GUERRILLA FRONT IN BOLIVIA PICTURED AS "IMPREGNABLE"
[The reports concerning the opening of a guerrilla front in southeastern Bolivia have been so contradictory that until the report below was published, World Outlook considered it best to adopt a reserved attitude.
[The main source of information was the Barrientos regime, one of the most unreliable in all of Latin America -- and that is saying a good deal. What it reported one day canceled out what it had said the previous day.
{The Johnson administration appeared to be dubious as to the accuracy of the accounts, although this did not prevent it from sending additional military supplies and a number of "advisers" and experts in counterguerrilla war.
{It should be added that the sudden reports about guerrilla activities came on the eve of the Punta del Este Conference sponsored by the Johnson administration and were utilized to help whip up the "hate Cuba" propaganda. Moreover, the focusing of attention on the southeast part of Bolivia was not without a certain value in helping to draw a screen over the savage witch-hunt of political opponents which the Barrientos regime has been conducting since last January.
{Various journalists appear to have been trying to ascertain the truth about the reports of a new guerrilla front. Three journalists who went there were promptly seized by the Barrientos regime and one of them, Régis Debray, was accused of being the "political commissar" of the alleged guerrilla group. (See World Qutlook, May 19, p. 507.)
[The Paris daily Le Monde sent one of its best correspondents, Marcel Niedergang, to Bolivia. An unusually reliable journalist, his dispatches have been awaited with interest. His reports concerning Régis Debray soon pointed up a number of lies on the part of the Barrientos regime.
(Arriving in the guerrilla zone, he seems to have succeeded in interviewing some of the representatives of political tendencies that have been driven underground. Coupling this information with facts gleaned from other sources, he offered his first conclusions concerning the guerrilla front in the May 18 issue of Le Monde. We offer below some extracts from this article.]
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(Niedergang begins by reporting the March 23 incident in which a government patrol stumbled into an ambush on the Nancahuazti River north of Lagunillas, an oil town in the province of Santa Cruz. A sublieutenant named Amezaga, six soldiers and a civilian employee of the Bolivian state oil company, one "Vargas," were killed. ]
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The news was not released officially in La Paz until Monday March 27; the authorities preferring to remain silent at first...
According to a communiqué of the army high command, Sublieutenant Amezaga's lost patrol was charged with "studying indications of a forest trail" and the "quick reaction of the forces of law and order enabled them to capture some prisoners, a jeep, radio equipment, some suitcases containing uniforms and Castro- Communist propaganda of Cuban origin."
A quite different version is offered at Marietta's in Camiri. "For several months people in Camiri had noticed the incessant coming and going of 'Coco' Perero and his brother Marco, both of whom are from Beni. Congenial, friendly, with an easy smile and ‘abrazo' [equivalent to a slap on the back], they said they had bought a farm near Nancahuazi to raise stock. People around here ended up just the same thinking that the two brothers were buying an abnormal amount of supplies for their employees. Around Lagunillas and Monteagudo, they made no objection to paying double the price for chickens and meat. At first it was thought that a new clandestine plant for making cocaine was involved, these being numerous in the region. Then things said in confidence by an employee of the conpany about men coming down from the mountains to the Perero farm led the government authorities to send a patrol accompanied by the guide 'Vargas' to see what was involved."
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[About ten kilometers from the Perero farm this army unit ran into a genuine military training camp. ]
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From all appearances, the unexpected invasion by the Amezaga patrol caught the guerrillas by surprise. They had not expected to be involved in action so quickly. Actually, three months earlier, a young Bolivian technician had by chance met the Perero brothers in the Monteagudo market. He knew them well in Europe when he was a student there. Marco and "Coco" Perero belonged to an extreme
left formation, but at the end of 1965 they decided, it seems, to join a pro- Chinese group, the leader of which is Oscar Zamora, former general secretary of the International Student Union in Prague.
Zamora, a former member of the "orthodox" Communist party, is at present detained in a military camp for political prisoners in Peking, a place in the Amazon forest close to the Brazilian border said to be unhealthy. [See World Outlook, April 21, p. 420, for a description of the conditions in these camps.] When his family complained about the particularly harsh conditions of the camp, the authorities replied: "What are you complaining about? He is exactly where he wanted to go.” In this particularly isolated part of Bolivia are to be found other places with such unexpected names as Paris, Versailles, New Berlin and London...
"We decided, with the comrades, to begin armed insurrection," the Perero brothers confided. "For the time being we are in the stage of preparation and organization, but you will soon hear them talking about us. The only way out is through armed struggle."
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[In La Paz and Santa Cruz, Niedergang continues, one hears many Bolivians affirm after the event that they knew about the guerrilla preparations all along. In the area, however, two months later the general feeling is still one of surprise and doubt.
(Three days after the skirmish at Nancahuazu, General Barrientos, president of the republic, arrived by plane to personally inspect the "red zone."
[For a month and a half repeated announcements were made about an imminent clash, but the reported incidents indicated that the guerrillas continued to hold the initiative. ]
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On April 10 a particularly murderous ambush, sprung by the guerrillas at Iripiti, still on the banks of the Nancahuazi, cost the lives of two lieutenants, a subofficer and eight soldiers.
Still graver -- the section commanded by Captain Sanchez, which reached there a little later, was disarmed and taken prisoner. Captain Sanchez and his men remained two days with the guerrillas, astonished at not being exe¢uted. They observed with interest the very modern arms of the rebels, their organization and perfect discipline. A doctor, Japanese according to them, took care of the wounded. Deprived of their clothes and their arms, the men in the Sanchez patrol, no doubt having refused to join the guerrillas, were released. They carried their dead and wounded on stretchers; one of the guerrilla chiefs turned over to Captain Sanchez the wedding ring belonging to Sublieutenant Amezaga, killed March 23.
On April 20, in the village of Muyupampa, that is, considerably south of this sector, Mr. Régis Debray was apprehended in the company of two journalists, one of them Argentine, the other British. This was not done by the military but by the DIC (Department of Criminal Investigation). The three men were unarmed, in civilian clothes, manifestly unprepared to stay, for even a short time, in the Nancahuazi jungle.
Other skirmishes took place April 25 and during May near Gutierrez, not far from the Rio Grande. A total of twenty-five deaths in the ranks of the regular forces in less than forty-five days. This is a high figure; proportionately much higher than the losses admitted officially over a longer period in Colombia or Venezuela, the two countries most affected up to now by armed insurrectionary movements.
Thus morale does not seem to be very high among the Bolivian soldiers of the Fourth Division, taken aback by combat tactics and-a terrain to which they are quite unaccustomed. Despite the repeated announcements about a "general offensive," orders have been issued by the high command to reduce the number of "suicide patrols."
In the sinister gorges of the Nancahuazi, thirty years ago, the heads of the Bolivian army, under different conditions of course, had to overcome the distaste of the men of the Altiplano or the high Andean valleys for the tropical heat and humidity. The Aymara Indian and the Cochabamba cholo dread the jungle and its snares -- snakes, mosquitoes and giant, venomous spiders. It seems clear that the rebels, controlling a territory of around 200 square kilometers, do not intend to "break out of the encirclement" and pass over to the offensive. They are satisfied with lightning commando operations to demoralize the regular troops.
"It seems," Colonel Zenteno, commander of the Eighth Division and former minister of foreign affairs, told us, "that the guerrillas have a base in this sector that is for the moment almost impregnable."
Conscious of these difficulties, the top command is now seeking to replace the troops composed in the majority of men from the highlands by conscripts enlisted in the tropical zones, particularly Beni. But a significant incident occurred last week at Trinidad, the capital of.
Beni, the province north of Santa Cruz. A crowd of men and women assembled on the airstrip at the airport to block the military plane from taking off with the conscripts. The government's comment: "It involved a group of Communists."
The project launched by General Barrientos at the end of March to create a "peasant militia," seems to have likewise been abandoned. It is not that the Bolivian army, having a strength of about 30,000 men, lacks elite units, but they are not numerous. A battalion of Rangers, around 1,000 men, is stationed near Santa Cruz but has not yet engaged in operations. Another battalion has great firepower and is well trained. A second battalion of Rangers is being formed with the collaboration of U.S. "advisers" from the anti-guerrilla school at Panama. An estimated 250 young Bolivian officers have already taken courses in this school.
There is nothing confidential about this American military assistance. A regular military flight schedule is maintained between Howard air field in the Panama Canal Zone and Bolivia. The newspapers in La Paz have published pictures of Hercules air-cargo planes landing war matériel in Cochabamba and Santa Cruz, as well as pictures of American "advisers." The same Bolivian dailies report "military aid from Argentina."
"U.S. and Argentine technicians and instructors are arriving frequently in Bolivia," General Belmonte Ardiles, commander in chief of the Bolivian air force has admitted. And he added: "This aid consists of cooperating with our aviators in the struggle against the guerrillas in the department of Santa Cruz."
"We were surprised," a U.S. adviser, a specialist in radio communications, told us in Santa Cruz. "The rebels possess a remarkable camouflage technique and a dispersion capacity resembling what we are running into at present in Vietnam. They have good radio equipment. We detected six points transmitting in Morse code. But when the troops tried to move toward one of these points, all six shifted at the same time, wiping out the trail ... Really they are very well trained."
The excellent preparation of the Bolivian guerrilla focal center, admitted by the U.S. and Argentine advisers, thus makes all the more interesting the affirmations of those who, even in Santa Cruz itself, appear to be in good position to know the intentions of the guerrillas.
"This zone was not chosen by accident," they say, "not only because of the terrain but especially with disengagement in mind. From Nancahuazi it is easy to link up with Bolivia's three levels -the eastern plains by way of Camiri, the valleys of Cochabamba and the Altiplano by way of the passes. For the immediate future, it is only a matter of harassing the regular forces. In the long range, if the focal center is maintained, it will perhaps be possible to form columns marching simultaneously toward the capital. This obviously involves linking up with the tin miners in the Altiplano. Some of them have already joined the underground. They talk about foreigners among the guerrillas. What difference does that make? Aren't there foreigners on the side of the Bolivian army?"
Does it make sense, this "dream" held by the leaders of the Bolivian left -- of repeating, ten years later, in this area, the exploits of the "Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos columns"? Many factors must be considered, beginning with the almost total absence of political consciousness among the peasant masses in this country. Can the fish live in such inhospitable water? The more or less underground spokesmen of the parties (all of them, however, divided into several tendencies), ranging from the Communists to the MNR (National Revolutionary Movement) of ex-President Paz Estenssoro, are not stopped by these considerations. "To defeat the guerrillas," they say, "the government will be led progressively to an operation of the Santo Domingo type."
In any case there is one point on which all the leaders and representatives of the opposition are in agreement -- the shots fired last March 23 in the wild gorges of the Nancahuazu marked the beginning of something that threatens to last for a rather long time and to compel all "shadings" of opinion to take a stand on in relation to the "Bolivian focal center," the most important perhaps of all those that have surged up in the past ten years with varying fortunes south of the Rio Grande.