Word: coupes
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...coup that fizzled
...with clandestine political work within the country, may eventually pose a forceful challenge to the military regime. In the meantime, political stability will depend on other factors. The regime has survived economically so far because of the repeated lenience of the international financial community. At the time of the coup, Bolivia's foreign debt was $1.9 billion, $170 million of which came due in December. Within 10 days a consortium of banks led by Chase Manhattan agreed to postpone the payments. Last Friday, the consortium agreed in principle to reschedule another $460 million, giving Garcia Meza additional breathing space...
...from concern about cocaine, produced in Bolivia and sold in the United States. Deep involvement of top-ranking officers in cocaine trade has been documented beyond doubt. Analysts of Bolivian polities suspect that control over this 800-million-dollar-a-year business was a central reason for the July coup...
...cocaine trade in Bolivia has boomed since the military coup of July 1980. CBS' 60 Minutes recently provided ample documentation that top-ranking members of the military are closely associated with the elite group which controls the drug traffic. Minister of Interior Colonel Luis Arce Gomez, for example, is part owner of an air freight company which makes weekly flights to an unknown location in Colombia. In February, his plane was found to be carrying 300 kilos of cocaine, but Arce avoided conviction. Arce's yearly income from cocaine was estimated at half a million...
Hernan Siles Zuazo, who won the election in June of last year, had promised to clamp down on the cocaine traders. The statement may have lacked conviction, but the military leaders were not willing to risk their 800 million per year business to find out. The subsequent coup brought to power a cocaine mafia that includes even the president Luis Garcia Meza. Informants within Bolivia report that cocaine production now has become centralized, efficient and much more tightly controlled. The losers are Indian peasants, who no longer can afford to chew coca because its price has risen astronomically. With...