Reply #9: I'm sure you're very well aware the U.S. has been bullying, intimidating Bolivia, as well as all the

[Judi Lynn]

others, a long, LONG time. The almost recent attachment to telling them they can't grow their ancient plant, coca, is relatively new, happening long after certain U.S. Presidents brought hell to that country and dumped it out upon them.
(Not the least was the assault on Bolivia's poor through a _{Bush the Elder} connected company, the Bechtel Company and its subsidiary which attempted to steal the very water from them, including the water in streams, rivers, lakes, and even trying to charge the peasants for trying to gather rainwater in barrels!)

BEFORE any of this happened, they were hard at work in other ways:

COLONEL HUGO BANZER
President of Bolivia

In 1970, in Bolivia, when then-President Juan Jose Torres nationalized Gulf Oil properties and tin mines owned by US interests, and tried to establish friendly relations with Cuba and the Soviet Union, he was playing with fire. The coup to overthrow Torres, led by US-trained officer and Gulf Oil beneficiary Hugo Banzer, had direct support from Washington. When Banzer's forces had a breakdown in radio communications, US Air Force radio was placed at their disposal. Once in power, Banzer began a reign of terror. Schools were shut down as hotbeds of political subversive activity. Within two years, 2,000 people were arrested and tortured without trial. As in Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil, the native Indians were ordered off their land and deprived of tribal identity. Tens-of-thousands of white South Africans were enticed to immigrate with promises of the land stolen from the Indians, with a goal of creating a white Bolivia. When Catholic clergy tried to aid the Indians, the regime, with CIA help, launched terrorist attacks against them, and this "Banzer Plan" became a model for similar anti-Catholic actions throughout Latin America.
(snip/)

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/dictators.html



Hugo Banzer embracing another right-wing beloved puppet, bloody butcher Augusto Pinochet.