Word: villarroel
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...most carefully chiseled pieces in Juan Peron's "southern bloc" of republics was the Bolivian Government of the late President Gualberto Villarroel. But just as his deputies were about ready to sign the trade treaty with Argentina that would have sealed the Bolivians in for good, Villarroel was lynched, last July...
Outside, in the Plaza Murillo, where last July a mob lynched Dictator Villarroel, the news rapidly drew a crowd that swelled to 80,000. They seized Oblitas as police questioned him, propelled him across the square to a lamppost. There, while President Gutierrez shouted from his balcony, "My life is unimportant," they shot, then hanged Oblitas...
Howling and shouting, the mob boiled down La Paz' cobbled streets to the jail. There they broke in, seized Jorge Eguino and José Escobar, the Villarroel police chiefs held since July for trial. These were the men who had admitted directing the massacre of scores of oppositionist leaders at Oruro in November 1944. Both were dragged twelve blocks to the plaza's lampposts. Escobar was probably dead before he got there, but they hanged him anyway...
...Threat. Many Bolivian regimes (Villarroel's was an exception) have been in the pay of the tin barons. Until Bolivia's economy is broadened or until cheaper Malayan production knocks high-cost Bolivian tin for a loop, tin rule will be a threat...
Tossed into the Bolivian broth last fortnight was white-haired, sexagenarian Judge Tomás Monje Gutierrez, a political moderate who took over as President of the junta. From a window of the presidential palace that overlooked the Villarroel lamppost, he delivered his inaugural speech. Said he, "Whenever you people get tired of me, let me know so that I can go away." Apparently he meant what he said. Last week the junta decreed national elections next January for a permanent President and congress...