On their side, the Americans, especially Ambassador Henderson, remained openly skeptical throughout the insurgency that the Bolivians needed anything like the armament they requested, including high-performance aircraft and napalm. Furthermore, it quickly seemed clear to them that Barrientos's top military commanders were putting him under enormous pressure to use the emergency to upgrade their equipment. As the weeks rolled by and the rebellion persisted, however, the Bolivian president and his high command really seem to have doubted their ability to control the problem without significant help.
The first appeal to the Americans was limited, but that approach lasted for less than a day. With the defection of the two guerrillas on March 15, Barrientos called Henderson at once, who went to the presidential residence with his deputy and military attache. There, the president and his aides relayed the prisoners' description of the guerrilla band, which Barrientos assumed was engaged mainly in a feint to embroil his armed forces in a debilitating struggle in remote, difficult terrain, while urban guerrillas struck in the cities and the mines. While this was certainly a reasonable assumption, it nevertheless was quite wrong. Guevara had nothing close to the resources to carry out such a plan, and the orthodox Communist Party, whose cooperation might have made a scheme like that feasible, had broken with him several months earlier.
Barrientos first made relatively modest requests. He asked Henderson to warn the governments of Paraguay and Argentina of the danger, to provide communications gear for his armed forces, and to supply equipment capable of locating guerrilla radio transmitters. Meanwhile, despite a crippling inability to communicate, the army nevertheless continued cautious probing in the jungle, reporting that two of its squads were trailing a half day behind elements of the guerrilla band. Henderson took the whole story "with some reserve," as he told Washington, but still he agreed to Barrientos's requests. Regarding the radio-locator equipment, he decided to search locally before "calling for further USG [U.S. government] help," undoubtedly looking among the resources of the U.S. MILGP and the CIA station.
But before that day ended, Barrientos's modest requests proved to be the beginning of an avalanche. That evening, he told Henderson that Bolivia needed financial support. Although the embassy still called the group in the wilderness "alleged guerrillas," Bolivian officials expressed no doubts about them, putting their number at 150 to 200 men. But despite the Bolivians' concern, Henderson remained the skeptic. The Bolivians had produced no evidence that a threat existed, he said, and even if it did, Bolivian armed forces as then constituted should have been able to handle it. He relented only to the degree of saying rather bureaucratically that if the Bolivians would "specify and justify their requirements in writing" the U.S. government would give them "further consideration." Cold comfort, but it did not cool Barrientos's determination to get U.S. aid.
The next evening, Barrientos called Henderson to his residence twice. During the course of these sessions, he revealed with startling frankness that he really viewed the guerrilla problem less in terms of jungle warfare than of political infighting, especially with unhappy generals. Surprisingly, he estimated the guerrilla strength at no more than 16 but said that his armed forces were under severe budget restraints; he hoped that U.S. contributions might ease the pinch. Henderson then received a list signed by the minister of defense that called for an enormous amount "of soft and hard goods to clothe and maintain 1,500 additional reservists . . . and arm [a] sizeable force for extended combat operations." The list included ammunition for 90 days for nine types of weapons from M-l rifles to 75-millimeter howitzers, 400 parachutes, 100 radios, 10 weapons carriers, and 20 jeeps, among other items.
Henderson promised only that his military advisers would study the request, but his message about the incident to the State Department reveals a great deal about the situation in Bolivia, about Henderson himself, and about U.S. relations with client states in that era. Henderson then sent the list to Washington three days later in the diplomatic pouch, the slowest possible way. But the Bolivians had no intention of letting things end there. If Henderson's military advisers were studying their requests, then the Bolivians would turn their persuasive abilities on the advisers; thus, the advisers, too, were called in repeatedly to meet with the Bolivian commanders, and they, too, told the Bolivians to "submit requirements in writing." One of the Bolivian requests was to use T-28 aircraft borrowed from the United States and several months overdue for return, plus a supply of antipersonnel bombs. The Bolivian focus on the advisers did not mean Henderson was forgotten by any means, nor for that matter was his deputy, John W. Fisher, who unluckily caught a call from Barrientos once when Henderson was absent. An adamant Barrientos warned sternly of Bolivia's needs. He had visited the guerrilla area and found the situation far worse than he had expected. He did not elaborate except to say there were many more guerrillas than the 16 he estimated originally. The government planned to send 300 troops to the region as soon as possible, he said, and asked in a "peremptory" way whether or not the U.S. government would provide the requested items. Fisher temporized, saying his government was studying the request, needed approvals, these things take time, and so on. Barrientos replied simply that every minute counted.
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