Written: unknown
First Published: March 27, 1967
Source: The Bolivian Diary: the authorized edition, Ocean Press, © 2005.
Translated:
Transcription/Markup: Ocean Press/Brian Baggins
Copyright:
© 2005 Aleida March, Che Guevara Studies Center and Ocean Press. Reprinted with their permission. Not to be reproduced in any form without the written permission of Ocean Press. For further information contact Ocean Press at [email protected] and via its website at www.oceanbooks.com.au.
The military brutes who have usurped power, after killing workers and laying the groundwork for the total handover of our resources to US imperialism, are now mocking the people with a comic farce. Even as the hour of truth arrived and the masses took up arms, responding to the armed usurpers with armed struggle, they tried to continue with their lies.
On the morning of March 23, troops from the Fourth Division, quartered in Camiri, about 35-strong and led by Major Hernán Plata Ríos, penetrated guerrilla territory along the Ñacahuazú River. The entire group fell into an ambush set up by our forces. As a result of the action, we confiscated 25 weapons of all kinds, including three 60-mm mortars with a supply of shells and other ammunition and equipment. Enemy casualties consisted of seven dead, including a lieutenant, 14 prisoners, five of them wounded in the clash and cared for by our medics to the best of our capabilities. All the prisoners were freed after explaining the aims of our movement.
The list of enemy casualties is as follows:
Dead: Pedro Romero, Rubén Amezaga, Juan Alvarado,
Cecilio Márquez, Amador Almasán, Santiago Gallardo, and
an army informer and guide whose last name was Vargas.
Prisoners: Major Hernán Plata Ríos, Captain Eugenio
Silva, soldiers Edgar Torrico Panoso, Lido Machicado
Toledo, Gabriel Durán Escobar, Armando Martínez Sánchez,
Felipe Bravo Siles, Juan Ramón Martínez, Leoncio Espinosa
Posada, Miguel Rivero, Eleuterio Sánchez, Adalberto Martínez,
Eduardo Rivera, and Guido Terceros. The last five
were wounded.
In publicly announcing the first battle of the war, we are establishing what will be our norm: revolutionary truth. Our actions have demonstrated the integrity of our words. We regret the shedding of innocent blood by those who died; but peace cannot be built with mortars and machine guns, as those clowns in braided uniforms would have us believe. They try to portray us as common murderers. But there never has been, and there will not be, a single peasant who has any cause to complain of our treatment or our manner of obtaining supplies, except those who, as traitors to their class, served as guides or informers.
Hostilities have begun. In future communiqués we will set forth our revolutionary positions clearly. Today we make an appeal to workers, peasants, intellectuals, to everyone who feels the time has come to confront violence with violence and rescue a country being sold off in great slabs to Yankee monopolies, and raise the standard of living of our people, who grow hungrier every day.
National Liberation Army of Bolivia
Copyright: © 2005 Aleida March, Che Guevara Studies Center and Ocean Press. Reprinted with their permission. Not to be reproduced in any form without the written permission of Ocean Press. For further information contact Ocean Press at [email protected] and via its website at www.oceanbooks.com.au.