We greet you in these times of griel and sorrow. We want you to know what has taken place in this mining center so that through your mediation the barbarbous cruelty can be divulged . . . The Max Toledo Regiment attacked Caracoles with guns, mortars, tanks and war planes; our husbands defended themselves with stones, sticks and dynamite. By Monday afternoon most of the miners were dead, and the survivors either fled to the hills or houses in Villa Carmen. Army troops pursued them and killed some men in their homes, arrested and tortured others and bayonetted many. They also decapitated the wounded. In the middle of the plaza they put dynamite in the mouth of one miner and blew him to pieces . . . They whipped children with cables and made them eat gun powder. They made young people lie down on broken glass and forced us to walk over them; afterwards the soldiers marched over them. At dawn, on Tuesday, Agust 5, they loaded the dead and wounded into three army trucks headed for La Paz . . . About 900 people disappeared, the dead, wounded and prisoners.
The magnitude of political repression by the military has made organized opposition to Garcia Meza over the past year virtually impossible. Siles Zuazo has established a government-in-exile based in Lima, Peru which, combined with clandestine political work within the country, may eventually pose a forceful challenge to the military regime. In the meantime, political stability will depend on other factors. The regime has survived economically so far because of the repeated lenience of the international financial community. At the time of the coup, Bolivia's foreign debt was $1.9 billion, $170 million of which came due in December. Within 10 days a consortium of banks led by Chase Manhattan agreed to postpone the payments. Last Friday, the consortium agreed in principle to reschedule another $460 million, giving Garcia Meza additional breathing space.
This most recent reprieve is contingent on prior fulfillment of an IMF stabilization plan that Garcia Meza first tried to impose in January. IMF intervention in the Bolivian economy has a long history of detrimental effects on the popular sectors and the latest IMF conditions are no exception. In January, economic degrees resulted in severe inflation of necessary goods and wage freezes. Workers all over Bolivia went on strike in spontaneous protest. A new attempt to comply with IMF mandates will surely bring more political problems for Garcia Meza.
The survival of Garcia Meza's regime also depends on diplomatic recognition from key developed countries. Joining the international outery against Garcia Meza in July, former president Carter withdrew the U.S. ambassador and suspended all "non-humanitarian" economic aid. Reagan's election has diminished hopes that this expression of opposition will continue. In a recent Commentary article U. N. representative Jeane Kirkpatrick advocates support of Garcia Meza's regime and argues that the human rights violations are not significant. Shortly after the article was published, nine Leftist leaders were massacred by the government.
Furthermore, Reagan's policy toward El Salvador, Guatemala and other Latin American governments shows a complete willingness to support institutionalized, state-sponsored terrorism of the right wing. The resistance to recognize Bolivia stems not from human rights violations, but from concern about cocaine, produced in Bolivia and sold in the United States. Deep involvement of top-ranking officers in cocaine trade has been documented beyond doubt. Analysts of Bolivian polities suspect that control over this 800-million-dollar-a-year business was a central reason for the July coup.
Outraged by the drug connection, Sen. Dennis DeConcini (R-Ariz.) is attempting to mobilize U.S. opposition to the Bolivian regime. Future U.S. recognition of Bolivia depends largely on the outcome of this controversy: human rights is not an issue.
Continued U.S. non-recognition would be highly ironic. Just as the late Shah of Iran and Somoza of Nicaragua were U.S.-created dictators, so is the Bolivian military largely a product of U.S. foreign policy in the 50s and 60s. The 1952 revolution in Bolivia shook the U.S. government because major mines were nationalized, a peoples' militia were created, and workers obtained an important role in the new government. Over the next 18 years U.S. economic aid was contingent on the rebuilding of the military, and direct military aid during that period came to $56.6 million. Even more important, between 1950 and 1975 nearly 4000 Bolivian military personnel were trained in Panama and the United States. The ideological emphasis of this training was rabidly anticommunist, and the predominant message was that only the military could "save" the country from internal threats to political stability. Young officers were taught to see politically active workers and campesinos as insurgent enemies.
Since 1964, when the military came to power in Bolivia, there have been massive denials of human rights, extensive political repression, including frequent massacres of peasants and miners. U.S. economic military and economic aid continued undaunted during all of that time, and only recently has there been any serious objection to the interruptions in the democratic process.
With the upsurge of militarism and Cold War politics in the U.S., rapid change in the Bolivian situation is highly improbable. If the past is any indication, miners and campesinos will slowly reorganize and gradually force a political opening. This will give the Left an opportunity to reformulate its strategy in light of past experience. Opposition leaders agree that the new strategy must include a means to neutralize the military, either through political influence or countervailing military strength. Our responsibility as North Americans is to support the reassertion of the Bolivian Left as it occurs, and to oppose all diplomatic and economic ties between the U.S. and the military regime. Monitoring our own government's action is of special importance.
All over Latin America, the U.S. is taking the side of repressive, elite-controlled regimes. By working to prevent that support, we will help workers and campesinos within each country to assert themselves politically, to challenge the injustice of their own situations, and to determine their own destinies.
Charles R. Hale '81, a Social Studies concentrator who wrote his thesis on Boliva, is also a member of Education for Action's Bolivian Study Group.
The Cocaine Connection
Cocaine, one of the most popular and most expensive illicit drugs sold in the U.S., derives from the coca plant which grows mainly in Peru and Bolivia. For centuries, highland Indians have chewed leaves of the coca plant as a mild stimulant, to stave off hunger and drowsiness. Although this use continues, Bolivia now produces four times more coca leaf than can be consumed locally.
The rest, some 27,000 tons per year, is converted into cocaine paste, and exported to Colombia where additional processing takes place. The final product enters the U.S. market.
The cocaine trade in Bolivia has boomed since the military coup of July 1980. CBS' 60 Minutes recently provided ample documentation that top-ranking members of the military are closely associated with the elite group which controls the drug traffic. Minister of Interior Colonel Luis Arce Gomez, for example, is part owner of an air freight company which makes weekly flights to an unknown location in Colombia. In February, his plane was found to be carrying 300 kilos of cocaine, but Arce avoided conviction. Arce's yearly income from cocaine was estimated at half a million.
Hernan Siles Zuazo, who won the election in June of last year, had promised to clamp down on the cocaine traders. The statement may have lacked conviction, but the military leaders were not willing to risk their 800 million per year business to find out. The subsequent coup brought to power a cocaine mafia that includes even the president Luis Garcia Meza. Informants within Bolivia report that cocaine production now has become centralized, efficient and much more tightly controlled. The losers are Indian peasants, who no longer can afford to chew coca because its price has risen astronomically. With the Bolivian mafia so pervasive and well-connected, any thought of internal drug enforcement would be preposterous.
Outraged by the drug connection, U.S. congressmen have organized opposition to the Garcia Meza regime. Sen. Dennis De Concinni (R-Ariz.), one of the most vocal opponents, contends that cocaine elites actually prop up the government, referring to an alleged $70 million emergency grant given by those involved in the illicit trade to avert an impending economic crisis. De Concinni and others also demanded that the most blatant drug traders be removed from the government, a condition that Garcia Meza met last month by dismissing Colonels Arce Gomez and Coca. The Bolivian government propbably will continue to comply with U.S. demands in hopes of achieving formal recognition and the accompanying economic support. Notably absent from U.S. demands, however, is reference to the extensive political repression and human rights violations of the Garci "Meza" regime--which clearly are not ameliorated by cosmetic changes in the Bolivian cabinet.