René Barrientos Ortuño

René Barrientos Ortuño (born May 30, 1919 in Tarata , † April 27, 1969 in Cochabamba ) was a Bolivian politician and general . Barrientos was President of Bolivia from November 4, 1964 to January 5, 1966 and from August 6, 1966 to April 27, 1969, and was killed in a helicopter crash.

Advancement in the military

René Barrientos Ortuño was the son of a poor farmer from a valley in the Andean plateau. After graduating from the Escuela Fiscal High School in Cochabamba , he became a cadet and later attended pilot schools for the Bolivian Army . Barrientos completed parts of his flying training and further military training in Italy and also in the USA . He proved to be a good pilot and parachutist.

Barrientos, who in just seven years, between 1952 and 1959, rose from lieutenant to general in the air force, was sponsored by Bolivian President Víctor Paz Estenssoro . Barrientos Paz Estenssoro served as a personal pilot during the 1952 Revolution. With the help of the United States, the president rebuilt the Bolivian military. Barrientos benefited from this. The steps of his career ladder were: commander of an air base, air force attaché of his country in London , commander of an air cadet institute , head of military air transport, head of procurement in the Air Force, lecturer at the General Staff School , head of the General Staff of the Air Force and finally its commander in chief.

Political beginnings

Barrientos was also funded by the US government . This is said to have deliberately brought him to the president in order to limit his left-leaning politics. Against the will of the state party MNR , of which Barrientos was a member, the military enforced him as deputy president in 1964.

When there were violent demonstrations against President Paz Estenssoro in 1964, Barrientos joined the military coup against his former sponsor. The president then fled to Peru . First, Alfredo Ovando Candia took over the leadership of a military junta . After further demonstrations, Ovando resigned. On November 5, 1964, Barrientos became chairman of the junta. At the beginning of 1966, he gave up this post to run as a candidate in the presidential election. Ovando temporarily took the lead again.

Presidency

Ortuño was elected on July 4, 1966 with about 60% of the vote. During his tenure, he broke the resistance of the miners' union partly with violence. He let the army occupy some mining districts. He had also incurred the displeasure of the miners' union when he cut wages and fought clientele politics in the state-run mines. For Bolivian standards, a phase of (forced) calm and stability followed.

The attempt made by Barrientos in 1969 to bring about a political mass movement to support him was unsuccessful. Like Víctor Paz Estenssoro, he relied on a more left-wing policy and relied not least on the indigenous population. To get their support, he traveled across the country.

The government of René Barrientos Ortuño received international attention when it sentenced Régis Debray in 1967 . On October 9, 1967 at 1:10 p.m. Che Guevara , who had recently been captured, was executed on the spot by Mario Terán , a sergeant in the Bolivian army, on the instructions of Barrientos, without a prior trial .

Ortuño was killed in 1969 when a helicopter he was piloting crashed.

literature

Fernando Diez de Medina: El general del pueblo. René Barrientos Ortuño, caudillo mayor de la revolución boliviana. Editorial Los Amigos del Libro, La Paz and Cochabamba, 1972.
Miguel Angel Kippez Aneiva: René Barrientos Ortuño, "el hombre". Impresiones Poligraf, Cochabamba 1992.
René Barrientos Ortuño , International Biographical Archive. 25/1969 of June 9, 1969, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)

Web links

1964 René Barrientos Ortuño. In: vicepresidencia.gob.bo. Retrieved June 23, 2016 (Spanish).

Individual evidence

↑ Dieter Stäcker: Hamburg doesn't want to mourn. In: The time . April 19, 1971. Retrieved June 23, 2016 .

predecessor	Office	successor
Víctor Paz Estenssoro	President of Bolivia 1964 - 1965 (May 26, 1965 - January 2, 1966 Co-President)	Alfredo Ovando Candía

predecessor	Office	successor
Alfredo Ovando Candía	President of Bolivia 1966 - 1969	Luis Adolfo Siles Salinas

personal data
SURNAME	Barrientos Ortuño, René
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Bolivian politician, President of Bolivia
DATE OF BIRTH	May 30, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH	Tarata
DATE OF DEATH	April 27, 1969
Place of death	Cochabamba

[1] Dieter Stäcker: Hamburg doesn't want to mourn. In: The time . April 19, 1971. Retrieved June 23, 2016 .