Word: paz
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...morning of July 17, 1980, reports arrived in La Paz, Bolivia that a military uprising had taken place in Trinidad, a departmental capital east of La Paz. The military in Trinidad demanded that the Armed Forces take charge of the government. Bolivia's National Committee for the Defense of Democracy (CONADE) called an emergency meeting in La Paz and ordered a general strike and road blockades in protest. At noon, before that meeting had ended, ambulances arrived at the meeting place and heavily armed paramilitary personnel jumped out, broke in, and arrested everyone present. Several, most notably Marcelo Quiroga Santa...
That afternoon the Armed Forces occupied the city of La Paz, closed the University and took numerous political prisoners; the count soon reached 2000. A few hours later the Constitutional president, Lydia Gueiler, abandoned the government and General Luis Garcia Meza, commander of the Army, assumed the Presidency...
...next morning in Curawara, the central hamlet of the valley. The approximately 5000 campesinos of this region speak Aymara, an Indian language, as a first language. They save a portion of their agricultural produce for their own consumption and carry the rest to Viloco and to La Paz for sale in the urban markets...
...meeting in Curawara, a resistance committee for the valley was formed and the first decision made was that no agricultural produce would leave for La Paz, in keeping with the strike and blockades called by CONADE. They also decided to suspend sports events and observance of religious holidays that would detract from the efforts at hand. Then the assembly addressed the question of security. The campesinos were assigned to guard the lower valley, the only alternative entrance to Viloco. Each community was responsible for providing 15 men for a 24 hour shift. Women stepped forward and asked what they could...
...Since international journalists were expelled from the country in mid-August and national newspapers censored documentation of atrocities committed in these first weeks has rarely reached the international press. Excerpts from a letter by two miners' wives from Caracoles, a mining center near Viloco, to the archbishop of La Paz describe the coup's aftermath...