Luis García Meza Tejada
| Luis García Meza | |
|---|---|
| 68th President of Bolivia | |
|
In office 17 July 1980 – 4 August 1981 |
|
| Preceded by | Lidia Gueiler |
| Succeeded by | Celso Torrelio |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
Luis García Meza Tejada August 8, 1929 La Paz, Bolivia |
| Nationality | Bolivian |
| Political party | None |
| Profession | Military |
| Military service | |
| Allegiance |
 Bolivia
|
| Service/branch |
 Bolivian Army
|
| Years of service | 1952–1981 |
| Rank |
 General
|
| Commands | Bolivian Army |
Luis García Meza Tejada (born August 8, 1929, La Paz, Bolivia) is a former Bolivian dictator. A native of La Paz, he was a career military officer who rose to the rank of general during the reign of Hugo Banzer (1971–78). García Meza was between 1980-1981 the dictator of Bolivia.
García Meza graduated from the military academy in 1952, and served as its commander from 1963 to 1964. He then rose to division commander in the late 1970s.
He became leader of the right-wing faction of the military of Bolivia most disenchanted with the return to civilian rule. Many of the officers involved had been part of the Banzer dictatorship and disliked the investigation of economic and human right abuses by the new Bolivian Congress. Moreover, they tended to regard the decline in popularity of the Carter administration in the United States as an indicator that soon a Republican administration would replace it—one more amenable to the kind of pro-US, more hardline anti-communist dictatorship they wanted to reinstall in Bolivia. Many allegedly had ties to cocaine traffickers and made sure portions of the military acted as their enforcers/protectors in exchange for extensive bribes, which in turn were used to fund the upcoming coup. In this manner, the narcotraffickers were in essence purchasing for themselves the upcoming Bolivian government.
This group pressured President Lidia Gueiler (his cousin) to install General García Meza as Commander of the Army. Within months, the Junta of Commanders headed by García Meza forced a violent coup d'état—sometimes referred to as the Cocaine Coup—of July 17, 1980, when several Bolivian intellectuals such as Marcelo Quiroga Santa Cruz were killed. When portions of the citizenry resisted, as they had done in the failed putsch of November 1979, it resulted in dozens of deaths. Many were tortured. Allegedly, the Argentine Army unit Batallón de Inteligencia 601 participated in the coup. Former Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent Michael Levine had arrested the two most prominent leaders of the Roberto Suarez cartel (the primary cartel linked to the coup), and he claims that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) intervened to drop charges against one of them and reduce bail for another, allowing both to escape their US trial in 1979; subsequently they returned to Bolivia and participated in the coup, along with the aid of Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie. Levine has alleged CIA cooperation with the coup. These allegations were the basis for the dismissal of the DEA from Bolivia by current President Evo Morales in 2007.
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