Hugo Banzer Suárez (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈuɣo ˈβanseɾ ˈswaɾes]; 10 May 1926 – 5 May 2002) was a Bolivian politician and military officer who served as the 51st president of Bolivia. He held the Bolivian presidency twice: from 1971 to 1978 as a military dictator, and then again from 1997 to 2001, as a democratically elected president.
Banzer rose to power via a US-backed coup d'état against socialist president Juan José Torres and repressed labor leaders, clergymen, indigenous people, and students during his 1971–1978 dictatorship. Several thousand Bolivians were either forced to seek asylum in foreign countries, arrested, tortured, or killed during this period, known as the Banzerato.
After Banzer's removal via a coup led by Juan Pereda, he remained an influential figure in Bolivian politics, and would run for election to the presidency via the ballot box on several occasions, eventually succeeding in 1997 via a narrow plurality of 22.26% of the popular vote. During Banzer's constitutional term, he extended presidential term limits from four years to five, and presided over the Cochabamba Water War, declaring a state of siege in 2000 that suspended several civil liberties and led to violent clashes between demonstrators and law enforcement. After being diagnosed with lung cancer, Banzer resigned in 2001 and was succeeded by Vice President Jorge Quiroga.
Hugo Banzer Suárez was born on 10 May 1926 in the hacienda Concepción, Santa Cruz, son of César Banzer Aliaga and María Luisa Suárez Justiniano. His grandfather, Georg Banzer, was a German immigrant originally from Osnabrück.
Banzer studied at Colégio Seminario Ovidio Santisteban, and high school at Colegio Nacional Florida. At the age of 14 in 1941, Banzer entered the Army Military College, graduating with the rank of second lieutenant in 1947. During his time at the institution, he stood out for as one of the best cadets in the academic field. Banzer's military vocation would have originated after meeting Germán Busch by chance at the age of ten.
During his military training, Banzer was trained in institutions from different countries, such as the Military College of the Nation in Argentina, the Armored Cavalry School at Fort Hood in the United States and the School of the Americas in Panama, the latter being the alma mater of South American police and military recognized for their crimes against humanity, such as Manuel Contreras, Manuel Noriega, Leopoldo Galtieri and Roberto Eduardo Viola.
Military and ideological formation
Banzer was promoted to colonel in 1961. In 1963, he was briefly a military attaché at the Embassy of Bolivia in the United States. From 1964 to 1966, Banzer served as head the Ministry of Education and Culture in the government of General René Barrientos, a personal friend. From 1967 to 1969, he was military attaché at the Embassy of Bolivia in Argentina. From 1969 to 1971, Banzer was director of the Military Academy, appointed during the presidency of General Alfredo Ovando. In 1970, he was also director of the Coronel Gualberto Villarroel Military School. Banzer became increasingly involved in politics, siding with the right wing of the Bolivian Army.
In 1970, President Juan José Torres was leading the country in a leftist direction, arousing the ire and mistrust of conservative anti-communist circles in Bolivia and, crucially, in the Nixon administration. He had called an Asamblea del Pueblo, or People's Assembly, in which representatives of specific "proletarian" sectors of society were represented (miners, unionized teachers, students, peasants). The Assembly was imbued with all the powers of a working parliament, even though the right-wing opponents of the regime tended to call it a gathering of virtual soviets. Torres also allowed labor leader, Juan Lechín, to resume his post as head of the Central Obrera Boliviana/Bolivian Workers' Union (COB). These measures, coupled with Ovando's earlier nationalization of Gulf Oil properties, angered his opponents even more, chief among whom was Banzer and his US supporters. In early 1971, a faction of the Bolivian military attempted to unseat the new president but failed, whereupon Banzer fled to Argentina, but did not give up his ambitions to the presidency.
On 17 August 1971, Banzer, at long last, masterminded a successful military uprising that erupted in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, where he had many supporters. Eventually, the plotters gained control over the La Paz garrisons, although not without considerable bloodshed. The combined levels of United States and Brazilian involvement for the coup d'état have been debated, but according to Stephen Zunes, it is apparent that significant clandestine financial and advisory assistance existed at a critical level within the Nixon administration for Banzer.
With such backing secured, Banzer emerged as the strong man of the new regime, and, on 22 August, was given full power as president. Conversely, President Juan José Torres was forced to take refuge in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where five years later he was kidnapped and assassinated by right-wing death squads associated with the Videla government and the acquiescence of Banzer. His murder was part of Operation Condor. Banzer received the political support of the center-right Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (MNR) of former president Víctor Paz Estenssoro and the conservative Falange Socialista Boliviana of Mario Gutiérrez, considered to be the two largest parties in the country. For the next seven years, and with the rank of army general, he ruled Bolivia as dictator.
Frustrated by the political divisions and protests that characterized the Torres and Ovando years, and, traditionally an enemy of dissent and freedom of speech, Banzer banned all the left-leaning parties, suspended the powerful Central Obrera Boliviana, and closed the nation's universities. "Order" was now the paramount aim, and no means were spared to restore authority and stifle dissent. Buoyed by the initial legitimacy provided by Paz and Gutierrez's support, the dictator ruled with a measure of civilian support until 1974, when the main parties realized he did not intend to hold elections, instead using them to perpetuate himself in power. At that point, Banzer dispensed with all pretenses and banned all political activity, exiled all major leaders (Paz Estenssoro included), and proceeded to rule henceforth solely with military support.
Human rights groups claim that during Banzer's 1971–1978 tenure (known as the Banzerato) several thousand Bolivians sought asylum in foreign countries, 3,000 political opponents were arrested, 200 were killed, and many more were tortured. In the basement of the Ministry of the Interior or "the horror chambers" around 2,000 political prisoners were held and tortured during the 1971–1978 military rule. Many others simply disappeared. Among the victims of the regime were Colonel Andrés Selich, Banzer's first Minister of the Interior and co-conspirator in the August 1971 coup. Selich was accused of plotting to overthrow Banzer and died of blows sustained while in custody. Two other leaders with sufficient stature to potentially eclipse the dictator were murdered under suspicious circumstances while in exile: General Joanquin Zenteno Anaya and former president Juan José Torres, both in 1976. Klaus Barbie, former head of the Gestapo de Lyon, was integrated into the special services in order to "renew" repression techniques and received Bolivian nationality. During the Banzer government, drug trafficking experienced an unprecedented expansion that lasted until the 1980s.
Much of the stability achieved by the Banzerato was sustained by the constant flow of easy credit from abroad, which was often used on mammoth "white elephant" projects of dubious usefulness, which nonetheless impressed certain sectors of the population. The loans would soon raise Bolivia's external debt to record levels, but proved useful in the manipulation of political patronage. In 1975, Banzer restored diplomatic relations with Chile, broken since 1962, with an eye toward obtaining an access to the Pacific Ocean, denied to Bolivia since the loss of its maritime coast in the 19th-century War of the Pacific. The Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet offered a narrow outlet just north of the port of Arica, on the border with Peru, on lands that had previously belonged to that country. According to the terms of the treaty that handed that territory to Chile, Peru had to agree to any proposal of transferring that land to a third party. Peru refused to accept the Pinochet proposal, instead creating its own counter-proposal, which declared Arica and its waters an area of joint-sovereignty between the three nations. Chile refused this proposal, and talks with Bolivia ended. Diplomatic relations were once again frozen in 1978.