Autobiography - The Galindo Group

Ram Galindo THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN Page 64
not consider any measures that reduced employment in any way or form. Thus,
although at the cost of impoverishing the nation even more, the nationalized mines
remained open and operating.
In return for officially keeping Bolivia out of the Soviet orbit, first Dwight Eisenhower and
later, on a larger scale, John Kennedy, followed by Lyndon Johnson, through the foreign
aid program known as “The Alliance for Progress”, sent enough help to keep the
socialists in power. The aid came despite, or perhaps because of, the blatant anti-
American domestic bent of the government. Its agents were permanently instigating
marches to throw rocks at the U.S. embassy, burn the Stars and Stripes and hang
Uncle Sam in effigy. One of the government’s purposes was to intimidate any domestic
sympathizers who saw America as the hope for freedom. As in Cuba a few years later,
in the 1950s everyone who could flee Bolivia did so. Even my own parents temporarily
moved the family to Peru in 1957, where my father led a small group of entrepreneurs to
establish a nylon hosiery plant and remained there for about four years.
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HOT FRONT IN A COLD WAR.
It was to this climate of poverty and despair that I came back to Bolivia in November
1963, still inspired by then President Kennedy’s vision. Deep inside me I already knew
then that my true allegiances belonged to the United States of America, but I felt a
strong drive to fulfill my parents’ call to return to their land and an obligation to give back
to Bolivia at least some years of my life. Events during the following decade reinforced
my identification with the American system even more and prepared me better to be an
appreciative citizen of the United States. By the time I returned to Bolivia, in the pattern
of mid 20 th century underdeveloped socialist states, all semblance of political opposition
had been eradicated. The only institution coherent enough to exercise any resistance
was the armed forces, which, although it had been “cleansed,” was not yet totally
subservient to the political apparatus.
On November 4, 1964, a popular general by the name of Rene Barrientos staged an
armed but essentially bloodless coup. The despots left in a hurry. Civil liberties were
restored and economic activity was opened to all. But, together with Haiti, Bolivia still
remained the poorest country in the continent. By the time Barrientos ran for election in
a democratically staged contest and easily won the presidency in August 1966, the
country had built significant forward momentum in its economy, social balance and
exercise of civil liberties. The good parts of the 1952 revolution, such as land ownership
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