by Mitch Weiss
The report said Bolivian guerrillas stood in contrast to pro-Castro guerrillas in Venezuela, Guatemala, and Colombia, in their ability to seize the initiative in encounters with the military. The guerrillas were “well-trained and disciplined” and “well-schooled” in Che’s insurgency techniques—whether or not he was with them. Analysts attributed the guerrrillas’ success to “totally inept” Bolivian counterinsurgency operations and noted Barrientos’s need for a quick, decisive victory.
They also speculated that the Bolivian army posts tended to alienate the populations around them, terrorizing local inhabitants, molesting women, “and opening themselves to unfavorable comparison with the well-disciplined guerrillas.”
In the end, the report concluded that the Bolivians were quickly losing ground. “Should the guerrillas continue succeeding in Bolivia, their experiences and methods are certain to be emulated in other Latin American countries.”
* * *
On a Sunday night in late August, Mario Salazar was getting ready for the dance. Every weekend, the Bolivian men gathered around a small band in the La Esperanza plaza. When the right music started up, they paired up and danced the Cueca, a traditional Bolivian folk dance.
It looked a bit like square dancing to the Americans—the partners wheeled and turned around one another, and all the pairs moved together in a simple choreography round the plaza, with white handkerchiefs fluttering like doves from every right hand. The partners never touched each other, but maintained contact through facial expressions and mirrored movements.
It was a mating dance, and very seductive when the beat was slow. And in La Esperanza, when the soldiers danced, they danced with one another. The Bolivian trainees were forbidden any contact with local women.
To Shelton’s crew, it was a little weird. Where they came from, men didn’t dance with men, not to mention wave around their handkerchiefs.
But Salazar didn’t care what they thought. Dancing was another way of relaxing after a long week of training. “We couldn’t have contact with the women in the village. That was forbidden. We were isolated. For us, this made us feel like we were home,” he recalled.
Salazar was happy in La Esperanza. These had been the best months of his life, the most purposeful. He got up each morning and ran to start training. The most important part, to him, was the growing camaraderie with his fellow soldiers. When a Ranger fell in the field, they all rushed to pick him up. When someone had a bad day shooting, others volunteered to stay afterward to help him out.
Life in the camp was hermetic and intense, sometimes tragic. In July, one of the men was killed when a gun went off accidentally in the barracks. A few weeks later, a Bolivian sergeant took his platoon out for mortar training on a Sunday afternoon, without clearing the exercise with his peers. A mortar fell short of its target, killing the sergeant and injuring several of his men. Because none of the officers knew an exercise was going on, the explosion brought the whole camp running.
Hapka and the medical team led the way, starting emergency triage and IV lines. They worked feverishly to stabilize men who were bleeding profusely. Soldiers loaded the wounded onto a truck, which sped off to a Santa Cruz hospital. But when the injured soldiers arrived, there was no doctor on duty. One soldier died there, but the others survived.
The accident pointed out just how serious the training was, Salazar recalled.
“This was not like the regular army training. In the past, soldiers trained, but knew they would go home. Here you knew there was a chance you would never go home. You could be in combat. You could die.”
The soldiers knew they were all in this together, that they would be called upon to save their nation from the insurgents. They shared a sense of machismo—they were heroes-to-be. At the same time, they were homesick farm boys. At night, when they weren’t on maneuvers, the men lay in their bunks in the dark and talked about their villages and families. Family ties were strong, and the rhythms of village life were bred in the bones of most of the soldiers.
That’s why they danced—or why they didn’t. Salazar’s friend Luis was from a small village outside Vallegrande. Salazar asked him if he was going along to the Cueca that night. Luis said no, he was too tired.
Salazar sat down on the end of his friend’s bunk and gave him a shove. “What’s up, man?”
“Well,” Luis said, “when I’m dancing, I think of my wife. She’s home all alone and I wonder if I will ever see her again. I wonder if I will ever hold her in my arms. So if I go to the dance, I will feel bad. I’ll start thinking about her. It’s better I stay here.”
Salazar smiled.
“I don’t have a wife, but I understand. I think of my mother a lot. This dance, this keeps me busy. It keeps me from thinking about them. It takes my mind off everything. That’s why I’m going.”
“I know we’re here because we have to go and fight. But I also want to see my wife again. I wonder if it’s worth it,” Luis said and sighed.
Salazar didn’t have an answer. But he understood Luis’s fear. No one knew what would happen once they left La Esperanza. If they fought the guerrillas, some of them would probably die. Soldiers on both sides were dying.
Salazar walked to the square, lost in thoughts of home. He had written, but he hadn’t heard back from them. He tried to put it out of his mind—no one at home felt very comfortable writing things. But Luis had reminded him of home, and for a moment, he felt lonely.
He spotted Prado standing outside the casino, a sort of club for village leaders.
Prado hailed him. “How are you doing, my friend?”
They had become friendly during training. Prado liked the way the young soldier handled himself in the field. For Salazar, Prado represented everything that was right with the Bolivian military.
They walked together to the plaza. Salazar told Prado he was anxious to get in the field to find the guerrillas. The officer said it wouldn’t be long now; in just a few weeks they’d be finished with La Esperanza and out there on the hunt. Then they would know if all the training had paid off—if they were indeed ready. But no one would have to ask Salazar if he was ready. He would go tonight, if they told him to. Even if it meant missing the dance.
* * *
Nighttime training was critical. Rangers might have to move under cover of darkness, through dense jungles, deep water, uphill and down. Ability to move in the night is a tactical advantage in battle; it enables a unit to stay a step ahead of the enemy.
As their training progressed, the men spent more of their nights on maneuvers.
It was Chapa’s turn to ride along with C Company. They were conducting a night attack. He knew the drill.
There was no moonlight. Clouds hid the stars.
Chapa ordered the men to move out. The soldiers scrambled as quietly as they could down the trail in the dark, straining to see the winding path. They moved toward a thicket of trees along the edge of the training fields. Chapa was especially careful at night. You never knew what was hiding out there. Sometimes a bird or animal would suddenly shriek from the darkness alongside and scare the shit out of everyone.
Chapa had a good sixth sense for night maneuvers. His eyes were wide open and he watched every step. He saw the man in front of him duck his head under a low-hanging tree branch, and as he passed below it, Chapa felt something heavy strike his forehead. What the hell? he thought. A hot tingle shot down his arms and legs. He felt incredibly weak—his knees buckled. Salazar was just behind him and saw Chapa collapse to the ground. He sounded the alarm.
“He’s down. Something’s wrong. We need a medic,” Salazar shouted to the other soldiers. He sent several men running back to camp. They ran as fast as they could up the dark pathway. Out of breath, they could barely get the words out.
“Chapa . . . not feeling good . . . fainted,” one of the soldiers said.
Shelton stayed calm. He grabbed Hapka,
the medic, and told the others they would need help. The Special Forces team bolted down to the tree line.
They found Chapa flat on the ground. He could barely move. He was dazed, fading in and out of consciousness. “We need to get him out of here,” Shelton said.
They carried Chapa back to the first-aid station. Hapka and Peterson began working. They cut off Chapa’s clothes and closely examined his face, body, legs—the only injury they found was a large bump on his forehead. Chapa was mumbling that his skin was on fire. He was tingling all over. His arms and legs were beginning to swell. They hadn’t found any fang marks, but the symptoms said snakebite.
The area was infested with venomous tree vipers. Chapa was in for a fight, the medics said. Hapka treated him for anaphylactic shock, injecting cortisone between his fingers and toes. Nothing seemed to work. They had to get Chapa to a hospital, the medic said.
But how?
It was nighttime. The road to Santa Cruz was all but closed after dark, and the trip would take more than two hours, if they were lucky. Hapka radioed Fort Gulick and asked for the group surgeon to be called in. It took a while. In the meantime the Green Berets huddled around Chapa, taking turns applying cold, wet towels to his body while they waited for the call back.
Chapa was like a brother to most of them. He was from Alamo, Texas. He had joined the army in 1953, when he was twenty years old.
Chapa did everything the right way, and he was a natural teacher—he excelled in marksmanship. In La Esperanza, he stayed late with the conscripts, patiently showing them the correct way to level a gun, line up the sights, and squeeze off a shot. He was also the one who’d given the recruits their how-to at the trench latrine.
The men in C Company were ordered back to quarters, but they were a long way from sleepy. They drifted back outside to wait for news.
The night was cool, and many villagers worked late, enjoying the break from the heat. Word spread quickly among them—one of the American soldiers was badly hurt. Villagers gathered outside the first-aid station. The Roca family sent one of the boys to see if the victim might be Graham, and when he returned with the answer they wanted, they peppered him with more questions.
“But which soldier was hurt?” they asked, all at once. “What happened to him? Will he live?” The family finally gathered up their things and headed up to the sugar mill to find out for themselves.
The word then passed through the crowd: “snakebite.” Tree viper. Everyone knew how deadly tree vipers were. They blended into the scenery and struck without warning. So many villagers, lots of them children, had been killed and injured over the years by snakes that they all carried machetes with them for protection.
Finally the surgeon called back from Panama. The crowd fell silent as the medic shouted down the line. Yes, they’d treated him for shock. Yes, they’d injected cortisone. Cold compresses, pressure . . . Yes, yes, yes.
The surgeon ran out of suggestions. The medics had already tried everything. What they were doing was all they could do.
Hapka sighed. They had to find a way to save Chapa, but Hapka had reached the bottom of his medical bag. If they were in a hospital, he could give him antivenom. But there were no hospitals out here. They couldn’t do anything but pray.
So the soldiers huddled around Chapa, each man making whatever prayer he knew. Shelton held out hope. Chapa was a tough bastard. The hours dragged on. The sergeant’s skin took on a bruised look as the poison spread.
Valderomas stood in the dark outside. His neighbor told him the news and ended with the words “I don’t think he’s going to live.” Valderomas peeked in the first-aid window and saw that it was Chapa—a happy man who always said “good day” when he passed. What a shame. Valderomas felt a little tingle, remembering how a snakebite felt. And then he remembered: The healer, Manosanta Humerundo.
When a snake bit Valderomas years ago, his father had called in Manosanta—the Holy Hand—a folk healer from a neighboring village. He was sure the old man was still alive.
The sun was rising. Valderomas didn’t wait another minute. He took off at a fast walk, fast as he could go with dignity, down a grassy path, brushing back tree limbs and trailing vines. When he was clear of the village, he broke into a run.
A few minutes later, the holy man listened to Valderomas panting out his story. He was used to people showing up at his house without warning. He put some items into a black leather bag, locked the door behind him, and walked back to the camp with Valderomas.
They approached the first-aid station, and the old man knocked gently at the doorsill.
“I can help the soldier,” he said. Shelton and the others were doubtful. Manosanta was tall, with dark brown skin. The flowing brown robe and white beads around his neck would have fit in at a hippy commune.
The villagers spoke up: Manosanta was a medicine man. He knew all the ancient remedies, and when they were sick they depended on his help. He was an honorable man, they said. Please, let him look at Chapa.
Shelton glanced at Hapka and nodded his head yes. They had nothing to lose.
Manosanta examined Chapa. The man was unconscious; his breath came in ragged, shallow gasps. The medicine man noticed the wound on Chapa’s forehead—a mark he’d had seen many times before. It was a snakebite, he said. He knew the cure. Manosanta asked them to find a piece of raw meat. The soldiers scrambled to the supply shed, and from some deep hiding place a steak was produced. The medicine man laid the slab of meat on Chapa’s forehead and bound it on with a bandage. He whispered a prayer, then turned to the soldiers.
“He will live,” he said. “Just keep the meat on the wound; it will absorb the poison.”
He stepped into the dawn and headed home.
The Americans were skeptical. A steak? Really?
But nothing else had worked.
Within a few minutes, Chapa seemed to breathe more easily. The swelling went down. The purplish bruises stopped spreading. Chapa woke up about an hour later, confused but feeling much better. They could tell he was going to make it. His friends told him to rest, and warned him not to look in a mirror.
When he went back to sleep, they removed the steak. They didn’t want Chapa to think that the Special Forces medics had used voodoo medicine to cure him. “That was our little secret,” Peterson said.
A few days later, Chapa was back in the fields, helping the soldiers train. Valderomas smiled when they passed each other in the village. The healer did his job, Valderomas thought.
He was glad he had played a small role in saving Chapa’s life. He was a good man. The soldiers meant no harm. And even though they still kept him up at night, Valderomas stopped complaining.
CHAPTER 16
Yado del Yeso
A white apron hung in the trees, blowing softly in the breeze.
The cloud-like white stood out in the scrubby brush of the Bolivian countryside. From cover, Captain Mario Vargas Salinas could see the guerrillas—first one, now almost a half dozen—wading in the dark water of the Rio Grande. Swollen from the rainy season, the river cut through the valley, its swift current pushing against them as they crossed.
Vargas had his men set up in perfect position on the opposite bank. Alerted to the crossing point by a farmer, they had marched hours to get in position. Now they only had to wait a few more seconds.
Patience, Vargas thought. Patience.
In a farmhouse in the distance, Honorato Rojas tried to busy his hands while he waited for the bursts of gunfire. Only after would he feel safe. The day before, a guerrilla band had visited here. They asked him what place was best to cross the river. The Rio Grande was not wide, but it was deep in places. The fast currents made it dangerous unless it was done at the right time and place.
Rojas had helped the guerrillas earlier in the year. He kept a country store nearby, and the men bought supplies from him. A man who called himself Inti tol
d Rojas that he was the leader. Inti persuaded Rojas to give him information about other families in the neighborhood. Rojas cooperated, and the guerrillas went away. He was surprised to see them again, asking about the river.
Rojas told the guerrillas he would take a look at the fords and find the safest spot for them to cross. Instead, he double-crossed them.
Rojas knew Bolivian soldiers were in the area, too. So after the guerrillas left, he sent his twelve-year-old son to look for them. The first soldier the boy found was Private Fidel Rea, who was fishing in a stream on his off-duty afternoon. The boy relayed his father’s message: Three guerrillas were at his farm and he needed help. Rea knew this was important. He left his fishing tackle and sprinted all the way back to his post with the news. The day was waning, but Vargas did not wait to act. He marched his men ten miles to Rojas’s farm. By the time they arrived, it was the middle of the night. They waited.
At dawn, Vargas spotted a woman walking down a dirt path with several small children in tow. It was Rojas’s wife. She confirmed the story about the guerrillas and told Vargas it was safe to come down—the men had left.
Vargas went in the house and talked to Rojas, then devised a plan. The guerrillas were to return to Rojas’s house that day, Rojas didn’t know when. When they did, he would show them the exact spot to ford the river. He would do it by displaying a white apron at the crossing point. When the guerrillas spotted the signal, they would know “the coast is clear.”
Now Vargas could see the apron hanging in the brush. It had been months since the first ambush in the Nancahuazu River canyon. At times, it seemed he’d been chasing ghosts; his troops were always one step behind. But if Rojas was right, Vargas would finally be in the right place at the right time. He would get a chance to pay the guerrillas back for all of their success.
It had been twelve hours since they arrived, and some of his soldiers were getting antsy. Hell, he was getting antsy. All of them were stiff and tired. Suddenly, the guerrillas appeared out of the brush and waded into the water.