(Father Tuffy, a priest of the Atlanta diocese on loan to the Missionary Society of St. James, has served in Bolivia for the past five years. He had returned to this country for a brief stay this summer and was in Boston in July when a military coup occurred in Bolivia, preventing the establishment of a government elected to office by Bolivians in late June. Father Tuffy was asked to give his perspective.)

By Father Liam J. Tuffy

Bolivia … that’s in Africa somewhere, right? “No Sir, it’s in South America.” Oh, yes, Bogota, right? … Bogota is the capital ...? “No Sir, La Paz is the capital.” Gee, I think it’s just great that you guys go to all these strange places and help the natives, you know, just like the Peace Corps. That’s great!

Normal Street, USA? Right on!

It’s happened a thousand times since I have been back and I just cannot get used to it, so here I am heading off another image destroyed at Humiliation Pass. Five years of my life and nobody knows where I have been except the IRS.

While it is as normal as scrod in Boston and understandable as a nervous breakdown in a traffic snarl, American ignorance of what is happening outside the U.S. is as destructive as a bull in a china store; and especially so with regard to what is happening on our southern border.

Bolivia is a land-locked country in central South America and its 155-year experience of republic is key to understanding the political change of the past 25 years and the years to come.

It is the poorest country in South America with a population of five million people, the majority of whom are of Indian stock. It was, until the 189th government takeover, several weeks ago, the recipient of the greatest American aid to any country on the Latin American continent. It was a U.S. ally in the Second World War because of its important tin and other mineral resources and, for some strange reason, since that time, American enemies of the war have been doing better than its friends.

Bolivia is a big story; its destiny will have an impact greater than it normally would on democracy in Latin America because of its geographical position and history. And these days a drama is being lived by a largely peasant people that could have undreamed of consequences for all believers in democracy in the Americas. To prove my point, I have but to mention Argentina’s recognition of the new military government and its expressed willingness to pay the bills that the U.S. has been paying up to now. Recognition by Brazil is not far away; Paraguay and Uruguay are in the wings and the recently born democracies of the Andean countries and close neighbors of Bolivia are running scared because they recognize the patterns.

The Bolivian story is too big for me, but I can give you some perspective on it because of my close association with some of its people. The story involves danger and so I have “changed the names to protect the innocent.”

Meet Ignacio. He is an educated peasant who has a wife and five kids ranging in age from nine to 23 years. They live in an adobe hut on a couple of acres of land on what is known as the Altiplano of Bolivia, a broad plateau at 13,000 feet in the Andes.

The basic amenities that we take for granted are unknown to them and survival is a way of life. Elvira, Ignacio’s wife, is a quiet and beautiful person, whose life history can be read in her face. She has seen four of her nine born children die at childbirth or very early years, and while she says that it is her “destino” (fate), a fierce capacity for survival glows in her personality.

I said that Ignacio is an educated peasant, but the fact is that he has spent very few years in a school of any kind. However, he has a surprising grasp of the magnitude of his people’s problems and their probable cause. His response is everyday dedication to community building and “consciousness” growth.

Ignacio has channeled his anger at “destino” into a constructive fight against injustice and those who live by it. A man who supports his family on $10 a month has few concerns that are not basic. His first concern after the well being of his family is the hunger-induced apathy of his people and the loss of Aymara Indian identity in a society where the only acceptable model is white, rich and “superior.”

Ignacio is not involved politically in the usual sense of the word because he hates with a crusaders’ passion, the politicians who supposedly represent the majority Indian population but ignore their basic needs and play with their lives. Strangely enough, he relates very well to many of the university students who are equally enslaved by an activism born of frustration. Let us meet one of them.

Marcello is middle class, studies economics at the local university and is involved politically on the same side as Ignacio. He is fiercely nationalistic and hostile to imperialism in any garb. He is aware that he suffers from a media-manipulated complex born of his pride in the Bolivian heritage and his slightly veiled inherited antipathy toward the “Indio.” Liberal American whites who were actively involved in the civil rights movement of the 60s would understand his suffering. Marcello could have studied abroad, but his “complex” would not allow his giving up the world of “conscientizing” his fellow students, workers, miners, and the unemployed about the practical effects of the thinking known as “National Security.”

Today, Marcello would be considered by the new military regime as a Communist agitator paid out of Cuba or China; little do the military recognize that they have had a great deal to do with creating sensitive human beings like Marcello who then become monstrous thorns in their own sides. The insidiousness of the situation is difficult to realize, but it is possible that a son of Ignacio, who is presently serving in the military, could be called upon to shoot and kill Marcello in these early weeks of the 189^th government of the Republic that is named for Simon Bolivar, the Liberator. Though difficult for us to accept, the gun used could very well be a U.S. model and “a gift of the American people.”

Today, “Beautiful World” (that is how her name translates) is in danger as many times before. I am confident that she is in hiding. She is deeply involved in the Human Rights Assembly; though her joy is teaching the pleasures of literature to high school students, her most serious avocation is to stand before the thrones of the ever-changing powers-that-be to denounce injustice and defend life.

Pablo, a labor union worker and a miner, is a good friend of “Beautiful World.” They rarely agree but when united in the face of injustice, they cause thrones to tremble. They, and many like them, are the reason why imposed governments fall and why this most recent one will surely fall. They will lament the fact that all military will be tarnished by this as will all other involvement in non-garrison politics. But today, Pablo is probably in the main shaft of one of the larger tin mines, mainstay of a floundering economy, and though he is one of God’s gentler creatures, he is prepared to blow that shaft and his fellow workers to bits if the military do not respect the people’s choice for president in the June 29 elections.

Allow me here to pay tribute to another young man. I can give his real name because he is dead and nothing I say can harm his family because Marcello Quiroga Santa Cruz and leader of the Socialist Party-1, the idealistic, rich, Bible-reading intellectual was well known to friend and foe alike. As a younger man he worked untiringly for the nationalization of Gulf Oil in Bolivia and helped bring a boom to the now modern city of Santa Cruz. He was killed, ironically, because he was a threat to Santa Cruz and to national security and international interests.

I can well imagine Jorge Manrique today. That is how the five-foot firebrand Archbishop of La Paz is known. While he still mourns the loss of Luis Espinal, a Jesuit who was brutally assassinated after four hours of even more brutal torture some months ago, the Archbishop is probably testing to the extreme his second pacemaker as he defends the rights of the poor and the lives of the oppressed. Many of his priests and nuns are in prison because, among other things, they openly denounced the summary execution of three youths on the streets of La Paz. His petition for their release will not be heard while the Vatican refuses to recognize the new government.

With fear and great sympathy for him, I introduce another Jorge who is studying in a military college. I cannot represent what I know must be his great agony now. It has grown with the passing of time. He wrestles with the question of his own identity and his choice of profession and it is difficult to say whether the influence of his freedom fighter father or military discipline shall win. But who can win where to love one is to hate the other? Desertions are taking place though we do not know at what level of army ranking. Open divisions among the brass are evident. Signs of strength are giving way to weakness and, as always, the defenseless people are stronger than the military machine.

One of my critics strongly suggests that I give the “so-called oppressor’s perspective.” That is fair but I could not in honesty give that view because I do not know anyone personally. My perspective on them would be a caricature of their position, which I am sure, conceals sincerity and convictions. My bias is obvious and I believe it will not obstruct objectivity.

Often, as an “American” (Gringo) in Latin America, I have mused on and discussed whether there is more active participation in government in the U.S. or Bolivia. I must admit that a conclusion evades me, but whatever the result, democracy is obviously a worthy inspiration and perhaps the answer lies in the search.