Bolivia’s Optimistic President Is Back in Power--for the Fourth Time

When a Latin American ambassador asked Victor Paz Estenssoro how he would pay Bolivia’s foreign debt and halt runaway inflation, Bolivia’s new president replied, “With optimism, because we don’t have any other resource.”

If there is one thing that Paz has shown consistently during his 50 stormy years in politics, it is optimism.

His career has gone from heady heights of revolutionary power and national adulation to the depths of political defeat and exile. But his ambition to govern has never waned.

Paz, who will be 78 years old Oct. 2, has made a political comeback and is serving as the president of Bolivia for the fourth time since 1952--at an age when most people have retired.

Governing this poor, turbulent Andean country of 5 million people has always been like riding a bucking bronco. Paz is back in the saddle at a moment when Bolivia is undergoing its most serious crisis since it lost the Chaco War to Paraguay in 1936.

Tin Baron’s Lawyer

Paz was then working as a lawyer. One of his employers was Patino Enterprises, the biggest of the privately owned tin mines in Bolivia. The so-called tin barons--Simon Patino, Carlos Aramayo and Mauricio Hochschild--then ran Bolivia’s economic and political life.

Paz, the son of a bank manager, had a middle-class upbringing in the provincial capitals of Tarija and Oruro. He studied law and economics at universities here.

He was not a combatant in the Chaco War, but like many other professionals and intellectuals of his generation, he was deeply shaken by this country’s defeat and the loss to Paraguay of a large expanse of disputed territory. He became a militant for radical political change.

In 1940, he helped found the Nationalist Revolutionary Movement, a political party that set for itself the mission of creating a modern state in Bolivia by mobilizing the middle class around nationalist goals and giving land and the vote to Indian peasants who were the majority here.

The movement got its first taste of power when a nationalist military group led by Maj. Gualberto Villaroel seized power in 1943. Paz became finance minister of that government, which was ousted in a bloody revolution in 1946. He escaped into exile in Argentina.

Military Annuls Vote

In 1951, the Nationalist Revolutionary Movement won a national election with Paz as its candidate for president, but the military annulled the vote. The next year, Hernan Siles Zuazo, then Paz’s closest political ally, led party militiamen to victory over the Bolivian army in the historic revolution of 1952. Paz returned in triumph from exile and was installed as president with Siles as his vice president.

When Paz’s administration nationalized the big tin mines and divided large estates among the Indian peasants, he became the most powerful popular leader in Bolivia of this century.

In 1956, Siles was elected president to succeed Paz, and the latter went to London as ambassador for four years. He returned in 1960 and was easily elected to a second term. But his party was split by internal rivalries, and the Bolivian armed forces were rebuilding from the defeat that Siles had dealt them in 1952.

Paz decided to run for a third term in 1964, alienating Siles and other party leaders, who accused him of tampering with the constitution. Paz turned to the military for support and named air force Gen. Rene Barrientos as his vice presidential running mate. Paz won the election, but three months into his new term, he was unseated by a military uprising led by Barrientos.

Paz again fled into exile, and his political career seemed in eclipse. But he retained influence over loyal party members from abroad. He never lost hope of returning, and in 1971 he gave his support to a successful anti-Communist military revolt led by then-Col. Hugo Banzer.

Parties Were Banished

Paz returned briefly, hoping for legalization of political parties. But Banzer, who assumed the presidency, banished parties and ruled without a Congress. Paz was soon back in exile.

In 1978, Banzer called an election for president. Paz returned and ran a bad third in an election that was later annulled due to fraud.

In 1979, Paz confronted Siles, his old ally. Siles was the candidate of a leftist coalition, and he beat Paz. But congressional maneuvers led to a stalemate, then to an interim government and finally to another military coup.

Again in 1980, elections were held. Siles beat both Paz and Banzer, the latter having become the leader of a conservative party. But the military again intervened, and it was not until 1982 that Siles was seated as president.

Paz once again seemed to be at the end of his political life. But Siles’ coalition fell apart as Bolivia’s economic problems deepened with declining prices for tin and rising labor conflicts. When inflation went out of control, Siles cut short his term and called new elections.

Paz seized on this opportunity, winning back the support of the Nationalist Revolutionary Movement and the peasant vote that was always his strength. Although Banzer defeated Paz badly in the cities, Paz’s party captured a plurality in Congress, which elected him to the presidency.

Paz has outlived many of his early supporters, and others have abandoned him in political disputes.

A white-haired grandfather who wears spectacles, Paz showed during the campaign that he is still vigorous. He rode horseback to rural hamlets and logged many hours in helicopters. He sometimes spoke five times a day.

Paz is a pipe-smoking intellectual who has been a university professor and has lectured at UCLA, among other institutions, while in exile.

In recent years, he and his second wife, Teresa (Chi Chi) Cortez, a former airline stewardess, have been living at a farm in Terija where Paz grows grapes. From his first marriage, Paz has three children.