They also looked for a suitable place to train, choosing a tiny settlement called La Esperanza, a town with "15 or 20 families," according to Shelton's deputy, Captain Edmond L. Fricke, with a few dirt streets over which cowhands occasionally drove thundering herds of cattle that raised huge clouds of dust. La Esperanza seemed to have been made for a western movie. "Close your eyes," Fricke said, "and think of Tombstone."
The Green Berets set themselves up outside of town at an abandoned sugar plantation and mill, once the recipient of an ill-considered Alliance for Progress loan, as one AID official stated frankly. It lay approximately 45 miles north of Santa Cruz, the region's principal center, itself a town of dirt roads and adobe buildings about 55 miles from the scene of the guerrillas' northernmost operation. That was as close as Guevara and the Green Berets would ever be to one another, roughly 100 miles.
On April 29, Shelton and his team of 16 trainers, all Spanish speakers, flew into Santa Cruz aboard two large C-130 cargo planes, also loaded with food and supplies. A convoy of Bolivian Army trucks hauled everything, men and materials, to La Esperanza. 19 On May 8, the Green Berets began training the men of the Second Ranger Battalion.
The course, distressingly slow in the view of the Bolivian government, lasted until September 19. The Bolivians learned how to march, shoot, move at night, detect booby traps, fight hand to hand, go through barbed wire, and operate effectively as units: platoons, companies, and battalion. They underwent physical training, practiced firing at silhouettes, learned how to avoid ambushes, and were taught how to build latrines. They were very proud of the latter and preferred to use the bushes rather than soil them.
AID happened to be assisting the Bolivians in building a road near the camp, and the American in charge of it, Harry Singh, put his crew and machinery at the service of the Green Berets. His bulldozers helped immeasurably in building a firing range and in cutting out a road from the camp to the larger road Singh was working on, which provided a connection to the outside world.
In the 1960s, doing good works or "civic action" was part of American counterinsurgency strategy. No one was better at it than Shelton and no recipients more appreciative than the rural Bolivians around him. His new friend Singh, with his construction capability, helped him greatly. As soon as Shelton's team had the camp at La Esperanza organized, they began building a school for the community, which they had finished by the time the rangers graduated in late September.
Shelton seems to have a populist streak, perhaps a result of his rural southern background, which served him well in Bolivia. He also knew when he came to Bolivia that he would retire when the assignment ended, and that gave him a dashing kind of freedom from the caution, especially regarding superiors, that constrains many soldiers and diplomats who still anticipate advancement. In addition, although Shelton was only a major, Porter knew who he was, respected him, and at least once had an extended interview with him in Panama about the team in Bolivia. Such was the seriousness with which Southern Command viewed the Guevara insurgency.
On paper, Shelton reported to the MILGP representative in Cocha-bamba, Lieutenant Colonel Joseph P. Rice, who in turn reported to the commander of the advisory group in La Paz and so to Panama. Shelton, in fact, almost never saw Rice, and the last time he did, Porter was talking to the battalion. Shelton recalls that Rice believed for some reason that the translation of the remarks into Spanish was not being done properly, whereupon Shelton told him that they could not both run the battalion. "When you know you're going to retire you can be pretty abrupt," Shelton said, looking back on the event. It was the last time he saw or heard from Rice. He also had almost no dealings with Colonel Horras, the advisory-group commander in La Paz.
