Henderson would have none of it. The whole thing was developing too high an American profile. No military team, he said; just send one man, no more, and that should be Tope. The general did not speak Spanish, but Henderson waved that objection aside, certain that he very quickly would be on a first-name basis with Barrientos, who spoke English and was a fellow air-force officer. Tope finally convinced the ambassador to let him bring along one aide, a Puerto Rican officer fluent in Spanish, but that was all.
Henderson stressed to Tope the importance of keeping the American reaction to the insurgency "small" and assistance to the Bolivian government limited. He knew that Guevara by then had been driven out of his base encampment, and he was convinced that the situation mainly required, as he put it, "a highly trained group which will concentrate on the one operation and not fan out and look for guerrillas behind every mountain peak." Tope agreed, but the Bolivian high command did not see things exactly that way.
Tope visited Bolivia from April 18-30 and had three meetings with Barrientos, the first two including cabinet members and top military officers, the third alone with the president. In each meeting, the Bolivians made clear that they wanted high-powered, up-to-date military equipment. Given that, they could defeat the guerrillas, they maintained, despite the shortcomings in their armed forces. For one thing, better firepower would boost the morale of the armed forces, and once that happened, even marginal soldiers could prevail by "fill[ing] the air with lead," as Tope put it. The Bolivians did not want to wait for a unit to be trained. They needed a victory, and they needed one quickly. Once again, they made no secret of their fear that they might soon face a hydra-headed revolution creating havoc throughout the country. As Tope reported, they expressed "strong concern over the political and psychological impact of recent army reverses on the rest of the country, particularly on other dissident groups who they feel are just waiting to strike."
But "unfortunately, all of their quick fixes are unsound," Tope said, and he told them so. Still, before the crisis ended, the United States might have to reinforce that message with "some very firm approaches," he reported, using all of the "leverage" it had. Meanwhile, he pointed out to the Bolivians that "an untrained conscript will drop a modern weapon just as quickly as he will a Mauser," and he underscored the point that the Viet Cong supplied themselves largely by picking up U.S. equipment dropped by South Vietnamese soldiers.
The Green Berets
