Bolivia: The Captives in the Hills

"Tell them in La Paz that the in portant thing is not to send the troops," pleaded USIA Official Thomas Martin. "If they bring in troops, we're finished."

There the captives sat last week —Martin and three other Americans, a Dutchman, a German and eleven Bolivians — frightened and endangered pawns in a medieval power struggle high in the Bolivian Andes. Dark-featured Indian women, wives of rebellious tin miners, stood guard over them in a shabby union hall at the 14,000-ft.-high Siglo Veinte mine, 135 miles from La Paz. The women cradled tommy...

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