Juan José Torres

Juan José Torres

Juan José Torres Gonzales (born March 5, 1920 in Cochabamba , Departamento Cochabamba ; †  June 2, 1976 in San Andrés de Giles , Province of Buenos Aires , Argentina ), in his homeland also under the abbreviation JJ (for: Jota Jota, di Juan José), was a Bolivian officer and politician who held the office of President of the Republic of Bolivia between October 7, 1970 and August 21, 1971 . Juan José Torres was murdered in 1976 while in exile in Argentina as part of Operation Condor .

origin

Torres comes from a poor mestizo family in Cochabamba; many of his ancestors were of the Aymara people . His father, Juan Torres Cueto, died in the Chaco War of the early 1930s. Juan José Torres therefore had to contribute to the livelihood of the family - six brothers and the widowed mother Sabina González - at an early age. He attended the Army Academy and graduated from Gualberto Villarroel Military School on December 20, 1941 with the rank of lieutenant in the artillery .

Military and political career

In the following years Torres rose the military ladder to the rank of general . In 1964 he was a military attaché at the Bolivian embassy in Brazil and in 1965 he was appointed ambassador to Uruguay . In 1966 Torres became Minister of Labor in the military government under the first presidency of Alfredo Ovando Candía . The following year he was appointed Chief of the General Staff of the Bolivian Armed Forces . From 1968 to 1969 he was permanent secretary of the "Supreme Council of National Defense" ( Consejo Supremo de Defensa Nacional ). During this time, Torres and a group of civilians and the military drafted the political and ideological guidelines that the second government of Ovando Candía adopted as a government program in 1969. Torres was the author of the “Revolutionary Mission of the Armed Forces” ( Mandato Revolucionario de las Fuerzas Armadas ), the programmatic platform of the military government from 1969, and, with José Ortiz Mercado, was a leader in the elaboration of a “Socio-economic strategy for national development” ( Estrategía Socio-Económica del Desarrollo Nacional ). This program, which was supposed to guide the government activities of the government of Ovando Candía, was only implemented during the government of Torres itself. During Ovando's presidency, the oil company Bolivian Gulf Oil Company was nationalized according to the specifications of a “Second Revolutionary Mission of the Armed Forces”, which had also been worked out by Torres . In 1970 Torres Gonzales became commander in chief of the armed forces and was a member of the Council of Ministers as a direct representative of the military. His central task here was to ensure that Ovando's government implemented the military's program.

Juan José Torres was the “right hand” of the reform-oriented Alfredo Ovando in the 1960s. In contrast to the predominantly right-wing military leaders in Latin America, Torres himself was a staunch leftist. In it he was close to the Peruvian Juan Velasco Alvarado and Omar Torrijos in Panama . His origin from the poorer classes, combined with his partially indigenous descent, made him a popular figure in Bolivian politics. When Alfredo Ovando Candía became president of the country for the second time in a coup in September 1969, Torres was one of the key left-wing officers who urged Ovando to undertake more far-reaching reforms, even in the face of opposition from conservative officers.

The right-wing coup and its suppression in October 1970

On October 6, 1970 , right-wing military leaders launched a coup against Ovando's government. Left and right-wing military units fought bloodily against each other in several larger cities in Bolivia. President Ovando believed his cause had been lost and fled to a foreign embassy. But the loyal armed forces, under the determined leadership of Torres, found support from a broad popular movement made up of workers, peasant organizations, and the student movement in the universities. Torres himself later called this alliance the "four pillars of the revolution". On October 7, 1970, the left military and their allies had prevailed in Bolivia. Worn by 13 grueling months in the presidency, Ovando handed over the presidency to the man of the hour, his friend Torres Gonzales.

Presidency

During his brief presidency, which lasted just over ten months, important parts of the mining sector were nationalized and the employees of the US peace corps, which were perceived as "imperialist", were expelled from the country. The internal socio-economic measures include the noticeable increase in the budget of the Bolivian universities, the creation of a development corporation (Corporación de Desarrollo) as a support facility for Bolivian state-owned companies and a state bank, as well as a noticeable increase in wages for the mining workers. Torres established an "assembly of the people" (Asamblea Popular), which included representatives of "proletarian" sectors of society (mining workers, unionized teachers, students, farmers) and which were given almost the powers of a parliament, but which were granted by right-wing opponents of the regime as a "council meeting" was opposed. Difficult, the relationship as Chairman of the Asamblea Popular, which returned from exile union leaders who designed Central Obrera Boliviana , Juan Lechín Oquendo , who tried to make the Asamblea a parallel government, which was based on trade unions and local popular assemblies. Continued strikes weakened the Torres government.

Torres' policy was such a balancing act between the far-reaching demands of the left movements, which watched him suspiciously as a member of the military, and the attacks of the right, who saw him steer him straight in the direction of "communism" and the benevolence of the government of Richard Nixon in the US could be safe.

Fall, exile and murder

After only ten months in office, Juan José Torres and his government were overthrown in a bloody coup d'état by a junta of military commanders around Hugo Banzer . The putschists enjoyed the support of right-wing Brazilian circles and large parts of the German colony in Bolivia. There was civil and military resistance to the coup, but the right-wing had learned the lesson from the failed overthrow attempt of October 1970: they broke the resistance with ruthless brutality. Torres went into exile, first to Peru , then to Chile and finally to Argentina . While in exile in Chile, Torres wrote a summary of his historical and political convictions and his programmatic position under the title “Bolivia: National Dynamics and Liberation” (“Bolivia: Dinámica Nacional y Liberación”).

Torres remained in exile in Argentina after the coup of right-wing generals led by Jorge Rafael Videla in March 1976. On June 2, 1976, he was kidnapped and murdered in Buenos Aires as part of Operation Condor . The governments of Banzer and Videla are suspected to be behind the action by “anti-communist” forces.

Memory and afterlife

Torres' sarcophagus in the Monumento a la Revolución Nacional in La Paz

The dictatorial government of Banzer in Bolivia prevented the repatriation of the remains of Juan José Torres to his homeland, because they feared that the popular general and ex-president could promote the resistance against the regime even as a corpse. Eventually, his family, who were exposed to pressure from both the Argentine and Bolivian junta, decided to transfer the body to Mexico , where it remained for the next seven years. It was only in 1983 that he was returned to Bolivia during the government of Hernán Siles Zuazo . It rests in the "Monument to the National Revolution" ("Monumento a la Revolución Nacional") in La Paz at the side of the presidents Germán Busch Becerra and Gualberto Villaroel López, who are also regarded as martyrs .

Web links

• Website dedicated to JJ Torres (span.)

predecessor	Office	successor
Alfredo Ovando Candía	President of Bolivia 1970 - 1971	Hugo Banzer Suarez