Background
Alfredo Ovando Candia was born on 6 April 1917 in Cobija.
Alfredo Ovando Candia was born on 6 April 1917 in Cobija.
Attended primary and secondary school in Sucre and La Paz and entered the military academy. In 1936 he graduated and subsequently received further training in the Higher War College and in Argentina. He was a major by 1948.
With the outbreak of the Chaco War, he briefly served at the front. After the Nationalist Revolutionary Movement (MNR) victory in 1952, he was further promoted, rising to general of division by December 1962. He taught at the Higher War College, served as military attaché to Paraguay and Uruguay, was army chief of staff in 1957, and commander-in-chief of the armed forces by 1962. On December 24, 1964, he was promoted to general of the army.
Ovando was the military power behind the overthrow of the MNR in November 1964. He served as co-president of the military government until 1966. and he ruled alone until René Barrientos Ortuño took over in August. With the death of Barrientos in April 1969, Ovando permitted Vice President Luis Adolfo Siles Salinas to assume the presidency briefly, but carried out a coup against him on September 26, 1969.
Ovando launched a Peruvian-style “revolution from above.” He formed a civilian-military cabinet of the “national left,” revoked the Petroleum Code of 1955, and nationalized the Bolivian Gulf Oil Company on October 17, 1969. Labor unions were permitted to organize, and wages were increased. Troops were withdrawn from the mines.
These radical moves proved confusing. Earlier, Ovando had ordered troops into the mines during the general strike of May 1965, had direetd the campaign against the Cuban guerrilla foco of 1967, and put down the Teoponte guerrilla foco in July 1970. Economic nationalism and the influence of radical young civilian reformers in his cabinet encouraged anti-imperialist measures and a foreign policy of “independence neutralism.” He sent an ambassador to Moscow in January 1970 and received a $27.5 million loan from the USSR.
The United States recognized the Ovando government, but after the nationalization of Gulf, major oil companies refused to purchase or refine Bolivian crude, and U.S. government aid was reduced by 75 percent. In September 1970, shortly before his ouster. Ovando promised to compensate Gulf with $78 million. Internal turmoil came to a head on October 4, 1970, in a right-wing military coup. It failed, but on October 7, Ovando resigned, and General Juan José Torres González secured control. Ovando was named ambassador to Spain by Torres and remained there in exile after Torres fell ten months later.
