Hugo Banzer

Hugo Banzer Suárez (Concepción; May 10, 1926-Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia; May 5, 2002) was a Bolivian dictator, military man and president in two periods: 1971- 1978, through a coup d'état, and 1997-2001, through elections.

Banzer came to power through a coup d'état against President Juan José Torres and repressed union leaders, clerics, indigenous people and students during his dictatorship between 1971 and 1978. Several thousand Bolivians were forced to seek asylum in countries foreigners, arrested, tortured or murdered during this period, known as "the Banzerato".

After Banzer's removal through a coup d'état led by Juan Pereda, he remained an influential figure in Bolivian politics and would run for president through the ballot box on several occasions, eventually succeeding. in 1997 by a narrow majority of 22.26% of the popular vote. During Banzer's constitutional term, he expanded presidential term limits from four to five years and presided over the Cochabamba Water War, declaring a state of siege in 2000 that suspended several civil liberties and sparked violent clashes between protesters and law enforcement. After being diagnosed with lung cancer, Banzer resigned in 2001 and was succeeded by Vice President Jorge Quiroga.

Origins

Hugo Banzer was born on May 10, 1926 on the El Junquillo hacienda, belonging to the municipality of Concepción in the province of Ñuflo de Chávez in the department of Santa Cruz. He was the son of César Banzer Aliaga and María Luisa Suárez Justiniano, and grandson of Georg Banzer, a German emigrant from Osnabrück.

Before he was ten years old, his mother took him to Santa Cruz de la Sierra in search of better opportunities. Thus he began his primary school studies in 1933, at the Seminary School founded by the Santa Cruz bishop José Santistevan. He continued high school at Florida National College.

In 1941, he applied for a military career in the city of La Paz, entering that same year at the Army Military College (COLMIL), graduating with the rank of second lieutenant in 1947. During his stay at that institution, Banzer He stood out for being one of the best cadets in terms of studies.

During his military career, Hugo Banzer Suárez received training in different countries, such as Fort Knox, in the United States, and at the School of the Americas in Panama, an institution where police and military personnel from all over South America and Central America also passed. including some of special relevance for their crimes against humanity such as Manuel Contreras, Manuel Antonio Noriega, Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri or Roberto Eduardo Viola.

Meeting Germán Busch and Hugo Banzer

Germán Busch, on one of his horseback riding visits to his father, met a ten-year-old boy, Hugo. For him, the impression of conversing, even briefly, with the legendary war hero, would mark him for the military vocation. The child's charm was such that Busch recommended to his father, César Banzer, former sub-prefect of the province, that when the time came he send his son Hugo Banzer to the Military College, which he would endorse. During the military government of General René Barrientos He held the position of Minister of Education.

First government (1971-1978)

In 1971, the extreme left dictatorship of General Juan José Torres, hostile to conservative society, was surprised in January, when revolutionary uprisings occurred in the cities of Santa Cruz de la Sierra and Cochabamba under the name of Banzer., who, under pressure from the revolutionaries, joined the uprisings, but was instantly arrested and discharged, going into exile in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The Torres Government suffered days of effervescence among the radical population, even reaching sectors of the left. On May 1, the COB (Central Obrera Boliviana) broke away from the Government, turning its back on President Torres.

To return, Banzer requested financial aid to reward the commanders of the main military regiments, the police and the civic committees of Santa Cruz, Beni, Pando and Tarija. Months later, from Argentina, Banzer returned to Bolivia heading to Santa Cruz de la Sierra, to rest in the house of Dionisio Foianini, accompanied by Colonel Miguel Ayoroa; In the early morning of August 19, they were surprised by people who had the objective of taking them prisoner, they took Col. Banzer, transferring him to a YPFB residence in Las Plamas, and then he was flown to the city of La Paz, would be held at the police headquarters. That same day, after the apprehension of Banzer Suárez, Colonel Andrés Sélich Chop, entered and militarily occupied the capital of Santa Cruz, supported by supporters of Banzer, the same thing later happening in the capital of the department of Cochabamba.

On August 21, several commands of the Military Forces joined the coup d'état, and occupied the city of La Paz, thus beginning the bloody clashes. Then the political movements of the FSB (Bolivian Socialist Falange) and then some commandos of the MNR (Revolutionary Nationalist Movement) also joined forces, who, being enemies, managed to agree to support the coup. The coup also had popular support from the conservative section.

After the command of the Tarapacá Regiment made the decision that the tanks access the city, the Government of General Torres was sealed, who resigned from the presidency, fleeing the Government Palace at night towards an embassy, this defined to which Col. Banzer, imprisoned in the Carabineros barracks in La Paz, be transferred to the Government Palace. Banzer tried to leave the Palace to go to some means that would take him to Buenos Aires, but, through the head of Communications of the Palace, he learned of the radiograms of the military units, who informed him that they were satisfied with Banzer assuming the presidency..

On the afternoon of August 21, Colonel Hugo Banzer Suárez assumed the presidency, taking the oath in the Government Palace, to the sound of acclamations that said he was the only patriotic champion capable of saving Bolivia, the next day presented to his cabinet.

After a short time, he outlawed political parties, including their allies. However, he had direct support from the United States because of his declared anti-communism. He was a dictator for seven years, leaving countless complaints of attacks against human rights. His government perpetrated very notorious acts of corruption.

His government is usually involved in Plan Cóndor, an anti-communist repression operation carried out in the second half of the 20th century by the military governments of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile and Bolivia, up to the Peru of Francisco Morales. in the 1970s. According to some reports, during this period, Bolivia mainly supplied Chile and Argentina (and vice versa) with information about the movement of those who were then called 'subversives' and that they were within the territory of these countries.

According to statements given in November 1974, Gen. Banzer had planned to end his government in August 1980, but he had to advance his plans, he claimed, because the political situation had already deteriorated. He had stabilized enough to allow the participation of various parties in democracy, but also because of the fatigue he felt after a hectic life full of responsibilities. In this sense, the General assured:

The truth is he was physically exhausted. All the time I was running the presidency, I came to the palace at seven in the morning, and it was weird the day I could go home at eight o'clock. When traveling it was not to do spectacular media tours abroad, but generally to visit garrisons or districts away from the territory. Not to receive applause, to speak out and to urinate me from myture and serpentines, but to solve some particular problem. I do not boast of proceeding like this, because I simply fulfilled my duty as president as I had done before at the barracks.

Consequently, on November 2, 1977, Hugo Banzer issued a decree calling for presidential and legislative elections for July 9 of the following year.. To this end, he decreed a partial amnesty for the exiles before Christmas 1977 , which generated discontent among the president's adversaries for some weeks. In the mining district of Catavi, four mothers with their children began a hunger strike. The press and politicians tried to give a political reason to the protest, but General Banzer stated otherwise:

The strike of the four women of mining workers came to ask for the restitution of her husbands to work, the same as were caught stealing company mineral. It was an economic-social and non-political fact, skillfully politicized by extremist agitators, who seconded women and extended their demands, not only the replenishment to work, but also the unrestricted amnesty.

Little by little, socialist and social democratic groups took advantage of the discontent to join in little by little, extending the protests until January. Due to the growing hunger strikes and understanding that he could not act with brutality, General Banzer expanded the amnesty to make it total, which aroused the discontent of the Armed Forces, which expected more intransigence from the president on this matter.

For the elections, the Bolivian Armed Forces proposed to General Banzer three names of a possible candidate: General Juan Pereda Asbún, General Juan Lechín Suárez (brother of Juan Lechín Oquendo, Trotskyist union leader) and the Cnl. Alberto Natusch Busch. The last two gave up the possibility and only the first remained; Banzer accepted the decision of the Armed Forces.

After the elections of July 9, 1978, Juan Pereda Asbún was the winner, but electoral fraud was evident with the complicity of the Armed Forces and against the will of General Banzer. Given this, General Pereda carried out a coup d'état against Banzer, who had been left alone and without the support of even the Army; He had to go into exile to Argentina.

Trial of responsibilities and political participation (1978-1997)

The National Congress of Bolivia attempted to prosecute Banzer for crimes against humanity during his dictatorship; but the trial of responsibilities did not take place. One of the main promoters of the trial, Marcelo Quiroga Santa Cruz, was murdered during the coup d'état by Luis García Meza in 1980, who was later tried and sentenced to prison. He, already in prison, declared that those who murdered Quiroga Santa Cruz were paramilitaries who received orders from Banzer.

In 1979 Hugo Banzer Suárez founded his own right-wing party, Acción Democrástica Nacionalista-ADN, where Alfredo Arce Carpio served as support. With this party he participated in the subsequent national elections in 1979 and 1980: on June 29, 1980 he came third, very far from the first two who fought in Congress for the Presidency, Hernán Siles Zuazo, who would be elected President, and Víctor Paz Estenssoro.. In the general elections of July 14, 1985, after the failure of the leftist Popular and Democratic Unity (UDP) of Siles Zuazo, the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement of Víctor Paz Estenssoro won the vote by a very narrow margin, who was elected in Congress. with the votes of the center-left MIR, led by Jaime Paz Zamora. Once in the Presidency, Paz Estenssoro saw that he had to make an agreement with Banzer if he wanted to have room for maneuver to apply his shock measures to stop inflation. In the so-called Pact for Democracy, Banzer's party assumed control of both chambers of Congress in exchange for this party's congressional support for the executive's measures.

In the 1989 elections he obtained the second largest vote and allied himself with the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR) to be part of the Government, this time giving his votes for the third most voted candidate, Jaime Paz Zamora, a party founded in 1971 precisely to combat the Banzer dictatorship.

Second government (1997-2001)

In 1993 he ran again for presidential elections, this time as a candidate for the Patriotic Agreement, his party's alliance with the MIR of Paz Zamora, obtaining second place behind Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, candidate of the MNR, who was elected. in Congress

After the government of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada (1993-1997), Banzer stood once again in the elections, winning them and thus achieving the presidency in 1997 through constitutional means, together with Jorge Quiroga. In his second term as president, Hugo Banzer tried to match his predecessor and continued some policies.

The government's main focus moving forward was the project called “coca zero.” The goal was to eradicate the use of the coca leaf to make cocaine base paste and drug trafficking. This operation had the support of the United States Government, which caused large mobilizations, road blockades and marches, many of them led by the then deputy Evo Morales, leader of the Chapare coca leaf producers' unions.

On April 8, 2000, a state of siege was decreed, with the objective of stopping the wave of social protests against the privatization of drinking water and sewage services in the city of Cochabamba in the so-called Water War, which later It was reinforced by protests in the highlands led by the indigenous leader Felipe Quispe, the Mallku.

During his term, it became public that he suffered from cancer, which forced Banzer to resign from the presidency of the Republic for health reasons in 2001, leaving the position to his vice president Jorge Quiroga Ramírez. He died on Sunday, May 5, 2002, a few months after resigning from the presidency of Bolivia, in the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra at the age of 75.