had.
Nonetheless, recognition did pave the way for emergency food shipments, military sales, and the final ratification of Ambassador Andrade’s tin contract—all of which would strengthen the authority of the new government. Ambassador Flack had done what he could to ensure that the oligarchs of the junta and not the popular forces of the Tripartite Committee gained legitimacy and control over La Paz and the nation. While he was exuberantly hailing the newly recognized government as an “irreparable blow” to the “formation of an anti–United States bloc so dear to Perón’s heart,” his superiors were acting to ensure that postrevolutionary Bolivia did not succumb to counterrevolution or Argentine pressure.11
Although U.S. nonrecognition of the new government had been as benign, supportive, and short as it could be, initial signs suggested that the Argentines were taking advantage of the transition period “by creating a food crisis” and “general economic chaos,” either to foment a counterrevolution or simply to avenge Villarroel. Immediately after the revolution, Bolivian diplomats in Buenos Aires reported rumors that Peronists might “besiege” Bolivia “through hunger.” In the next weeks, Argentine food shipments to Bolivia did indeed drop “off sharply” and ceased altogether on 7 August, for fear of “uprisings of miners and Indians,” according to Argentine diplomats, but there was far more to the story.12 Later in August, Peronists closed the border with Bolivia entirely and stopped issuing export permits; this created a “critical situation” that was “worsen[ing] by the day.” In the most notorious case, Argentine customs officials turned back twelve rail cars of wheat bound for Bolivia. Bolivian diplomats first concluded that these steps were part of a concerted Argentine policy until Perón’s foreign minister convinced at least some of them that Argentina was simply following the U.S. lead on nonrecognition.13
As the situation became “much more grave” by the day, however, the Bolivian chargé in Buenos Aires, Ernesto Daza Ondarza, seems to have spent every waking moment trying to ascertain the real reason critically needed food was not crossing the border. Periodic shortfalls in Argentine grain and meat shipments to Bolivia were nothing new; these had grown more pronounced toward the end of the war. Now, however, Argentine diplomats were placing blame for the recent “suspension of transport to Bolivia . . . exclusively [on] the grave transportation problem from which Argentina suffer[ed].” Several officials pointed to a shortage of rolling stock; others suggested that a recent sixty-day campaign to reduce the cost of living in Argentina was draining off food originally destined for export to other South American nations. One railway official taking this view told the chargé that nothing could be done without a direct order from Perón’s cabinet. The director general of transportation explained that Argentine railways had deteriorated and that the line into Bolivia was in “the poorest condition of all the rail lines in Argentina.” He assured Daza Ondarza, however, that he would contact Perón to obtain permission to ship “all that Bolivia needs.” Perón apparently responded with an order that “special preference” was to be given to rail shipments bound, not for Bolivia, but for export overseas to Europe.14
When Chargé Daza Ondarza approached Argentine customs officials, they expressed surprise that wheat and meat were being held up at the border, noting that only certain minor products were subject to export prohibitions. They directed him to Minister of Industry and Commerce Rolando Lagomarsino, who could reopen the border with a stroke of the pen. Lagomarsino, in a manner Daza Ondarza described as “Florentine,” claimed to be “very surprised” at this “new development” and directly contradicted the customs officials. Such contradictions and apparently deliberate obfuscations supported the thesis that the Argentines were simply applying pressure on the junta, but it remained unclear toward what end. As the State Department noted wryly: Perón had “Bolivia over a barrel” but was “nimble” and “adroit enough to put on, from all outward appearances, an irreproachable front.”15
After weeks of bureaucratic runaround and deepening shortages, Chargé Daza Ondarza believed he had finally discovered the real source of the problem. Well aware of Peronist “sympathy with the fallen government” and the daily “attacks on the Bolivian revolution” that appeared in the peronista press organs, he had long suspected “political factors.” And, indeed, after giving him yet another recitation of the sad state of Argentine railways and yet another round of “assurances and promises,” a deputy minister of foreign affairs asked Daza Ondarza “about those seeking asylum.” When the Bolivian responded by asking whether this was not the “essence of the question” and the “cause of his nation’s difficulties,” the Argentine diplomat “could not conceal a rather suggestive smile.”16 Although the State Department’s sudden decision to recognize the new government had forced the Argentines to abandon nonrecognition as a tool to guarantee the safe evacuation of MNR members, they had apparently opted for another form of pressure.
In all likelihood, the Peronists’ concern for the MNR refugees went well beyond simple humanitarianism or respect for international law; they considered them to be the only Bolivian faction who “could respond to our overtures for the formation of a bloc” against the “Yanqui and Brazilian imperialisms aligned against us.” Because most MNR members, including Paz Estenssoro himself, were seeking refuge in Buenos Aires, the potential for intrigue was virtually unlimited. Although other Bolivian diplomats attributed at least some blame for the food crisis to the inefficiency of the new Peronist trade monopoly and noted that other nations had suffered from it as well, this did nothing to change the fact that the “normalization of exports” from Argentina would “not be possible in the short term.”17
What the Peronists failed to take into account, however, was the State Department’s strong desire to see the Monje junta prosper. Over the course of 1945 and 1946, U.S. diplomats had discovered that “Argentina normally eases its policies on supplies quite readily after it discovers that we are willing to take care of its neighbors’ food needs.” Because U.S. diplomats urgently sought to strengthen the new government and Braden was receptive to any means by which any Argentine venture could be countered, this was the perfect opportunity. Indeed, State Department officers had been planning for this contingency since before the revolution, and Assistant Secretary Braden pledged that he would meet Bolivia’s “minimum requirements” of food. In fact, he “was already making arrangements to do so” in mid-August, when the first Bolivian request arrived.18 His superiors immediately authorized the shipment of twenty-four thousand tons of flour, and promised more to come. In October, the United States shipped eight thousand tons of wheat as well as an additional nine thousand tons of flour by rail from Chile; Ambassador Martínez Vargas confidently informed his superiors that he could obtain another eight thousand tons of U.S. wheat in November. For the Bolivians, the lesson was clear, and one they would exploit for years. Because the United States would provide wheat and flour to counter a Peronist embargo and ease a “critical and dangerous economic and political situation,” Bolivian diplomats could use the promise of U.S. aid to secure lower prices from the Argentines and, in turn, lower prices from the North Americans as well.19
Once the State Department announced that it would meet Bolivia’s needs and Monje declared that the MNR exiles would be given safe transit out of Bolivia, the Argentines lifted their “virtual blockade” almost immediately.20 Although the new Bolivian chargé in Buenos Aires was obliged to run almost exactly the same gauntlet of Argentine functionaries in October that Daza Ondarza had run in August, he was greeted with “a spirit of cooperation that translated into the immediate dispatch of export permits.” When queried by U.S. diplomats, Bolivian statesmen reported no complaints at the end of October and attributed the “reversal of Argentina’s position solely to United States expressions of aid, which have, in effect, nullified Argentina’s economic pressure.”21 At least one U.S. official was convinced that Daza Ondarza had for months “failed to bring Bolivia’s problems to the attention of the proper Argentine representatives,” but this had clearly not been the case. Although the Peronist motivations remained somewhat unclear, one MNR leader suggested that the Argentines had been “pointing a gun at the head
