BOLIVIA: Siege

Having beaten down half a dozen uprisings and one full-scale civil war in three years, Bolivian officials moved swiftly to meet another crisis last week. "In view of irrefutable evidence that subversive preparations were afoot," suave, bearded President Mamerto Urriolagoitia ordered the exile of ten civilians and army officers (including one general) and slapped on a drum-tight state of siege.

Though government communiqués spoke darkly of their old bogey, the neo-fascist Movement of Nationalist Revolution, the President faced far more deep-seated and widespread opposition than the M.N.R. For over three months he had been trying without success to get other...

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