The Captives in the Hills

"Tell them in La Paz that the in portant thing is not to send the troops," pleaded USIA Official Thomas Martin. "If they bring in troops, we're finished."

There the captives sat last week --Martin and three other Americans, a Dutchman, a German and eleven Bolivians -- frightened and endangered pawns in a medieval power struggle high in the Bolivian Andes. Dark-featured Indian women, wives of rebellious tin miners, stood guard over them in a shabby union hall at the 14,000-ft.-high Siglo Veinte mine, 135 miles from La Paz. The women cradled tommy guns and tucked dynamite caps beneath their bulging petticoats. On the floor below, just a bullet's zing through the wooden boards should fighting break out, 50 cases of dynamite were stored.

Rivals in Power. The 17 prisoners were being kept as hostages, kidnaped by the miners in a desperate effort to trade them for two left-wing union leaders held for a long string of crimes. But more than the arrest of the two union leaders was involved: the miners were in open defiance of the government in La Paz. And their leader, Juan Lechin, 50, Bolivia's far-leftist Vice President, was using their grievances as a defiant bid for power against Victor Paz Estenssoro, Bolivia's constitutional President, who intends to run for re-election next May.

Both Lechin and Paz are members of Bolivia's ruling M.N.R. Party, and together they plotted the 1952 revolution that toppled the country's feudal tin-mining aristocracy. But once in power, Paz and Lechin swiftly became bitter rivals. As Minister of Mines, Lechin, who is part Arab and part Indian, styled himself a "Trotskyite Communist," turned the 40,000-man miners' union into his private militia, and proceeded to featherbed the nationalized mines with 6,000 unneeded workers. The miners called him "El Maestro"--but the once profitable mines became a shambles, losing money at the rate of $8,500,000 a year. Lechin's miners elected him president of the entire Bolivian Workers Federation. By 1960, too powerful to be ignored any longer, Lechin was made Vice President on the ticket with Paz and started plotting to undercut the President himself.

Last year when Paz gained the upper hand, Lechin chose semi-exile as Bolivia's Ambassador to Rome. Paz then set about reorganizing the nationalized mines that normally produce 90% of the country's export income. To win $35 million in foreign help (from the U.S., West Germany and the Inter-American Development Bank), Paz reformed the mine management, reduced the power of the unions, and boldly fired more than 1,000 unneeded miners.

Call to Revolt. Lechin hurried home from Rome to fight. In radio broadcasts to the tin miners, he accused Paz of selling out to the "imperialists." At a labor rally, under a banner proclaiming THE WORKING CLASS AGAINST THAT CALAMITY CALLED THE ALLIANCE FOR PROGRESS, Lechin announced his own presidential candidacy.

One night two weeks ago, police laid a roadside ambush for two longtime Lechin lieutenants, Federico Escobar and Irineo Pimentel, who were wanted on a series of charges ranging from embezzlement to manslaughter. After a blazing gunfight, the two union men were dragged off to jail. When word of the arrests reached the mines, raging workers surged through the streets, tossing sticks of dynamite into the air.

By sheer coincidence, four Americans--USIA officers Martin, 27, and Michael A. Kristula, 41; Bernard Rifkin, 52, labor adviser to the Agency for International Development; and Robert Fergerstrom, 26, a Peace Corps volunteer--were in the area to deliver a $15,000 check to finance two new schools. As they sat in the home of the Dutch manager of the Siglo Veinte mine, a twelve-ton Mercedes truck rumbled up, and out piled 60 miners. Waving Czech mausers and pistols, shouting "Gringo! Gringo!" they ourst into the house and hauled out the foreigners. By dawn, 17 hostages were prisoners in Siglo Veinte's union building. A radio message went out from the mines to the government in La Paz: the hostages in exchange for the two union leaders "or else." Lechin casually denied all responsibility in the kidnaping: "It is a tradition in the mines."

Full Assistance. The U.S. Government was outraged. Secretary of State Rusk fired off a wire to Lechin holding him personally responsible for the hostages' safety. An angry President Johnson immediately offered the Bolivian government "full assistance"--whatever it wanted, including arms and men--to secure the prisoners' release. In Bolivia there was talk of helicopter-equipped U.S. Army Special Forces troops standing by in Panama, ready to fly to Bolivia for a lightning rescue.

Fearing the effect of such a U.S. offer on the already aroused miners, the Bolivian government quickly denied that any U.S. arms aid was requested--or needed. President Paz ordered 3,000 troops to encircle the mine area, then made his own position clear: there would be no exchange of prisoners, and the miners must release their captives. But neither Paz nor the miners would give in. To send the army in to rescue the hostages, Paz feared, might bring on their deaths and plunge the nation into bloody civil war.

Desperate Appeals. As the tension increased, a handful of newsmen, among them TIME Correspondent Gavin Scott, was permitted to visit the dingy mine standing on a barren mountain. He found the men held in two rooms decorated with bright pictures of Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. They were treated well enough, they said, but their dynamite-laden female wardens were getting extremely nervous. Both the mother and wife of arrested Union Leader Pimentel were among the guards. Reported Scott: "The women are surly, well armed, impulsive and dangerous. Even if the men wanted to relent and give up the hostages, it would be difficult without the safe return of Escobar and Pimentel. The authority, such as it is, lies in the primitive breasts of these bowler-hatted women."

From their jail cell in La Paz, the two union men made a taped radio broadcast to the miners, pleading for the release of the hostages to prevent a " bloody massacre." The miners refused, believing that their leaders were coerced into making the plea. Lechin himself returned to La Paz, and in a desperate attempt to make a deal, offered to resign as Vice President and return the hostages if Paz Estenssoro would free the two union leaders and three other leftists in jail. "It was a mistake in the first place to take the hostages," he admitted.

Finally, as troops advanced toward the mines, Lechin seemed to be impressed by the government's determination. In a radio appeal to miners, a weary, red-eyed Lechin urged them to honor Paz's conditions for settlement--assurances of a fair trial for the two jailed union leaders if the hostages are freed. Lechin then said he was leaving for Siglo Veinte to make a personal appeal, and President Paz Estenssoro announced terms had been agreed on and that the prisoners would soon be released. Even so, said a U.S. Embassy official, "We won't be happy until we see.the hostages right here in La Paz."

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