Word: junta
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Said MacArthur: "The history of the world shows that republics and democracies have generally lost their liberties by way of passing from civilian to a quasimilitary status. Nothing is more conducive to arbitrary rule than the military junta. It would be a tragic development indeed if this generation was forced to look to the rigidity of military dominance and discipline to redeem it from the tragic failure of a civilian administration. It might well destroy our historic and wise concept which holds to the supremacy of the civil power...
Victor Paz Estenssoro, 44, last week returned to Bolivia (after six years in Argentina) to take over the presidency he had won from exile in last year's election, then lost to a military junta, and finally won back when the junta was toppled in the Holy Week revolution, Bolivia's 179th since 1825. Shouting fanatics of his Movement of National Revolution party plodded seven miles uphill to El Alto airport to give Paz a delirious welcome...
...barricades, passed out guns. Seizing La Paz's most powerful radio station, they fooled at least part of the populace by announcing a "total and bloodless victory." But only part of the army joined them; at the last minute, top commanders swung their forces behind the junta government of General Hugo Ballivián. Bringing reinforcements from outlying towns, the government counterattacked with planes, artillery and mortars. Early next day, the M.N.R.'s top army supporter, General Antonio Seleme, thought the rebel cause lost and took refuge in the Chilean embassy...
Thus M.N.R. wrested control of the country from the military junta which had annulled the election victory won last year by the M.N.R. leader, Victor Paz Estenssoro, who campaigned from exile. In Buenos Aires, 1,400 miles to the southeast, Paz Estenssoro made ready to fly to La Paz this week. A bespectacled, soft-spoken onetime economics professor, Paz has been called everything from "the No. 1 Nazi of the Americas" to "a Communist of the right." Now he says mildly that his first steps in power will be to balance Bolivia's budget and get a higher price...
Recently the junta's Seguridad National (national police), making little progress in its bumbling search for the underground's top leaders, began rounding up some of the small fry. Evelyn, who was on the point of quitting her job to marry an American oilman, came under surveillance. In two months her widowed mother's house was searched twelve times by flying squads (and burglarized twice by thieves obviously untroubled by Seguridad patrolling). One day a friend saw a station wagon and a group of small, shabby men with blank expressions and Cuban heels outside Evelyn...