidad. Army troops took over strategic points around the city and issued a proclamation disavowing the authority of interim President Lydia Gueiler. Twelve hours later, 20 armed rebels stormed the Government House in the capital of La Paz and arrested Gueiler, along with her Cabinet. Power was seized by a junta composed of Army General Luis Garcia Meza, Air Force General Waldo Bernal Pereira and Admiral Ramiro Terrazas. At least two people were killed and 120 wounded during the military takeover--Bolivia's fourth in the past two years, and the 189th coup in the country's 155 years of independence.

The junta leaders, who later chose Garcia Meza as Bolivia's new President, said they had acted to reverse an "electoral fraud." Specifically, their aim was to block the election of left-leaning presidential Candidate Hernan Siles Zuazo, who had won a plurality of the popular vote last month and appeared assured of victory in a congressional ballot scheduled for early August. The coup apparently sent both Siles Zuazo and runner-up Candidate Victor Paz Estenssoro into hiding. The junta announced that Gueiler had submitted her resignation; at week's end she and her Cabinet ministers were still believed to be prisoners in the presidential residence.

The junta immediately disbanded Congress, imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew and moved rapidly to crush resistance by students and workers, who called for a general strike in protest against the "fascist coup-makers." Tanks and troops also moved into southern towns where some 5,000 armed tin miners were blocking the roads and vowing to fight the coup "until the ultimate consequences." There were ominous signs that the junta had adopted the chilling anti-terrorist tactics pioneered by Argentina's military bosses. As in Argentina, a number of activists simply disappeared after being kidnaped by plain-clothes thugs in cars without license plates.

Argentine officials had nothing to say about the coup, which was immediately deplored by the governments of Venezuela, Ecuador and Colombia, and by Peru's President-elect Fernando Belaunde Terry. The Bolivian military's action was also strongly denounced by the U.S. State Department, which recalled Ambassador Marvin Weissman for "consultations" and cut off all military and economic aid to the strife-torn country. qed

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