Word: chaco
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When President German Busch carved Bolivia into a totalitarian state three weeks ago, he announced proudly that it was his own doing, that Rome and Berlin had not helped. Last week Bolivia announced a barter agreement with Germany. For German machinery, a 350-mile pipeline across the Gran Chaco, and an oil refinery in Paraguay, Bolivia planned to ship some $15,000,000 of goods, principally petroleum, to oil-hungry Nazis. The man who made the announcement was not mournful Dictator Busch, but his tough, roving-eyed sidekick and Minister of Mines and Petroleum, Dionisio Foianini...
Popular hero of an exhausting war, Germán Busch was born in 1904 in the hot, fertile, coffee-growing region of central Bolivia, midway between the edge of the Chaco and the rust-colored, tin-filled mountains around La Paz. His father, after stopping three arrows in an attack by savages, went to Germany, sent Germán and his mother to Trinidad. Germán went to a provincial school, entered military college...
...Under him ex-Cadet Busch rose fast, became adjutant to Kundt, then Chief of the General Staff, was aide to Ernst Roehm when that luckless Nazi spent two years in Bolivia after a quarrel with Adolf Hitler. Germán Busch was a second lieutenant of 24 when the Chaco War began, a captain at 28, major at 29, lieut. colonel before the war ended, chief of staff soon afterward. Meanwhile he married, fathered three sons, was cited for his daring raids; his rescue of a division won him Bolivia's highest military award. He joined all Bolivian military...
...lesson of the inconclusive Chaco fighting was that, where they met on equally favorable ground, Bolivia's German-trained divisions were roughly handled by Paraguay's French-trained Army. Sick of the war, Bolivians were made sicker by bad times. Bolivia holds 15% of the world's tin supply and output fell from 43,300 tons in 1929 to 25,000 in 1935. Tin makes up 70% of the value of Bolivia's exports...
...young spy named Dionisio Foianini, son of an Italian father and a Bolivian mother. He grew up in the section where Germán Busch was born, not far from most of Standard Oil's Bolivian fields. Dionisio Foianini studied pharmacy in Italy, returned to Bolivia before the Chaco War broke out, was put in charge of munitions manufacture. Then he visited Argentina on a secret mission and organized Bolivian espionage behind Paraguayan lines. Dionisio Foianini rushed to the Chaco when the war ended, persuaded Army officers that expropriating $17,000,000 worth of Standard Oil properties would...