BOLIVIA: Death at the Palace

Tyranny was repaid with death. At the end of 96 hours of bloody fighting, the body of President Gualberto Villarroel last week hung from a “lamp post in La Paz’s handsome Plaza Murillo. His bemedaled official photograph decorated the sheet that draped his naked body, and one of his military boots hung from under his arm.

Striking students and teachers had sparked the revolution four days before. Around the grey stone presidential palace (which houses the best bowling alley in Bolivia) they had stormed and shouted. As the President spoke, gunfire rattled. The shots missed the President, hit his aides. Then Government police and soldiery moved in. When they were through, the gutters ran red.

But public resentment ran higher than ever. The Workers’ Federation called a general strike. The students broke into an arsenal. Up & down La Paz’s hilly, cobblestoned streets they fought, establishing resistance points behind thick adobe walls. Sharpshooters who peppered the palace cut off Villarroel’s escape. On Sunday, the revolutionists broke in. A few minutes later Villarroel, an Army major and Chaco war veteran, lay dead. His dictatorial regime, which began with a military coup in December 1943, had passed into Bolivia’s troubled history.

This week Bolivia had a civilian government. A junta headed by Supreme Court dean Nestor Guillen took over provisionally. The vicious military clique that had given Bolivia its fascist label faded, momentarily at least, into the background.

Whoever ruled faced real problems. Bolivia’s once-rich tin mines now produced only medium-grade ores. The mass of the coca-chewing Indian population was illiterate, and Bolivia’s leaders had so far shown neither the vision nor energy to transform them into efficient producers and prospective consumers. One thin ray of hope: a U.S.-financed highway that would join the dry, food-scarce plateau with the verdant eastern plains, perhaps integrate the country’s economy.