How involved Bolivia to the cold war?

Answer 1

In 1967 the famed Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara came to Bolivia in order to help lead the miners insurgency. When the United States learned that Che was in Bolivia they decided that it would be their best chance to kill someone that they conceived to be representative of the Cuban

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communist revolution. In order to better prepare the Bolivian army to capture Che the United States sent down a battalion of Green Berets to train some of the Bolivian army. The segment that the Green Berets trained became known as the Rangers. In all three battalions of Rangers were created. In October of 1967 the Rangers succeeded in their mission and captured, then executed, Che. After they completed their official mission "the three Rangers battalions remained for a decade or more an efficient force for repression and a reactionary influence within the military." (Black 78)

One of the Major embarrassments for the Barrientos regime was when the Minister of the Interior, Antonio Arquedas, admitted that he was paid by the C.I.A and implicated most of the other people in the Bolivian government. To add to the controversy, Arquedas admitted that he was secretly a Marxist supporter and even stole Che's captured diary and brought it to Cuba. This scandal drastically hurt the Barrientos regime, and General Barrientos was widely seen as being under the control of foreign influences. In 1968 General Barrientos died in a helicopter crash and his vice President, Siles Salinas, took control of the Presidency. Salinas' only managed to maintain his seat of power for a few months before the military overthrew him.

One of the military presidents that followed Salinas, Jaun Torres, gave Washington plenty to worry about due to his left leaning politics. One of Torres' gravest offenses was when he nationalized a few companies that were owned by American firms such as Maltide Mine. Obviously this was more than the United States could stand so they almost immediately started plotting to overthrow Torres with help from Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay. The man that this conspiracy choose to support was the Bolivian general, Hugo Banzer. On August 18, 1971 Banzer started his coup and by the 22nd he was president of Bolivia. Banzer was a natural choice for this because he was already well acquainted with the United States Army due to his time at the School of Americas. He also maintained contact with the United States when he was appointed to Washington as a military attaché for Bolivia. It is interesting to note that when Banzer carried out his coup one of his most important allies was the Rangers who were trained by the United States Green Berets. Also there were a handful of United States military advisors there as well who helped carry out the planning of the Coup.