The Romantic Radical: Move Over, Hugo Chavez
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"We had no contact with the traditional left," Garcia recalls. "We wanted to make this an indigenous revolution. And the police had the urban left penetrated." In Bolivia, they hooked up with an Aymara Indian nationalist and trade unionist, Felipe Quispe, a.k.a. el Mallku (the Condor), head of a peasant union called the Confederation of Unions of Bolivian Workers and Farmers (CSUTCB). For Bolivia's highland miners and peasants, the world had changed while Garcia was in Mexico. The economy had imploded; the government had sold off the mines to foreign capitalists and slashed state subsidies; tens of thousands had lost their jobs, poverty had soared, but investors were happy because inflation had subsided.
Garcia and Gutierrez began working with Quispe to start an armed worker and peasant movement they named the Tupac Katari Guerrilla Army (EGTK), after a famous indigenous uprising in 1781. "We planned and organized for years, and we thought that in 1989 we would start the revolutionary war," explains Garcia. But as with any start-up, the launch date was delayed over and over, and the strategy was under constant revision. Would a small cadre train and begin armed action before the masses of peasants and workers were ready? Or would the movement hold off and wait for a nationwide uprising?
In reality the guerrilla army didn't progress much past the pupa stage. Garcia's older brother and close adviser, Raul Garcia Linera, says Tupac Katari "never really had more than 20 guns," adding that its arsenal was augmented by the working-class Bolivian weapon of choice: dynamite from the mines. The group carried out its first attack on July 5, 1991, destroying an electric power pylon; its members are accused of also having firebombed a U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) motor pool and a Mormon missionary outpost. In general, their actions resembled vandalism and sabotage more than warfare. Garcia and Gutierrez functioned as a kind of intelligence division, traveling the country disguised as a wealthy couple while secretly trying to buy weapons, ferrying messages for the movement, and crafting pamphlets and books.
"The military would see two white people," Garcia recalls. "Raquel was blond and beautiful; I would always wear a tie. Most of the time they would wave us through checkpoints without any questions."
But in April 1992 the police finally caught on, and in a series of raids, 12 of Tupac Katari's key leaders — including the Garcia brothers and Gutierrez—were rounded up and charged with inciting armed insurrection. When I asked Garcia what happened in prison, he shrugged: "It was not like El Salvador where they cut off tongues and ears. But they were rough. I was scared."
Raul's account was more detailed: "The torture was very bad for Alvaro and Raquel," he said. "Alvaro had no water for three days; then they gave him salt water. And they used electric shock on both of them. They had electrodes attached to the fingers and nipples, and they were submerged in water and shocked. They made lots of threats. They threatened to take our parents hostage. They threatened to rape our partners."
For his part, Raul was forced to lean bent over with his head to a wall for three days while his legs were beaten into purple, swollen lumps. The man in charge of their ordeal was a colonel who, according to Raul, had been trained in the United States. In the end, none of the prisoners were convicted of anything; they were released, after five years, when Gutierrez staged a 19-day hunger strike that became a cause célèbre in Bolivia and Mexico.
Raul says his brother was transformed by his time behind bars. Once released Alvaro Garcia shed his shyness, seemed to thirst for life, and despite defeat and torture was more optimistic than ever. He took up life as a La Paz intellectual, teaching, writing, and speaking. He and Gutierrez had stayed together while in prison, even winning the right to conjugal visits, but after their release they drifted apart.
