Word: villarroel
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...power-play. It knocked the wind out of the six-month-old Government of President Enrique Hertzog. A fragile coalition of pro-mine-owner Conservatives and the Marxist Left Revolutionary Party (P.I.R.), it had held together only because of common fear that the supporters of the late Dictator-President Villarroel, who wound up his career dangling from a lamppost (TIME, July 29, 1946), might stage a comeback...
Hastily Hertzog summoned his Conservatives, told them that busting his coalition would be the best way of bringing the totalitarian followers of the late Dictator Gualberto Villarroel to power. That did the trick. He reformed his Government of national unity in time for Guachalla, again Foreign Minister, to go to Rio for Bolivia. But he still had not found a place for Arze...
Finally the whole business was settled in secret meeting by the leaders of the two parties. The deal was that the new Congress would meet this week and confirm Dr. Enrique Hertzog, 49, as successor to the late, lynched Dictator-President Gualberto Villarroel. Hertzog had beat Luis Fernando Guachalla by only 289 votes in the January elections. In return for the settlement made with Guachalla and followers all challenged Guachalla congressmen were to be seated, thus assuring the Guachallistas of at least a fair chance of controlling the new Parliament. Hertzog promised to invite his friend and rival to join...
Bolivians wanted to forget last July's bloody revolution and its lamppost lynchings. In part token, they had picked for next week's presidential elections two ultra-moderate candidates: Enrique Hertzog, 49-year-old surgeon who fought Dictator-President Villarroel and went to jail for it; and short, balding Luis Fernando Guachalla, 47, ex-Minister to Washington and friend of Cordell Hull. Both had helped run the melancholy Chaco War with Paraguay. (Last week, while the two old-line nominees campaigned in the interior, dissident laborites in La Paz put up a third candidate, General Felix Tavera...
Whoever won - Guachalla seemed to have the edge - Bolivia's new Government faced a stack of problems left by the totalitarian Villarroel regime. Living costs for the nation's 3,500,000 Indians, cholos (half breeds) and whites had zoomed 200% since 1939. Builders had never finished the highway (started with the help of U.S. funds) that would have given underfed population centers on the wind swept, 12,000-ft, altiplano food from the fertile lowlands. The $25,000,000 capital of Bolivia's RFC-like Development Corp. had been heavily tapped without bringing the country nearer...