American officials trekked repeatedly to the Barrientos residence to hear the same message: "Give us the supplies we have asked for." But the Americans would not. They continued to believe most of the requests were simply a ploy by the Bolivian armed forces, using the insurgency to get exciting new military gadgetry. In addition, they still believed that with limited assistance the Bolivians could handle the guerrillas; what was more, they believed that the Bolivians knew they could. Finally, they had been after the Bolivians for several years to permit a Green Beret team to come there to help develop a really crack ranger battalion. The Bolivians had resisted, probably because with the country's fragile political system, the unit could quickly become a dangerous political force. When the Green Berets finally did come and develop a new ranger battalion, its recruits were enlisted only for the duration of the crisis; the Bolivian government disbanded them the year after Guevara's death.
The day after the ambush, Barrientos, again calling in U.S. officials, estimated guerrilla strength at 150, adding that one 45-man army unit seemed to be surrounded and in danger of being cut off, a complete fantasy. Meanwhile, troop strength in and around Camiri had been bolstered to a total of 300 men. The decision to call up 1,500 reservists, however, was reversed, despite the fact that the Bolivian Army had a dearth of experienced soldiers. It consisted of 6,200 brand-new conscripts supplemented by only 1,500 men who had served for more than a year.
William Broderick, deputy director of the State Department's Office of Bolivia/Chile Affairs, visited La Paz in March 1967 and remembers vividly one of the meetings with Barrientos, a breakfast featuring "cold fried eggs and misinformation." The president was accompanied by his top military officer, General Ovando, plus a young soldier who told "a fantastic story" about being captured by the guerrillas and held for a few hours after several hundred guerrillas surrounded and captured his unit. They had special pills to satisfy hunger and doctors and nurses to care for anyone who was injured. "We heard the story," Broderick said, and then "the generals looked at us and we looked at each other and the generals said, 'Well, what do you think?' We tried to keep from laughing.
Broderick pointed out later that Washington had provided "some kind of CIA [financial] assistance to Bolivia in periods there," including the Paz Estenssoro presidency, when Barrientos was vice president. These payments, totally separate from AID's budgetary support, possibly were in Barrientos's mind during those meetings in March 1967, for it was in the course of one of these that he proposed something new: direct budgetary assistance for the armed forces in addition to the items on the "Santa Claus list." The request was "distasteful" to Barrientos, Henderson believed, saying that he beat about the bush for nearly an hour, talking about the latest rumors, reports, and speculations about the guerrillas, before broaching it.
For his pains, the president received an "educational talk" from Henderson, who saw the request as "an emotional-political appeal for more U.S. grant aid in unspecified amounts to keep his military happy." The Bolivian Ministry of Defense had wasted resources already available to it, Henderson told him. For example, after two years of urging, it still replaced most of its army every year, losing its training investment, while ignoring a U.S. military study on money-saving reforms. He reminded the president that "extraordinary efforts" had been made to provide $1 million in U.S. funds to control subversion in the mining district, but the Bolivian government's performance fell "considerably short of its commitments and of reasonable expectations." Barrientos should see if he could get support from neighboring countries, the ambassador suggested, meaning surely financial support or materiel, not military intervention.
But this was more than just an emergency, Barrientos stressed; it was a conflict in which Bolivia was "helping to fight for the U.S." He made his case vigorously, but the whole conversation, Henderson thought, was a humiliation for him. Still, Barrientos preferred the humiliation to the consequences of not "sweetenfing] the armed forces budget to their taste." Furthermore, he seemed to be suffering "some genuine anguish over the sad spectacle" of his military's performance against the guerrillas. In reporting this conversation to the State Department, Henderson repeated an earlier warning that Barrientos might attempt to end-run the U.S. embassy in La Paz and turn directly to "the lobbying talent of Ambassador Sanjines in Washington," something Henderson worried about constantly during the guerrilla episode.
Throughout the guerrilla era, and at other times as well, Henderson followed a nannyish mode of diplomacy common among American ambassadors in much of the Third World, certainly in Latin America, during the Cold War years. One key official concerned with Bolivian affairs said of him, "He was always giving the Bolivians lectures about what they should do and what they shouldn't do ... and since we were really their lifeline they couldn't protest. But it all seemed to me to be completely unnecessary. I don't think he endeared himself to any Bolivians." But the same official characterized the Bolivian response to the guerrilla crisis as "Gee, this is another way we can get more money out of the United States. Here we've got Che Guevara in our country, that ought to be worth something." Most official Americans involved believed this to some degree about the Bolivians, which helps explain Henderson's attitude.
Not the Sierra Maestra
