Bolivia: Ex-President Banzer Dead at 75 Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit [See link at the end to NarcoNews interview on the cancer-ridden Banzer's real history with regard to the international drug trade.--NY Transfer] source - JosePertierra@aol.com Associated Press - May 5, 2002 Former Bolivian Leader Banzer Dies by Vanessa Arrington LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) - Former President Hugo Banzer, a one-time dictator who led Bolivia to democracy and helped wipe out cocaine production, died of a heart attack Sunday. He was 75. The two-time president, who was forced by cancer to resign from office last August, is likely to be remembered both fondly and with distaste. Supporters say he did more to strengthen Bolivian democracy than any of his predecessors and his efforts to sharply reducing coca cultivation won him praise in Washington. Critics, however, contend the former dictator never lost his authoritarian streak, continuing to abuse human rights and failing to help the Andean nation's poor, Indian majority even as an elected leader. ``Hugo Banzer was the leader of the Nationalist Democratic Action party, but he ended up being much more than that,'' a teary-eyed Jorge Quiroga, Bolivia's president, said. ``He ended up being an example for all Bolivians, and for democracy in all of the country.'' Quiroga's government declared 30 days of mourning, and ordered the city of Santa Cruz, Banzer's home, to shut down for his funeral Monday. A political survivor, the U.S.-trained soldier overcame 13 coup attempts while he was dictator from 1971-78, leading a regime accused of widespread human rights abuses. After the era of Latin American dictatorships ended, he reinvented himself as a democrat, running in every election in the 1980s and 1990s, before finally winning the presidency in 1997. Banzer died Sunday morning surrounded by his family in Santa Cruz, a tropical city in eastern Bolivia, after waking up in pain around midnight, said his doctor, Freddy Terrazas. A cigarette smoker, Banzer was diagnosed in July 2001 by doctors at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington with lung cancer that had spread to his liver. He underwent chemotherapy treatments in Washington. The cancer forced him to resign as president on Aug. 6, 2001, a year before his term ended. In an emotional ceremony, Banzer handed over the presidential medallion and sash to Quiroga, then vice president, on Bolivia's Independence Day. ``If you note some emotion in me, it is not from weakness nor fear of anything,'' Banzer had said, his hands shaking and voice quivering, ``but rather because of the immense love I have for Bolivia.'' In February, doctors announced that the cancer had spread to his brain and throughout his body. Banzer was born May 10, 1926, in Concepcion, a sleepy ranching town in Santa Cruz province. Bound for a career in the military, he went to the Bolivian Army Military High School in La Paz, graduating as a cavalry lieutenant. His lengthy relationship with the United States began when he was sent to the U.S. Army's School of the Americas in Panama. He received more U.S. training at Fort Hood, Texas, in 1960. After commanding the 4th Cavalry Regiment in Bolivia for several years he was sent to Washington as a military attache. In 1964, Banzer was appointed minister of education and in 1969, he became director of the military academy, a prestigious post he held until dismissed in January 1971 by leftist president, Gen. Juan Jose Torres. The conservative Banzer began to rally other officers against Torres, seizing the La Paz military headquarters in a failed coup that got him exiled to Argentina. In August 1971, Banzer sneaked back into Bolivia to lead a coup that ousted Torres, naming himself president. Banzer's military rule ushered in violent repression of opponents. Censors clamped down on the media, and in 1974 Banzer prohibited all political activity. Widely accepted figures say that during Banzer's 1971-78 tenure, 19,000 people sought asylum in foreign countries, 15,000 were arrested and at least 200 were killed for political reasons. Banzer was overthrown in 1978, but he helped establish his democratic credentials in 1985 when he placed first in a presidential election but with less than 50 percent. Rather than seize office, he stepped aside and allowed Congress to constitutionally elect Victor Paz Estenssoro as president. In 1997, Banzer came in first again, and this time was democratically voted into the presidency by Congress. Though many praised Banzer for embracing democracy in his second term as president, his past still haunted him. Evidence presented in 1999 linked his previous regime to the notorious Plan Condor, which allegedly involved joint operations among South American military dictatorships in the 1970s aimed at kidnapping, torturing and assassinating leftists and dissidents in Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay. Under Banzer's U.S.-backed Dignity Plan, the army in recent years wiped out 106,000 acres of coca in the Chapare, once one of the world's largest illegal coca-growing areas. His commitment to taking Bolivia out of the South American cocaine-circuit by 2002 won him unwavering support from some - particularly the U.S. government - but others criticized the plan for damaging the economy and leading to human rights abuses. Copyright, 2002. The Associated Press. All rights reserved. * source - wnu@igc.org Weekly News Update on the Americas #640 - 5/5/02 Bolivian ex-president and former dictator Hugo Banzer Suarez died at 5:30am on May 5 at his mansion in the eastern Bolivian city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra. He was 75 years old. A graduate of the US Army School of the Americas (SOA), he seized power in a 1971 coup and remained dictator until 1978; his rule was notorious for severe repression against opponents. Banzer was also known for having helped to shelter Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie in Bolivia following World War II. In 1997 Banzer returned to power as Bolivia's constitutionally elected president. He was diagnosed with terminal lung and liver cancer last July and he handed the presidency over to Vice President Jorge Quiroga on Aug. 6, one year short of completing his five-year term. The Bolivian government declared 30 days of official mourning for Banzer, and residents of the department of Santa Cruz will have a day off for his funeral on May 6. [CNN en Espanol 5/5/02 from Reuters; info from SOA Watch website at http://www.soaw.org ] * source - "Alberto M. Giordano" May 5, 2002 The Narco News interview with Father Gregorio Iriarte in Bolivia -- the Catholic church's top expert on narco-trafficking issues in the region -- is now online in English and in Spanish: http://www.narconews.com/ The Iriarte interview is part II in our series, "Be With Them: Bolivian Civil Society Resists the Drug War" by Andean Bureau Chief Luis Gsmez. Father Iriarte tells Narco News that former Bolivian president Hugo Banzer "has been narco-connected," and the respected cleric reiterates his call for legalization of drugs. from somewhere in a country called Amirica, Al Giordano Publisher The Narco News Bulletin http://www.narconews.com/ narconews@hotmail.com Subscribe for free alerts of new reports: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/narconews Suscribete gratis para alertas de reportajes nuevos en espaqol: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/narconewsandes ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytsa-05.06.02-19:20:11-11170