Former Bolivian General Gary Prado in his office in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, in 2017. Image Alliance (Image Alliance via Getty Image)
Bolivian general Gary Prado has died at the age of 84 in the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra. Prado rose to fame after capturing guerrilla leader Che Guevara in 1967 while he was fighting in southern Bolivia. That same year, the Bolivian Congress proclaimed him a national hero for his defense of the national territory against what was considered a “subversive foreign invasion” when another military man, General René Barrientos, was in power.
Prado distanced himself from the positions of the military right and in the 1970s, when he already held the rank of major, opposed the dictatorship of General Hugo Banzer (1971-1978), which led to his dismissal from military career and went into exile in Paraguay . After the fall of Banzer, he resumed his post in the Bolivian army and was appointed planning minister in the cabinet of military successor David Pereda. Since then, he has been considered an “institutionalist” soldier, that is, one of the group of officers looking for ways to return political power to civilians.
He was also commander of the Military Academy and after the coup of General Luis García Meza that assassinated the socialist leader Marcelo Quiroga, he was temporarily marginalized, but later García Meza, due to the personal relationship he had with him, appointed him commander of the important 8th Division based in Santa Cruz. This designation was to radically change his life. His position at the time required him to serve as the primary political authority in that region. In 1981, a group of far-right militants led by regionalist politician Carlos Valverde Barbery seized the Tita oil field, owned by the oil company Occidental. Gary Prado approached the location and, without firing a shot, freed the hostage that the irregular group had taken and convinced Valverde to surrender, promising that he and his group would go into exile in Paraguay. As the group disarmed, one of the automatic rifles they placed on a table went off and the projectile pierced Prado’s spine, who has since been paralyzed from the waist down.
He retired from the army with the rank of general and devoted himself to politics and writing. During democracy, he was an associate of the party that promoted the “institutionalist” military during dictatorships, the Movimiento de la Izquierda Revolucionaria de Jaime Paz. When he was the country’s president between 1989 and 1993, Prado held senior positions and represented Bolivia as ambassador to the UK. He became one of the figures of the Bolivian political class during the period of “agreed democracy” that ruled the country until Evo Morales came to power.
He was the author of several military history books related to the Guevarista guerrilla period. The most famous and re-released of them is titled How I Captured Che. La guerilla immolada was also printed. Testimony and analysis of a protagonist. The end of his life, however, was anything but the quiet retirement of an enlightened soldier. He participated in the opposition of his region’s elite to the economic and social changes that President Morales tried to push through from 2006 onwards. He once accused him of “murdering Che”. Prado has always denied knowing the execution order for the Cuban-Argentinian militant, which most historians believe came from the military high command and from President Barrientos himself. Guevara’s executioner was Sergeant Mario Terán, who died a year ago.
In 2008 and 2009, radical sectors of Santa Cruz, presumably wanting to seize the political momentum to achieve independence for this region, hired mercenaries and formed a militia that carried out a number of attacks without casualties. On April 16, 2009, a police squad intervened at the Hotel Las Américas, where this militia was staying, killing three of its members, including their boss, the Bolivian-Hungarian Eduardo Rózsa-Flores, and arresting two others. The Morales government accused this group of planning an assassination attempt on the president. After that, a norm against the financing of terrorism was passed and other measures were taken, which forced several regional leaders into exile. He also initiated a trial that became known as the “terrorism case” and would become famous. It lasted ten years and only achieved the punishment of a few participants. Gary Prado was accused of having supported the Rózsa-Flores adventure with his military knowledge. Like most of the other defendants, he denied that the terrorist cell ever existed. During the trial he was placed under house arrest because of his health and age. In 2020, during Jeanine Áñez’s internal government, the process ended and was suspended.
Subscribe to EL PAÍS to follow all the news and read without limits.
subscribe to
Subscribe to the EL PAÍS America newsletter here and receive all the latest news from the region