Page "René Barrientos" Paragraph 9

Barrientos had ample opportunity to prove his anti-Communist credentials in 1967, when a guerrilla force was discovered to be operating in the Bolivian southeast under the leadership of the Argentine-Cuban revolutionary Ernesto " Che " Guevara in the Bolivian jungle.

Barrientos was very concerned with Guevara's alleged popularity among the miners in the southwestern part of the country, and clamped down in the area with some very heavy handed measures ( such as the Massacre of San Juan ).

Guevara felt that such an atrocity by the Bolivian Army and Air Force would be the tipping point in his favour in rallying the miners to his Communist cause, but eventually the miners signed with government-owned mining company, Siglo XX, an agreement which Guevara felt undermined his reason for being there.

The war between the Bolivian President Barrientos and Che Guevara's militia did not end there, but eventually the Bolivian Army Rangers captured Guevara and executed him in October 1967.