Autobiography - The Galindo Group

Ram Galindo THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN Page 67
communist terror blended in one adventure. But in a relative short time, the Bolivian
Army captured and killed most of the invaders and no new Viet Nams in America ever
developed. Guevara himself fell on October 9, 1967, just over 11 months after he
arrived.
Che Guevara was a dangerous dreamer who had tasted unlimited power in Havana
immediately after his band’s takeover. As an example, he started to acquire
international fame when he administered “justice” to anybody who had committed the
crime of owning a telephone line and being listed in the phone book. To have that much
“capital” in a poor country was a crime against the people and his band was not going to
gloss over that. He used this and other tactics to scare every thinking Cuban into an
exodus mentality. Non-compliant prominent Cuban citizens, whether involved in politics
or not, were put to death, banished to prison, harassed and persecuted or sent to “reeducation
camps” just because they had owned property and were not “comrades.” At
the very least, their children were taken, by one means or another, into the custody of
the state. These actions of the “Sierra Maestra” elite were carefully concealed by the
international media but were experienced directly by many sources that personally
related them to me.
Why Guevara failed so miserably in Bolivia has been the subject of many essays and
no more about him belongs here, but the after-effects of his attempt forced all Bolivians
onto a new battlefield. It happened that Gen. Barrientos, the victor of Nancahuazu and
by general consensus the most popular president Bolivia ever had, was killed in a
helicopter accident not long after his triumph. During his tenure, besides repelling the
international invaders, he had even managed to restore commercial methods to the
nationalized mines. As I state in The Mining Country, Chapter 3, mines that had created
untold fortunes for their private owners before they were nationalized had become mired
in a deficit-ridden, vicious spiral of political demagoguery and financial chaos since they
were taken by the socialist government of Paz Estensoro.
Under Barrientos, the country’s economic activity had revived, principally due to
restructuring the nationalized mines and to his effective promotion of a search for oil
and gas by foreign companies. Also, peasants in the countryside were getting more
practical and less political education and began to improve their agricultural production.
Independent citizens were becoming entrepreneurs and a feeling of renewed hope
pervaded the public mood. Yet, these improvements were not to last. His sudden death
on April 29, 1969 cast a pale of gloom over the resurgent nation as the military took
control.
As I said before, the Bolivian Army had undergone some severe purges during the
socialist days in the 1950s and many officers with leftist tendencies were now
approaching high command positions. After Barrientos’ death it didn’t take long before
the foreign oil companies were nationalized, the mines reverted to management by
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