Down the steep cobbled streets of La Paz,
coca-chewing Indians trotted under huge packs of bundled alpaca hides.
In the market sun, Indian women in outlandish derby hats and
bright-colored skirts haggled over little piles of shelled corn. It was
winter, the good time in the Andes. The Indians were not even aware that political storms
threatened the peace of La Paz. But among Bolivia's propertied rulers, the one-in-ten who have a vote,
there was crisis. The uneasy coalition of “national unity” that
President Enrique Hertzog set up as an aftermath to last year's
lamppost revolution had nearly collapsed. Conservatives, long weary of seeing a Marxist preside over the Chamber
of Deputies, had worked up the strength to oust Jose Antonio Arze, the
green-eyed ex-Williams College professor who is also boss of the Left
Revolutionary Party . That very evening, when the President
entertained the Cabinet and others at dinner, the two P.I.R. ministers
chilled the turkey by handing in their resignations. Next day Foreign
Minister Luis Fernando Guachalla, whom Hertzog nosed out of the
presidency last January, by only 279 votes, also called it quits. Hastily Hertzog summoned his Conservatives, told them that busting his
coalition would be the best way of bringing the totalitarian followers
of the late Dictator Gualberto Villarroel to power. That did the trick.
He reformed his Government of national unity in time for Guachalla,
again Foreign Minister, to go to Rio for Bolivia. But he still had not
found a place for Arze. Last week President and onetime Physician Hertzog was calmly prescribing
for the colds of palace callers. The barefooted Indians still swarmed
unconcerned past the palace windows. Cracked Juan Pacheco, a cholo
fruit vendor: “I know nothing about this mess, but all politicians are
cut with the same scissors. They would give their necks to stay in
power—and maybe they will.”
