Word: melgarejo
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...back in 1868, so the story goes, Queen Victoria settled the Bolivia problem in her own imperious way. General Mariano Melgarejo, the Bolivian dictator of the day, had urgently invited the British Minister to attend a reception in honor of the general's new mistress. When the diplomat frostily declined, the affronted dictator had him tied aboard a donkey, facing aft, and trotted him three times around the main square of La Paz. The minister fled home and told Queen Victoria of the outrage. "Where is Bolivia?" the Queen demanded. A map was brought and the Queen was tactfully...
...British-Bolivian relations have not always struck so resonant a note. In the 1860s, the Bolivian dictator Mariano Melgarejo tied the British minister on to a burro, face tailward, rode him three times around La Paz's principal plaza because he had slighted the dictator's mistress. Queen Victoria, on being told that British naval guns could never reach landlocked Bolivia, seized a pen, crossed the country off the map, saying: "Bolivia no longer exists...
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