BARRIENTOS HOLDS REGIS DEBRAY INCOMMUNICADO
Official sources "close to the general staff" told the press in La Paz April 22 that a French citizen named Régis Debray had been killed two days previously when regular army forces engaged in a skirmish with some fifty “guerrillas” near Yacunday, about 650 kilometers southeast of Bolivia's capital. The dictator Barrientos reportedly confirmed the news himself during a press conference April 21.
The Paris daily Le Monde nevertheless indicated reservations as to the accuracy of the report. The 26-year-old Régis Debray was well-known in Paris, his mother being a city councillor.
A disciple of the Communist intellectual Louis Althusser, Debray had frequently visited Cuba since 1961 and had taken up residence there shortly before the Tricontinental Conference of January 1966. An article of his, "Castroism -the Long March of Latin America," had been published by Les Temps Modernes, the magazine sponsored by Jean-Paul Sartre.
His book, Revolucién en la Revolucién, published in Havana in a Spanish translation and in Paris in French was said to have been read by Castro himself in the proofs.
Inquiries were at once instituted by various sources, including the French diplomatic service. The immediate result was a curtain of silence in La Paz.
On April 27, Le_Monde reported Debray's family had received a telegram from La Paz stating that he had been wounded by the Bolivian armed forces and was being held prisoner in a small town or village in the southeast part of the country.
Strangely enough he had been captured along with two other journalists, one a British citizen, George Andrew Roth, the other an Argentine citizen, Carlos Alberto Fructuoso. Nevertheless, the Bolivian military authorities claimed they knew he had come to Bolivia several times, that he had given "conferences" at the University of Cochabamba and that he had been in "contact" with "guerrillas." They added that he had been dressed in civilian clothes when he was "arrested" and that the army had engaged in a skirmish in which six guerrillas had been killed.
The French government sought without success to obtain assurances from the Barrientos dictatorship that the rights of the prisoner would be respected.
Le Monde suggested that Debray be brought to La Paz where his wounds, the nature of which had not been specified, could be taken care of, the press could see him, and, if the Bolivian authorities wished, charges could be pressed for what seemed to be no more than an "ideological offense."
The next bit of information came from Mexico. On April 29 the weekly magazine Sucesos sent an appeal to Barrientos, stating that Debray was one of their collaborators. Sucesos ran a series of articles last December and January on the guerrilla movement in Venezuela and its editor, Mario Menéndez, recently had trouble with the Colombian authorities when he tried to gain information about the guerrilla movement in that country.
Agence-France Presse reported from La Paz May 3 that Debray had been transferred to that city. It had also learned that he was to be tried by a military tribunal. In addition, Debray had not been taken by the army, but had been arrested by police inspectors when, accompanied by two journalists, one British, the other Argentine, he came to buy medicine in the small town of Muyupampa, 30 kilometers from Camiri. .
On May 4 Mme Janine Alexandre- Debray, the prisoner's mother, flew to La Paz. She reported on her departure that the most energetic steps taken by the French ambassador to see her son had proved fruitless.
She also reported that Régis had entered Bolivia under his true name, and with official identification as a press correspondent.
The Bolivian authorities told the press at the same time that he had tried to buy military maps of the guerrilla zone and that an American employee in the Geographic Military Institute had turned him in. Also, according to the La Paz paper Presencia, members of the FBI, specialists in interrogating guerrillas, were coming to Bolivia to take up the Debray case.
Le Monde confirmed that the "United States is taking quite special interest in the arrest of the young French student and may have decided to exploit the affair to demonstrate ‘the intervention of Castroism in Latin America.'"
On May 5 the Barrientos regime announced that Debray and the two other prisoners were regarded as "common criminals" and a woman claiming to be the widow of a soldier, Ruben Amezaga, killed by guerrillas last March 23, gave a very official sounding declaration to the press
calling Debray "the political commissar of the guerrillas."
This was the first indication of the nature of the charges that might be lodged against Debray, who was being held incommunicado, not being permitted to see a lawyer or even the judge that is normally placed in charge of cases.
The day after Régis' mother arrived, Barrientos himself denounced the prisoner, saying that he was an "adventurer who came to Bolivia to bring grief to Bolivian families. His adventures will end in Bolivia."
The most brutal touch was yet to come. On May 9 Barrientos told the press that he would "receive" Mme Alexandre- Debray...perhaps in the latter part of May...after he has handled some business in Paraguay.
But the mother has not yet been permitted to see her son! Nor has a lawyer seen him. Nor the French ambassador.
Upon this news, de Gaulle is said to have intervened personally; but the nature of his missive was not revealed.
Régis father, Georges Debray, said he had sent the following message to his wife in La Paz: "Régis Debray, after being captured, may have been tortured to such a degree that if he is still alive, he is not presentable. This may be the reason for the procrastination of President Barrientos. Solicit immediate denial in the name of humanity." .
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The accounts about a new guerrilla -508-
front in Bolivia have received sensational publicity. Coming on the very eve of the Punta del Este Conference, Barrientos utilized them to the utmost to press the Pentagon for jet planes, napalm and other war matériel —- with a request for more dollars one may suspect, not forgotten.
Washington has responded in a contradictory way. The State Department knows its man, Barrientos, and therefore one sees such statements, attributed to U.S. military experts (New York Times, May 3), concerning the reports about guerrillas: "Ninety-six per cent of what we are getting now is fanciful."
On the other hand, Washington wants to utilize the reports for propaganda purposes against Cuba and also to justify its own intervention in Bolivian affairs via military missions. Hence a step-up in sending arms and military "advisers" to La Paz.
But there is nothing "fanciful about the witch-hunt Barrientos has been conducting. This did not begin with the reports about fresh guerrilla activities (small groups of guerrillas have been reported periodically active in Bolivia for some years); it began on a major scale last January with the arrest and exile of leaders and cadres of the political opposition ranging from followers of the former Vice-President Lechin to the Trotskyists. They have been exiled in remote jungle villages under circumstances that amount to a sentence of slow death.
On this the bourgeois press has been silent. It constitutes no sensation; in fact it constitutes scarcely news in a country ruled by a subservient agent of the State Department.