Autobiography - The Galindo Group

Ram Galindo THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN Page 75
cold war had to be won or lost from Washington, the power center itself. While being a
front-line soldier in the trenches was at the time inescapable and redeeming, it was not
the foot soldiers alone, no matter how courageous, who could win it. I became more
convinced that my efforts to preserve all people’s right to pursue a dream could be more
effective if applied in the United States itself.
After the January 1971 defeat, Gen. Banzer contrived to survive to try again. With a
view to begin preparing my return to the United States, I attended some graduate
engineering courses at Texas A&M in the summer of that same year. I was also actively
soliciting financial help for our freedom fighters from parties with commercial interests in
Bolivia that I thought might be responsive to our plight. I had even set up an
underground connection with an American priest friend who would become the contact
for a would-be visitor during my absence. Frustratingly to me, I was not even close to
success, but I had my first experience in fund raising in the U.S. Toward the end of my
stay in Texas, I heard a new army revolt had detonated in Bolivia. As we were preparing
to board the plane back, a most desired and long-in-coming news bulletin came
through. Banzer’s second try had achieved success.
With Chuso and Bepi gone, the military leadership of our small group went to a
childhood friend of ours who by then was a former U. S. Special Forces member named
Fernando “Nano” Canelas. He told us, and I chose to believe him, that he had actually
disembarked in Havana Bay with an advanced recognizance unit during the October
missile crisis of 1962. In the period of my acquaintance with him, he certainly displayed
the tactical knowledge and courage to have been able to do that.
For Banzer’s second try in August 11, 1971, Nano was the victor of Cochabamba. On
the appointed night a band of about 20 friends gathered under Nano’s command to
shame the Army base commander to join the coup. Before dawn they telephoned him,
and with appropriately raucous patriotic screams on the background, made him believe
that they were a large band of desperados ready to shoot or be shot. In truth some of
them didn’t even have weapons, but the ruse worked and when in the darkness they
began their march to the base, the commander declared his troops loyal to Banzer, and
by so doing, all other forces in the district fell behind him.
In actuality what probably really happened is that the base commander was waiting for
just such a catalyst as a sign that the coup had started nationwide and that it had
enough civilian support to merit his attention. Then, as soon as he was able to verify the
events from Gen. Banzer’s headquarters, he made his decision to join him. This time
the coup had started in Santa Cruz, where Banzer had surreptitiously gone after he reentered
the country from his earlier exile in Argentina. He worked incognito recruiting
sympathetic officers until the political police found him and took him prisoner to La Paz.
This was the spark that two days later ignited the coup. The army commanders of Santa
Cruz issued the call for revolt and the whole department (state) accepted it.
Autobiography.doc 75 of 239