Bolivia: En revolutionär och medkämpe till Che Guevara till sista vilan

 

Bolivia: En revolutionär och medkämpe till Che Guevara till sista vilan

Av Dick Emanuelsson

TEGUCIGALPA / 2021-01-13 / Han blev 79 år då stroken blev för svår för Osvaldo Peredo Leigh, eller `CHATO PEREDO´, en revolutionär och ledare för den bolivianska ELN-gerillan som Che bildade och som Chato fortsatte att strida och leda efter att den legendariske argentinske gerillaledaren hade tillfångatagits och avrättats den 8 oktober 1967 på order, direkt på plats, av CIA-agenten Felix Rodriguez.

Chato var en av dem som deltog i bildandet av det bolivianska kommunistpartiet och utbildade sig till läkare i Sovjetunionen. Under en resa i Madrid träffade han Che Guevara.

Hans två bröder Guido y Roberto, i gerillan benämnda Inti och Coco anslöt sig till Che´s ELN-gerilla när den inledde sin kamp. Hans två bröder stupade i kampen för Bolivias befrielse.

Men ”Chato” fortsatte kampen, trogen de revolutionära principerna och omgrupperade 1970 de gamla och nya kadrerna från gerillan och från de kamrater som deltog i den politiska kampen som medlemmar av den urbana milisen i städerna. Från den erfarenheten skrev han senare boken 'Volvimos a las montañas', Vi återvände till bergen.

Jag stötte på `Chato´ en gång i La Paz kring 2002 och det var en fantastisk människa. 1997 hade han anslutit sig till Evo Morales MAS-parti. Han kom i politisk konflikt med vicepresident Alvaro Garcia Linares 2015 och ansåg att MAS hade ”drivits åt höger”.

Men den politiska högern kunde aldrig utnyttja honom som ett verktyg mot den politiska vänstern och han återvände till MAS 2020 mitt under den fascistiska statskuppsregimens år.

Hans kvarlevor kommer att kremeras och en del ska begravas i Bolivia och Chatos hemprovins Beni medan den andra delen kommer flygas till Kuba där det kubanska folket minns honom som en av dessa legendariska revolutionärer som gav sitt liv, inte bara för sitt bolivianska folk utan som en internationalist såg kampen i världsmåttstock.

Under en av mina reportageresor i Bolivia 2002 träffade jag tre av `Chatos´ miliskamrater från ELN och som jag intervjuade under en av dessa kalla kvällar uppe i Andernas La Paz. Reportaget finns i följande länk:

https://dickema24.blogspot.com/2007/10/gerillakvinnorna-som-stred-med-che-i.html

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Bolivia. Farewell to a great revolutionary: Osvaldo «Chato» Peredo // At the head of the ELN, he led the guerrilla that succeeded Che's assassination

By Resumen Latinoamericano

To say CHATO PEREDO is to speak of an enormous revolutionary who, following in the footsteps of two of his brothers (Coco and Inti, who died in combat) and Che Guevara himself, reissued the experience of the Bolivian ELN in the 1970s. Despite generating the so-called Teoponte guerrilla and fighting against the milicada advised by the rangers made in the USA , it was not able to achieve the long-awaited liberation in which they were engaged.

El Chato was arrested along with some of his companions, others were killed. Some time later Peredo was released but he never gave up his ideas of yearning for a Socialist Bolivia.

The former guerrilla, political leader and former councilman died this Tuesday at 2:10 p.m. due to respiratory complications from a stroke he suffered three months ago, as confirmed by one of his daughters, Selma.

His remains will be veiled at his home and then cremated. One part will be taken to Cuba and another to Mamoré, Beni, according to the statements of his daughter.

Osvaldo 'Chato' Peredo died at his home in Santa Cruz, in recent days his medical situation had become complicated. In 2017 he had suffered a stroke, which left him sequelae and that deteriorated his clinical condition.

A guerrilla from the Great Homeland

He was born in 1941. Since he was a teenager he was active in the radical left together with his brothers Antonio, Inti and Coco. The last two joined the guerrilla deed of the legendary "Che" Guevara in Bolivia.

After the death in combat of these two brothers, he organized the second Guevarista guerrilla incursion in 1970 in the Teoponte area, raising the flags of national liberation and socialism. From that experience he wrote a book, We returned to the mountains.

In prison he was the doctor of all inmates and it was there that he developed the technique, the postulates and later the philosophy that he exposes in The Road Home as testimony to his practice and scientific "militancy".

In 2008 Chato Peredo, a former MAS councilor in Santa Cruz, the Bolivian city most resistant to the Process of Change, suffered several attacks by the Bolivian terrorist right. On one occasion they wanted to lynch him and hang him with ropes in the municipal council session, where he was a councilor. Again, they tried to kidnap him. On other occasions, Molotov cocktails were thrown at his home. And not happy with that, on another occasion they threw grenades at the roof of his home, where his daughter was almost killed. Another night they tried to set it on fire.

Like a large part of the Bolivian people, Chato Peredo accompanied the rise of the MAS to the government under the leadership of Evo Morales, but later he had moments of harsh criticism against some officials linked to Evo, especially against former Vice President García Linera. Refugee in his center of operations, which was the Che Guevara Foundation and the Guevarista Movement that he also promoted, Peredo did not cease to be politically military, and during the Añez military coup, he actively joined the resistance, raising the unity of all the forces of the political and social left. In the last election that brought the Arce-Choquehuanca binomial to the government, he expressed his full support for them and celebrated victory with his people.

Che thought that Bolivia was the weakest link in the imperialist chain, and where it was necessary to begin to build that second Vietnam. Obviously the social, political and trade union movement gave the reason at that time to initiate this process in Bolivia. The Bolivian labor movement of that time was hegemonic in leading the revolutionary changes. He had a socialist thesis. It was not a political party, it was the Central Obrera Boliviana that even brought together the peasants. They were betting on reaching socialism. Moreover, he said, since there were no possibilities of reaching socialism peacefully, it was necessary to reach socialism by insurrectionary path. It was the thesis of the Central Obrera Boliviana.

Che considers that the political and union movement in Bolivia is very mature, much more mature than in other regions of Latin America. The great General Central of Workers of Argentina, which brought together millions of workers, had a simply union thesis, not a political one, not with the projection that the people begin to build a new state. The Central Unica de Trabajadores de Chile, which had an interesting political experience because there had already been a socialist experience in Chile with Dávila in 1932, the Socialist Republic, did not have as advanced a thesis as the Bolivian labor movement had.

Clearly, the weakest link in the imperialist chain was shown in Bolivia. Che comes, not to fight in the government, to install a revolutionary socialist government here in Bolivia. Che comes to build that second Vietnam with the convergence of all the revolutionary social movements of Latin America to confront North American imperialism. It had to be done, because in fact US imperialism was proving to have an action for all countries, therefore, it was necessary to respond with an action for all countries. But the governments did not understand it that way, because they were puppet governments, they were governments that could not go beyond the American approach, and whoever dared to go a little further would have their heads cut off.

Here in Bolivia there were four attempts at nationalist changes, we are not going to say socialist or revolutionary, and they were all defenestrated by US imperialism. The first change was that of Cárdenas in Mexico, that of Gouralt in Brazil, that of Perón in its first stage in Argentina and that of the MNR also in its first stage in Bolivia. Those four nationalistic experiments were not allowed by the Empire.

Che was clear that it was necessary to create a pole of convergence of all countries against imperialism. That even the Cuban Revolution, despite its clarity and resistance, was in danger to the extent that there were no other processes in Latin America. And it has been in danger until the moment that Venezuela appeared, then Bolivia, and other countries that are liberating themselves, that are in the process, we are not going to say some socialists, but others very clearly socialists, as in the case of Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador , Nicaragua.

Che, that's why every day is more current. As the Argentines say, Gardel sings better every day, I would say, Che fights better every day.

A lifelong fighter
(from a note by Martín Piqué in 2008)

Osvaldo “Chato” Peredo is a character for a book. Born in 1941 in a family in eastern Bolivia (Beni, Trinidad), Peredo was the youngest of the Peredo Leigue family. His older brothers, Antonio, Guido (Inti) and Roberto (Coco), quickly became interested in politics, always on the left. Inti and Coco participated in the Ñancahuazú guerrilla led by Ernesto Guevara. Coco died a few days before Che, Inti fell in La Paz in September 1969. Like his brothers Inti and Coco, Osvaldo Peredo started in the Communist Party. At thirteen he distributed the newspaper, at 19 he traveled to Moscow to study medicine. He graduated in 1967, exactly the same year that Che and his brothers fought for the mountains of Vallegrande.

Peredo returned to Bolivia and was reunited with Inti, who had survived. They decided to reorganize the ELN guerrilla, but the attempt was frustrated with the death of Inti. In 1970 he led another guerrilla group, which presented itself as heir to Che's ELN. He settled in the Beni area and came to have peasant support. Known as the Teoponte column, the group was dismantled when Peredo himself was taken prisoner.

When he was arrested, the nationalist general Juan José Torres had taken office and ordered the executions to stop. Peredo went into exile to Chile just when Salvador Allende was taking office. In the years that followed, he lived without a fixed address, entering and leaving Chile, Bolivia and Argentina, always in hiding. When the wave of dictatorships ended and democracy returned to the countries of the region, Peredo concentrated on his work as a doctor.

As a self-taught person, he studied regression processes (the return to extreme situations that were experienced in the past) and applied this knowledge to the cure of terminal illnesses.