Luis García Meza Tejada (b. August 8, 1932, La Paz, Bolivia) is a former Bolivian dictator. A native of La Paz, he was a career military officer who rose to the rank of general during the reign of dictator Hugo Banzer (1971–78). García Meza became Dictator in 1980.
Prelude to Dictatorship
García Meza became leader of the right-wing faction of the military of Bolivia most disenchanted with the return to civilian rule. Many of the officers involved had been part of the Banzer dictatorship and disliked the investigation of economic and human right abuses by the new Bolivian Congress. Moreover, they tended to regard the decline in popularity of the Carter administration in the United States. as an indicator that soon a Republican administration would replace it—one more amenable to the kind of pro-U.S., more hardline anti-communist dictatorship they wanted to reinstall in Bolivia. Ominously, many allegedly had ties to cocaine traffickers and made sure portions of the military acted at their enforcers/protectors in exchange for extensive bribes, which in turn were used to fund the upcoming coup. In this manner, the narcotraffickers were in essence purchasing for themselves the upcoming Bolivian government.
Coup d'etat
This group pressured President Lydia Gueiler (his cousin) to install Gen. García Meza as Commander of the Army. Within months, the Junta of Commanders headed by Garcia Meza forced a violent coup d'etat -- sometimes referred to as the Cocaine Coup—of July 17, 1980. As portions of the citizenry resisted, as they had done in the fail putsch of November 1979, it resulted in dozens of deaths. Allegedly, the Argentinian army unit Batallón de Inteligencia 601 participated in the coup.
The García Meza Dictatorship, 1980-81
Of extremely conservative anti-communist persuasion, García Meza endeavored to bring a Pinochet-style dictatorship that was intended to last 20 years. He immediately outlawed all political parties, exiled opposition leaders, repressed the unions, and muzzled the press. He was backed by former Nazi officer Klaus Barbie and Italian neofascist Stefano Delle Chiaie. Further collaboration came from other European neofascists, most notoriously Ernesto Milá Rodríguez (accused of the Paris synagogue bombing of 1980.<1> Among other foreign collaborators were professional torturers allegedly imported from the notoriously repressive Argentine dictatorship of General Jorge Videla.
The García Meza regime, while brief (its original form ended in 1981), became internationally known for its extreme brutality. The population was repressed in ways as the Banzer dictatorship did. Indeed, some 1,000 people are estimated to have been killed by the Bolivian army and security forces in only 13 months. The administration's chief repressor was the Minister of Interior, Colonel Luis Arce, who cautioned that all Bolivians who may be opposed to the new order should "walk around with their written will under their arms."
The most prominent victim of the dictatorship was the congressman, presidential candidate, and gifted orator Marcelo Quiroga, murdered and "disappeared" soon after the coup. Quiroga had been the chief advocate of bringing to trial the former dictator, General Hugo Banzer (1971–78), for human right violations and economic mismanagement.More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Garc%C3%ADa_Meza_Tejada
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