Alfredo Ovando Candía Alfredo Ovando Candía ( 6 April 1918 – 24 January 1982 ) was a Bolivian president and dictator ( 1964 – 66 and 1969 – 70 ) , general and political figure . Early years . Ovando was born in Cobija and 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 . The 1964 coup d ' état and the co - presidency . 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 of 1966 , when Barrientos resigned in order to register himself as a candidate . At that point Ovando became sole President , 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 . Armed forces commander and president - in - waiting , 1966 - 69 . Uncharismatic but tenacious , Ovando was biding his time , counting on the fact that he would be the logical choice to run for elections once Barrientos ' term ended in 1970 , perhaps with some electoral " help " from the outgoing administration . Soon , major differences emerged between Ovando and the president , however , especially in regard to the massacre of miners at Siglo XX in June 1967 , and the so - called Arguedas Affair of 1968 . In early 1967 , a guerrilla force had been discovered to be operating in the rural Bolivian southwest under the leadership of the Argentine - Cuban revolutionary Ernesto " Che " Guevara . While the popular insurgency was eventually crushed by the US - trained Bolivian military troops under American CIA command , Guevara was captured and executed in October 1967 . This event fostered a major spin - off scandal that surfaced in 1968 . That year , Barrientos ' trusted friend and Minister of Interior , Antonio Arguedas , disappeared with the captured diary of Che Guevara , which soon surfaced in Havana . From abroad , Arguedas confessed himself to have been all along a clandestine Marxist supporter , and denounced Barrientos and many of his aides as being on the CIA ' s payroll . This event embarrassed US military School of the Americas ( SOA ) graduate Barrientos as a US - controlled puppet , and prompted Ovando to distance himself from the president with an eye to the projected 1970 elections . The US SOA notoriously trained many Latin American dictators and death squads in counterinsurgency tactics and torture and disappearance techniques . The worries proved unnecessary , for Barrientos perished in a tragic helicopter crash on April 27 , 1969 . His Vice - President , a little - known Christian - Democrat politician named Luis Adolfo Siles , was sworn as President soon thereafter , in accordance to the Constitution . Siles ' poor relations with Ovando led Siles to support the candidacy of the popular Mayor of La Paz , Armando Escobar , as the true successor of the now constantly eulogized Barrientos , threatening to spoil the carefully laid plans of Ovando . Furthermore , Ovando had been undergoing a political metamorphosis , and had come to conclude that he had to move to the Left in order to be acceptable as President in the ideologically super - charged atmosphere of the late 1960s . The changes he planned to institute could be difficult to enact in the presence of a potentially hostile Congress . For these reasons , Ovando decided not to wait for the elections ( which no one could guarantee he could win , with the popular Escobar as candidate ) and on September 26 , 1969 , he executed a coup d ' état that overthrew Siles . The 1969 - 70 Ovando dictatorship . 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 . The October 1970 coup and retirement . On October 6 , 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 otherwise never participated in active politics again . He died in La Paz on January 4 , 1982 .