Shots & Plots

The DC-4. droning west from Santa Cruz to the Bolivian capital of La Paz with 47 political prisoners on board, had been aloft only five minutes one morning last week when one of the passengers asked a fellow captive, Andres Saucedo, for a cigarette. Imperceptibly, all the others strained to hear the reply from Saucedo. a cashiered colonel and their leader by common agreement. "In flight, my friend?" Saucedo answered loudly. With that prearranged signal, the prisoners overwhelmed their three guards and took control of the plane. The DC-4 dipped a wing, swung around, headed toward Salta, Argentina. 500 miles to the south. There, three hours later, the prisoners stepped out of captivity and into safe exile.

With only two months of his four-year term behind him, Bolivia's President Hernan Siles Zuazo is already deep in the distasteful business of prisoners and exiles, plots and shots. The tumult started a fortnight ago. when 4.000 members of the city-dwelling middle class, styling themselves "hunger marchers," burst into the streets of La Paz to demonstrate against the country's sky-high inflation. But the marchers' acts were not precisely those of the desperately hungry: they burned the pressroom of the government's daily La Nacion and Radio Illimani studios. In ensuing fights with policemen, five persons were killed and 25 injured.

President Siles Zuazo took a searching look behind the riots and decided that he saw the hand of the opposition Socialist Falange, a right-wing party that draws its support from the middle class, retired officers and the Roman Catholic clergy. The President abruptly put an end to the policy of national pacification proclaimed upon his inauguration. Toughs from the government's party patrolled the streets with guns and sticks of dynamite. The police jailed 300 oppositionists all over the country, including those who later staged the airborne mutiny.

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