LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Chaco War
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When the Chaco War ended in 1935, the Roosevelt administration was concerned principally with the growth and diffusion of Fascist regimes in Europe and their increased activities in Latin America. Consequently, the U.S. assembled a cooperative hemispheric security system to counteract these developments in the late 1930s. Besides aiming to stymie the spread of Fascist influence to the Western Hemisphere, the U.S. sought to establish an institutional mechanism to settle intra-regional, interstate conflicts and to provide mutual security to its members.
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By the era of the Chaco War, Bolivia has taken almost no steps towards democracy and has made no attempt to integrate or educate its indigenous Indians (representing more than 80% of the people). The undemocratic nature of the nation is well suggested by the fact that liberal regimes in the first two decades of the 20th century double the size of the electorate - but only from 2.5% to 5% of the population.
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As a consequence of the debacle in the Chaco, Bolivia's army became more politically aware and ready to act as an institution in pursuit of its own political goals. It began by deposing Daniel Salamanca Urey (1931-34), the elitist president who had led the country into its disastrous foreign war. For the first time since 1880, the army returned to power. Although both Bolivia and Paraguay were required by the terms of the armistice to reduce their armies to 5,000 men, Bolivia circumvented the restriction by creating a military police "legion" as an unofficial extension of the army.
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Airpower was largely misused in the Chaco War, particularly by Bolivia. Bolivia enjoyed almost total air superiority until the last days of the conflict. But it did her little good. Her commanders ignored aerial reconnaissance, though the information provided was usually excellent. Officers invited losses by ordering low-level air strikes against entrenched positions that could not be seriously harmed by the relatively light weapons the aircraft could carry. Yet they did not let their airmen attack the long, strung-out columns of slow moving trucks and road-building infantry that characterized the campaign.
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Popular hero of an exhausting war, Germán Busch was born in 1904 in the hot, fertile, coffee-growing region of central Bolivia, midway between the edge of the Chaco and the rust-colored, tin-filled mountains around La Paz. His father, after stopping three arrows in an attack by savages, went to Germany, sent Germán and his mother to Trinidad. Germán went to a provincial school, entered military college at 18.
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Despite gradual improvements in professional standards, the military remained a traditional institution for decades after the Chaco War. The officer corps--divided and fractionalized by interservice rivalry, personal ambitions, differing ideological and geographical perspectives, and generational differences--was alternately dominated by reformists and conservatives. The reformist military regimes of three colonels--Toro, Germán Busch Becerra (1937-39), and Gualberto Villarroel López (1943-46)--all contributed to the polarization of the officer corps along generational and ideological lines. The conservative business leaders who took power in 1946 attempted to reverse the trend of military control of government by having military courts try more than 100 field-grade and junior officers for political activities proscribed by the constitution of 1947; many were convicted and discharged from the army.
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Chaco War