DEMONSTRATIONS IN BOLIVIAN CITIES
Social tensions in Bolivia: have not declined since that unhappy country was forced by the Johnson administration to break off relations with Cuba, In Cochabamba October 21, fighting broke out between police and students. A report, lacking in details, put the casualties at two killed and a dozen wounded,
Minister of Interior Ciro Humbolt, on arriving in La Paz, said the account had been exaggerated -- that there were no deaths, only thirteen wounded, one of them seriously. He said that an agreement had been reached between university officials, student leaders and the police under which an arrested student leader was released and the students in turn released hostages they had taken,
. In Washington, however, an unnamed spokesman of the State Department took a more serious view. According to this source, anti-American "riots" took place the week before at Oruru and Potos{, and the unrest could spread to La Paz, endangering the regime of Victor Paz Estenssoro who recently had himself re-elected in violation of the constitution,
an Again according to the same source, the disturbances in Cochabamba broke out after Bolivian "security police" arrested Willi Camacha, a student leader, on charges of plotting to overthrow the government, Some 400. students at the University of San Simone then threw up blockades near the school and began throwing rocks at the police.
, The cops responded with tear gas. The counterattack failed when the police ran out of supplies. The students came through their barricades, surging into the city. The police then opened fire,
Peter Burr, a member of the Peace Corps, who claimed he was an innocent bystander, was hit in the leg by a bullet.
It was also reported in Washington that sharp differences have arisen between Paz Estenssoro and his Vice-President Rene Barrientos. The ambitious Barrientos, former commander of the Bolivian Air Force, has a reputation of being even more abjectly ~ pro-American than the president.
On October 23, students in La Paz went into action. They organized a demonstration to protest what the police had done in Cochabamba. The cops in the twoemile-high city resorted to tear gas in an effort to break up the student rally. They were met with showers of stones.
Adding. to-the unrest in Bolivia was a steep rise in the price of tin, the country's principal. source of foreign exchange. On > October 15 the metal hit an all-time high of £1,655 ($4, 634] a ton
on the London Metal Exchange. 7 "Tin consumers, in the thick of a fast, furious and marvellous year," wrote Business Editor Robert Heller in the October 18 London Observer, "spent the week working hard to persuade the United States overnment to make a quick £15 million or.so by selling some tin, Washington is in the most enviable of positions. It has the. goods; and nobody else has,"
Washington got the "goods," by offering economic aid to Bolivia; i.e., buying up tin at low-prices and stockpiling it as a “strategic material." - Bolivia's imperialist Big: Brother is now in position to cash in handsomely. °
Upon the decision of the Industrial and Strategic Materials Division of the State Department's Office of International Resources to begin releasing its tin holdings on the world market, the Paz Estenssoro government registered its protest.
wre. Bolivia is prevented from benefiting from a legitimate fluctuation in the price of its principal product, the possibility for the country to contribute to its internal efforts is thereby blocked," said an official,note addressed to the U.S. government, “The increase in sales of North American tin on the world market upsets the plans for deve loping the Bolivian mining industry."
It was doubtful, however, “that the Johnson administration would pay much attention to this complaint from the tiny country in the Andes. After all, the State Department succeeded in its game of compelling the Bolivian government to break off relations with Cuba, thereby lowering the risk that the Bolivian people might follow the example of the Cuban Revolution. Thus weakened, Paz Estenssoro has little choice but to pay an additional price for the aid and protection given him by U.S. imperialism.