BOLIVIAN GENERALS CLAIM BATTLE VICTIMS
What the April 8 New York Times described as the “first concrete evidence" of an encounter between forces of the Barrientos regime and guerrilla fighters in the southeast part of Bolivia was offered to foreign correspondents at Camiri April 7. The evidence was seven bodies of soldiers allegedly recovered from a mass grave. According to the Bolivian generals they were killed March 23 in a clash between a government patrol and a group of armed men in the vicinity of Nacahuazi. Nevertheless the Times remained skeptical of the story issued by the highly unreliable Barrientos government.
"The Bolivian Air Force has been bombing and strafing the impenetrable jungle in the Zone Red almost daily," said the Times dispatch, "and it says it has killed 25 guerrillas. A spokesman was able to offer no proof of the casualties, and he acknowledged that no troops were within 30 miles of where the bombings had taken place."
"The clash of March 23," continued the Times, "was the only undoubted evidence of a hostile band in the area. The rest of the claims made by the Government, involving other clashes, bearded prisoners, vast troop movements and even an artillery battle, cannot be substantiated. Statements made by one officer contradict those of another officer, and some contradict themselves."
The official account is that in the March 23 clash, seven soldiers were killed and fourteen were taken prisoner by the guerrillas. The prisoners were then allegedly marched twenty miles to the guerrilla headquarters. They were shown around and released forty-eight hours later. One of these supposed prisoners was made available to the press by President Barrientos during a "political swing near La Paz."
"The soldier, Sgt. Edgar Torrico," still according to the Times, “said there had been 450 men in the guerrilla band, all well armed. He said most had been Bolivians and some had spoken Quechua, the local Indian language.
"Then the sergeant added that there had also been Russians, Cubans, Mexicans and Chinese. The leader, he said, was an Argentine named Antonio. The band comprised [included] five physicians including a cardiologist, he said."
American advisers are with Barrientos' forces in the field, it has been reported repeatedly. Nevertheless, the Johnson administration appears to be waiting for additional evidence that strong guerrilla forces are actually operating in Bolivia.
Meanwhile, the Barrientos regime made an international move of a rather mysterious nature. It sent Colonel Kolle Cueto, head of the general staff of the Air Force, to Argentina. There the Bolivian emissary met with General Ongania to solicit aid in the fight against the guerrillas.
On March 31, according to Henry Janiéres, special correspondent of the Paris daily Le Monde, Colonel Kolle Cueto spent almost the whole day with the Argentine minister of national defense. The Argentine chief of the gendarmes, General Aguirre, spent the day flying to the Argentine-Bolivian frontier to inspect his troops.
Le Monde's correspondent reported that he had learned that the Bolivians wanted arms and munitions from Argentina. "Because the guerrillas, numbering about 500, are perfectly equipped, while the Bolivian army does not have adequate armaments. As for planes, they are useless in the mountainous, densely wooded area where the guerrillas are maneuvering."
This story, of course, stands in contradiction to the reports in La Paz about pitched battles "with artillery" and the devastating effect of the American napalm bombs and machine-gun fire poured on the guerrilla forces, "who are encircled and cannot escape."
One well-known glaring fact was strangely missing from most of the reports sent out by the bourgeois press; this is the nationwide witch-hunt launched by the Barrientos regime against the left-wing parties. Virtually all their leaders have been seized by the Bolivian secret political police and deported to remote villages in the mountains and jungles.
The wild, or greatly inflated, account of guerrilla action in the southeast part of Bolivia has served as a most convenient diversion. And it is a diversion in which the international bourgeois press is playing its own role by remaining silent about the witch-hunt which Barrientos is conducting against the Bolivian labor movement under excuse of discovery of a "plot" against his regime.
HUGO BLANCO'S JUDGES. At trial in Tacna, they sentenced the Peruvian peasant leader on September 8, 1966, to 25 years in El Frontén, the notorious fortress-prison on an island near Lima. When Hugo Blanco appealed this savage sentence to the Supreme Council of Military Justice, the prosecution demanded the death penalty. The highest legal body of the army recessed on January 15 and was scheduled to reconvene sometime in April when it would presumably resume consideration of the appeal of the defense and the counterdemand of the prosecution. If the verdict is unfavorable to the prisoner, he could be taken out and shot immediately.
Under Peru's barbaric witch-hunt legislation, the Council's decision cannot be appealed to the civilian courts. Although Hugo Blanco is a civilian, the army tried him in its own military tribunal. The army thus acted as both prosecution and judge and is now weighing whether also to play the role of executioner.
Only widespread international protest has stayed the firing squad up to now. It is necessary to redouble the protests, cabling to the following addresses: Consejo Supremo de Justicia, Lima, Peru; Presidente Fernando Belatnde Terry, Lima, Peru. Copies of protests should be airmailed to Hugo Blanco's attorney, Dr. Alfredo Battilana, Avenida Nicola de Pierola 966, Oficina 215, Lima, Peru. Also send copies to World Outlook.
Copies of the protests should also be filed with local Peruvian consulates and embassies. In some countries, picket lines have proved highly effective in gaining additional publicity in behalf of Hugo Blanco's appeal.