Wednesday, June 2, 2010

US Gov't Sponsored Bolivian Coup


This is fun. In an exclusive report, digital emunction digs out evidence to prove that the US gunded the Banzer coup in 1971. Here's how the note starts:
exclusive: the u.s. paid money to support hugo banzer's 1971 coup in bolivia

For nearly four decades, there’s been an open ques­tion about the 1971 coup that brought dic­ta­tor Hugo Banzer Suárez to power in Bolivia: was the U.S. gov­ern­ment involved? Thanks to newly declas­si­fied doc­u­ments, we now have an answer.

Here's a quick second excerpt

....the State Depart­ment denied it imme­di­ately, assert­ing unequiv­o­cally that the U.S. played no part in the over­throw of Torres.

A col­lec­tion of declas­si­fied doc­u­ments recently released* by the same State Depart­ment proves that this denial was not only incor­rect, but a lie: the Nixon Admin­is­tra­tion, acting with the full knowl­edge of the State Depart­ment, autho­rized nearly half a mil­lion dollars—”coup money,” accord­ing to the ambas­sador in La Paz—for the politi­cians and mil­i­tary offi­cers plot­ting against Torres. The CIA handed at least some of this money over to the coup’s lead­ers in the days lead­ing up to Banzer’s seizure of power.


Now go read it all for yourself. A good job of reporting. My thanks to reader AT for the headsup.

UPDATE:
After a deserved handslap and prompt, I've just noticed that Structurally Maladjusted ran with this story in its weekend update days ago. Moral of the story; if you want to be current with LatAm affairs, read SM first and IKN 2nd.