About Alfredo Ovando
Alfredo Ovando Candia (6 April 1918 – 24 January 1982) was a Bolivian military officer and political leader who served as the 48th president of Bolivia from 1965 to 1966 and 1969 to 1970. During his first term, he shared power with René Barrientos as co-president of a military junta. == Early years == Ovando was born in Cobija from an upper-middle-class family of immigrants parents from Extremadura, Spain and Piedmont, Italy. He 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 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.
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