Autobiography - The Galindo Group

Ram Galindo THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN Page 69
Vivian, was attending the University of San Simon in Cochabamba, a veritable rat hole
of violent communist ideologues and executioners. Providentially, my whole family
shared a love of freedom and was sick with the current state of affairs. At the expense
of his fledgling new business and risking his personal safety, my brother Chuso formed
his own secret society and began to clandestinely offer public signs of displeasure with
the heavy communist presence. Soon, we all joined him in his efforts in one way or
another.
Anyone who ever traveled through underdeveloped countries has seen streets covered
with graffiti. They are the most read medium available, more than newspapers. They are
cheap to print, unavoidable to read, and because they are almost indelible they carry
the message for a long time. During the 1950s and 60s Bolivia excelled in anti-
American and pro-communist graffiti. One morning in 1970, the city of Cochabamba
awakened to a rush of never before seen anti-communist graffiti. Soon the authorities
found out who was responsible. From that day on my brother Chuso became a marked
man to the Bolivian secret police but his political star was born among friends of liberty.
After Barrientos’ death, the country went into a series of short-term military governments
marked by assassinations, coups and counter-coups. One time, in October 1970, I
recall a general head-of-government was replaced by a triumvirate of other generals
and before the end of the day the triumvirate was replaced by yet another general - five
presidents in one day! As the immediate result of this fiasco, an openly leftist general by
the name of Juan J. Torres took control of the country with the backing of all the
acronymic communists. His regime was born beholden to them for civilian support.
Their payday started immediately.
It was during the build-up to this point that all my siblings and I simultaneously and
independently decided that we could no longer be just observers of the drama. Since
we had no economic support from anybody, we were all self-reliant in the care of our
families. This activity took up all of our time. In 1967, Chuso had established a
rudimentary bicycle factory to fill a well-developed market need and, like all new
entrepreneurs, was trying to build his business. In the process he met a remarkable
Brazilian father-son team who had come to Bolivia in the Barrientos days to form a
plastics’ extrusion company. They were just as anti-communist as we were but they had
a far wider knowledge of weapons, munitions, tactics and military organization. We had
none.
Giuseppi Betti (Bepi), the son, Luigi Betti (Luigi) the father, and Lucy Betti (Lucy), Bepi’s
wife, were to become critical for the salvation of Bolivia. At the time my brother Chris
and I were trying to keep afloat our own consulting engineering business. We had lost
significant clients with the departure of the oil companies and mining prospectors and
with the sudden disappearance of the ephemeral entrepreneurs that we had been
helping. Chuso and Bepi pretty well abandoned their business and went almost full time
into forming alliances with non-leftist armed forces officers and anti-communist militias
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