RARE "Bolivian President" Alfredo Ovando Candía Signed 3X5 Card for Sale

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RARE "Bolivian President" Alfredo Ovando Candía Signed 3X5 Card For Sale

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RARE "Bolivian President" Alfredo Ovando Candía Signed 3X5 Card:
$499.99

Up for sale "Bolivian President" Alfredo Ovando Candía Hand Signed 3X5 Card.

ES-4258E

Alfredo Ovando Candía (6

April 1918 – 24 January 1982) was a Bolivian president and dictator (1964–66 figure. Ovando was born in Cobija from an upper-middle class family of immigrants

parents from Extremadura, Spain and Piedmont, Italy. He started his long military career in the

early 1930s, when he served in the Chaco War against Paraguay. Originally rather apolitical, he was chosen (among

others) to lead the reconstituted Armed Forces of Bolivia in the aftermath of

the 1952 Revolution that installed in power the reformist Revolutionary Nationalist

Movement party, better known as the MNR. Ovando lived through

the relative deprivation, reduced budgets, and loss of prestige of the defeated

Bolivian army during the early years of MNR rule. By the early 1960s,

President Víctor Paz Estenssoro came

to rely more heavily on the military in the face of growing political divisions

among the governing elites. Equally as important in this rebirth was the

considerable pressure exerted by the United States to modernize and equip the

troops for a decidedly more political role: that of fighting possible

Cuba-styled Communist insurgencies. When Paz Estenssoro amended the

Constitution in 1964 in order to allow himself to run for re-election (a

largely frowned-upon move in the largely personalistic world of Bolivian

politics), General Ovando, along with the Vice-President and former head of the

Air Force René Barrientos, toppled

Paz from power. They ruled together in a Junta (sometimes called "The

Co-Presidency) until January 1966, when Barrientos resigned in order to

leading the country to the elections from which the popular Barrientos emerged

victorious. With the new president having taken the oath of office in August

1966, Ovando returned to his post as Commander of the Bolivian Air Forces. Ovando's

short (13 month) dictatorship was difficult and marked by political violence.

Upon taking office, he declared himself in favor of fundamental changes aimed

at enhancing the deplorable living conditions of the vast majority of

Bolivians. To this end, he nationalized the Bolivian operations of the

U.S.-based Gulf Oil Corporation and called on known leftist intellectuals to

become part of his cabinet. Ovando also announced his political adherence to

the principles espoused by other so-called "leftist military" regimes

then in vogue in Latin America, foremost of which were the regimes of

Peru's Juan Velasco and

Panama's Omar Torrijos. Ovando's

populist stance surprised many conservative members of the Bolivian military

and failed to fully satisfy the increasingly more belligerent forces of the

Left, especially the workers and students. Worse, the military (in whose name

he served) had become polarized, with some sectors supporting the President and

even calling for a further leftward turn (General Juan José Torres) and

others criticizing Ovando and urging a more conservative, anti-Communist, and

pro U.S. stance (General Rogelio Miranda). In June 1970, a new Marxist guerrilla

emerged in the lowlands near La Paz, this time constituted mostly by Bolivian

university students aligned with the outlawed Ejército de Liberación Nacional

(National Liberation Army, or ELN). The new guerrilla outbreak was easily

controlled, but Ovando's response had been rather vacillating and timid. He

offered a generous safe haven to guerrillas who gave up the fight, for example,

in contrast to Barrientos' call for "heads on spikes" in 1967. The

forces of the right had had enough. On 6 October 1970, an anti-government coup d'état took place via a junta of commanders of the Bolivian Military. However, the

polarized forces of the military were evenly split. Much blood was shed on the

streets of various major cities, with garrisons fighting each other on behalf

of one camp or the other. Eventually, President Ovando sought asylum in a

foreign embassy, believing all hope was lost. But the leftist military forces

re-asserted themselves under the combative leadership of General Juan José Torres, and

eventually triumphed. Embarrassed by his quick abandonment of the fight, and

worn out by 13 grueling months in office, Ovando agreed to leave the presidency

in the hands of his friend, General Torres. The latter was sworn in and

rewarded Ovando with the Bolivian ambassadorship in Spain.

Ovando remained in Madrid until 1978, when he returned

to Bolivia. In his latter years, he supported the progressive UDP alliance

of former President Hernán Siles, but