Cool USA Facts!

In 1971 in Bolivia, after half a decade of CIA-inspired political turmoil, a CIA-backed military coup overthrows the leftist President Juan Jose Torres, eventually being kidnapped and murdered by CIA backed right wing death squads, as part of Operation Condor. In the next two years, dictator Hugo Banzer will have over 2,000 political opponents arrested without trial, then tortured, raped and executed. Banzer wwas trained at the U.S.-operated School of the Americas in Panama and later at Fort Hood, Texas. A few years later the Catholic Church denounced an army massacre of striking tin workers in 1975, Banzer, assisted by information provided by the CIA, was able to target and locate leftist priests and nuns. His anti-clergy strategy, known as the Banzer Plan, was adopted by nine other Latin American dictatorships in 1977.