The Popular Christian Movement ( Spanish : Movimiento Popular Cristiano , MPC) was a political party in Bolivia , de facto controlled by the military junta .
31-493: The MPC was founded by General René Barrientos Ortuño in 1966 after the overthrow on 5 November 1964 of the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (MNR) government of President Víctor Paz Estenssoro by a military coup under the leadership of René Barrientos and General Alfredo Ovando Candía . Its purpose was to support René Barrientos in the general election the military regime arranged on 3 July 1966. During
62-450: A candidate for president in the general elections that were held in July 1966 . With the most important civilian leaders (Paz, Hernán Siles and Juan Lechín ) in exile, Barrientos was easily elected, and was sworn in during August 1966. General Barrientos was quite charismatic, and was throughout his presidency popular with ordinary Bolivians, aided by the fluency with which he spoke Quechua ,
93-459: A clandestine Marxist supporter, denouncing Barrientos and many of his aides as being on the CIA 's payroll. The episode embarrassed the administration and cast doubts about the president's judgment (after all, it was he who was friends with, and had appointed, Arguedas to the most important ministry post in the government). In the aftermath of the mining massacres and anti-guerrilla campaign, Barrientos
124-600: A guerrilla force was discovered to be operating in the Bolivian southeast under the leadership of the Argentine-Cuban revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara in the Bolivian jungle. Barrientos was very concerned with Guevara's alleged popularity among the miners in the southwestern part of the country, and clamped down in the area with some very heavy-handed measures (such as the San Juan massacre ). Guevara felt that such an atrocity by
155-522: Is headed by an FAB general. TAB, a charter heavy cargo airline, links Bolivia with most countries of the Western Hemisphere ; its inventory included a fleet of Lockheed C-130 Hercules aircraft. TAB's Base of operations was headquartered at El Alto, adjacent to La Paz 's El Alto International Airport . TAB also flew to Miami and Houston , with stops in Panama . During a 31 July 2017 ceremony, which
186-535: Is the air force of Bolivia and branch of the Bolivian Armed Forces . By 1938 the Bolivian air force consisted of about 60 aircraft ( Curtiss Hawk fighters, Curtiss T-32 Condor II and Junkers W 34 bombers, Junkers Ju 86 used as transport craft, and Fokker C.V , Breguet 19 and Vickers Vespa reconnaissance planes), and about 300 staff; the officers were trained in Italy. In 2017 Bolivia finally retired
217-672: The Alfredo Ovando Candía administration (1969–1971), was a Popular Christian Movement member of the National Congress from Santa Cruz Department elected in 1966. For all practical purposes, the MPC died with the accidental death of General René Barrientos Ortuño early 27 April 1969 and has had no political power in decades. In 1978, the Popular Christian Movement took part in an electoral coalition Nationalist Union of
248-625: The Lockheed T-33 marking the end of 44 years of service. Bolivia was the last operator of the T-33. FAB is organized into air brigades, which is formed by one to three air groups. The air groups are based at La Paz, Cochabamba, Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Puerto Suárez, Tarija, Villamontes, Cobija, Trinidad, Riberalta, Roboré, Uyuni, Oruro, Sucre and Chimoré. Major commands included the following: The General Directorate of Civil Aeronautics ( Dirección General de Aeronáutica Civil—DGAC ) formerly part of
279-414: The 15 parachutists fell to their death before a large crowd assembled to view the event. Recriminations flew as to who should be held responsible for the carnage. Barrientos, as Air Force commander, decided to put on a demonstration of his own, and jumped from an airplane himself using one of the parachutes that had failed to open during the earlier debacle. His point was that there had been nothing wrong with
310-519: The 30th vice president of Bolivia in 1964. General Barrientos came to power after the 1964 Bolivian coup d'état which overthrew the government of President Victor Paz Estenssoro . During his three-year rule, Barrientos and the army suppressed leftist opposition to his regime, including a guerrilla group led by Che Guevara in 1967. On 27 April 1969, Barrientos was killed in a helicopter crash near Arque , Bolivia. He may have been assassinated, but that has not been conclusively proven. Barrientos
341-484: The Army Commander Alfredo Ovando — toppled Paz in a violent coup d'état and installed himself as co-president in a Junta alongside General Ovando. His idea all along was to capitalize on his popularity and run for elections, with the full support of the Bolivian military establishment now in control of the country. To this end, he resigned his co-presidency in early 1966 and registered himself as
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#1732873359823372-529: The Bolivian Army Rangers captured Guevara and executed him in October 1967. Barrientos had directly ordered Guevara's execution after his capture. While temporarily enhancing the president's stature, this only started more troubles for Barrientos. While the army was fighting the guerrillas, the miners of Siglo XX (a state-owned Bolivian mining town) declared themselves in support of the insurgency, prompting
403-465: The Bolivian Army and Air Force would be the tipping point in his favour in rallying the miners to his communist cause, but eventually the miners signed an agreement with the government-owned mining company Siglo XX , which agreement Guevara felt undermined his reason for being there. The war between the national forces under President Barrientos and Che Guevara's militia did not end there, but eventually
434-476: The Bolivian political elites, many of whose members may have been waiting for their turn to occupy the Presidential palace for years. This was no exception, and Paz's controversial move would soon prove harmful to him. Paz, surprisingly to some, chose General Barrientos as his running mate in that year's elections, and the two were sworn in on 6 August 1964. Just three months later, Barrientos — in tandem with
465-682: The FAB, administers a civil aeronautics school called the National Institute of Civil Aeronautics ( Instituto Nacional de Aeronáutica Civil—INAC ), and two commercial air transport services TAM and TAB. Bolivian Military Airline ( Transporte Aéreo Militar / TAM ) is an airline based in La Paz , Bolivia . It is the civilian wing of the 'Fuerza Aérea Boliviana' (the Bolivian Air Force), operating passenger services to remote towns and communities in
496-543: The North and Northeast of Bolivia. TAM (aka TAM Group 71) has been a part of the FAB since 1945. A similar airline serving the Beni Department with small planes is Línea Aérea Amaszonas , using smaller planes than TAM. The Bolivian Ministry of Defence and Ministry of Public Works, Services and Housing announced on 8 December 2016 that TAM would cease transporting civilian passengers and cargo on 16 December 2016. The decision
527-578: The People backing Juan Pereda Asbún . In 1979, the MPC dissolved into Hugo Banzer Suárez 's new Nationalist Democratic Action (ADN). Ren%C3%A9 Barrientos René Emilio Barrientos Ortuño (30 May 1919 – 27 April 1969) was a Bolivian military officer and politician who served as the 47th president of Bolivia twice nonconsecutively from 1964 to 1966 and from 1966 to 1969. During much of his first term, he shared power as co-president with Alfredo Ovando from 1965 to 1966 and prior to that served as
558-625: The country to bring back the revolutionary leader Víctor Paz Estenssoro , then in exile, once the rebellion succeeded. In 1957, Barrientos was rewarded when he was named commander of the Bolivian Air Force. Known as a rather obsequious, sycophantic supporter of the MNR, he slowly became famous throughout the country for his uncommon, and very public, feats of valor. In 1960, for example, a live parachute jump demonstration by Bolivian Air Force soldiers ended in disaster when their equipment failed and 3 of
589-509: The equipment or the training, simply bad luck; this incident cemented his popularity among certain sections of the population. Furthermore, the ruling MNR helped prop up his standing, as the MNR leadership constantly extolled General Barrientos' virtues, portraying him as a paragon of the new kind of military officer the revolution had fostered. By the early 1960s, while the ruling MNR party had begun to fall apart due to personal and policy differences between its leading members, Barrientos' stock
620-520: The leader of the small Christian Democrat Party of Bolivia, Dr. Luis Adolfo Siles . He was fiercely anti-communist and pro-free market. Accepting more military aid and acquiescing to the training of special forces designed to combat possible communist-inspired insurgencies (under the aegis of the Alliance for Progress ) made Barrientos particularly popular with Washington. Barrientos had ample opportunity to prove his anti-Communist credentials in 1967, when
651-493: The military academy in 1943 and earning his pilot's license in 1945. Later in the 1940s, he gravitated toward the reformist Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario, or MNR) party of Víctor Paz Estenssoro . Barrientos played a part in the Bolivian National Revolution of 1952, when the MNR toppled the established order and took power. In fact, he was given the task of flying out of
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#1732873359823682-401: The most important native language among the Bolivian peasantry. Barrientos was skilled at manipulating the masses with his oratory, which often allowed him to present himself as both a populist and conservative, a revolutionary and a "law-and-order" advocate. Purporting to be a staunch Christian, Barrientos actively courted the church, and in fact, chose as his running mate in the 1966 elections
713-522: The past and Barrientos hoped to rebuild his political capital. However, on 27 April 1969, a Hiller OH-23 helicopter of the Bolivian Air Force (nicknamed Holofernes ) that was carrying him struck telephone cables near Arque , killing Barrientos, his aide-de-camp and the pilot. An assassination has been considered a possibility but never proven. Bolivian Air Force The Bolivian Air Force ( Spanish : Fuerza Aérea Boliviana or 'FAB')
744-600: The president to send troops to regain control. This led to the San Juan massacre, when soldiers opened fire on the miners and killed around 30 men and women on Saint John's Day, called Día de San Juan in Spanish, 24 June 1967. Further, a major scandal erupted in 1968 when Barrientos' trusted friend and Minister of Interior, Antonio Arguedas, disappeared with the captured diary of Che Guevara, which soon surfaced in, of all places, Havana . From abroad, Arguedas confessed himself to have been
775-499: The role the new armed forces played in the national arena. The most popular of these military leaders was, of course, the dashing Barrientos. In 1961, Paz Estenssoro had the Bolivian Constitution amended in order to be allowed to run for consecutive re-election, feeling that only he had the standing to keep the crumbling MNR together. Traditionally, attempts such as these (known as "prorroguismo") have been strongly condemned by
806-483: The three years René Barrientos remained in power, the Popular Christian Movement was the government party. The organizing cadres for the party were drawn from a variety of sources with the largest single source being from the old anti- Víctor Paz Estenssoro factions of the MNR. The Popular Christian Movement differed somewhat from other official parties in that it sought – and to a degree maintained – contact with peasant union organizations. This rallying of peasant support
837-432: Was a native of Tarata , department of Cochabamba . His father was of Spanish ancestry while his mother was Quechua . After his father died when he was a child, Barrientos was sent to a Franciscan orphanage. He left the orphanage at 12 and attended a private high school while working odd jobs to pay the tuition. After graduating, he entered the military academy in La Paz . He was a career military officer, graduating from
868-431: Was clearly on the rise. In addition, President Paz Estenssoro (elected to a second term in 1960) was leaning more heavily on military support to restore order to various parts of the country where rival pro-MNR militias had turned against each other, often on behalf of specific MNR leaders. Disarming the militias (who had been allowed to keep their weapons since the 1952 Revolution) became a priority to Paz, and this enhanced
899-406: Was part of René Barrientos's strategy of allying the military with the conservative post-reform peasantry. No subsequent military leader has been able to sustain this alliance effectively. The Popular Christian Movement, like other parties organized from the presidential palace, served to give some politicians a start in national politics. José Ortiz Mercado , for example, who became a major figure in
930-415: Was seen by some as a brutal dictator at the service of foreign interests while masquerading as a democrat. Eager to do some damage control and repair his once-excellent relations with the campesinos (Bolivian farm workers), the president took to traveling throughout the country to present his position, even to the smallest and remotest of Bolivian villages. It was a tactic that had yielded him good results in
961-472: Was to allow TAM to reorganize with a status akin to the state-sponsored Boliviana de Aviacion prior to resuming service under civilian regulations. Although a civil transport airline, Bolivian Air Transport ( Transportes Aéreos Bolivianos / TAB , was created as a subsidiary company of the FAB in 1977. It is subordinate to the Air Transport Management ( Gerencia de Transportes Aéreos ) and