My father, the hostage
Two weeks after living through the ordeal of JFK's assassination, glued to the TV screen in the living room at Cushing Academy — a boarding school in Massachusetts where I spent my senior year in high school — on the evening of Dec. 6, 1963, my father, three other Americans and 17 others are captured in a Bolivian tin mine and held hostage in exchange for the release of the miners' two Communist union leaders, Irineo Pimentel and Federico Escobar, arrested the previous night by the Bolivian government.
My parents were living in La Paz, Bolivia, where I had spent the summer — he as a labor advisor for the United States Agency for International Development.
As I remember, I was the first in the family to hear what would soon become international news.
The next day, my dormmate asked if I was related to Bernard Rifkin because she had just heard his name on the radio. Sure enough, there it was on the 5 p.m. news: He and three other Americans had been captured by Bolivian tin miners and were being held hostage.
I called my Aunt Ethel, his sister, initiating a whirlwind of events with which I ended up being only peripherally involved.
On Dec. 9, the Bolivian Army has an estimated 700 troops with combat vehicles in the region where Communist-led tin miners are holding four Americans and 17 others as hostages at Catavi-Siglo Viente, the world's largest tin mine, 14,000 feet in altitude, about 180 miles southeast of La Paz.
Bolivian Interior Minister Jose Antonio Arze says that, “under no circumstances” would the government give in to the miners' demands.
My father and the three other Americans had been on a charitable mission, delivering a U.S. government check for $15,000 for the construction of a school for the miners' children.
Upon their arrival, the miners cheer; later in the day, hearing their leaders had been jailed, they arm and enter the home of the Dutch mine manager to seize and hold him hostage.
My father and the three other Americans are having dinner with him; they are also taken, loaded into trucks surrounded by armed miners and driven three miles — with guns to their heads — to a room crammed with miners and their women.
Sixteen mining technicians are seized, as well, bringing the total hostage count to 21.
(In 1949, Bolivian tin miners lynched four American technicians.)
Bolivia's Vice President, Juan Lechin, who is leading the rebellious miners, says that he is willing to enter negotiations for the hostages' release but not until the government frees the Communist union chiefs who have been imprisoned in La Paz on charges of murdering a rival union leader.
UPI correspondent Betsy Zavala of La Paz visits the hostages and reports that they are being kept in a 12- by 18foot room on the ground floor of the so-called miners cultural center. Indian women with sticks of dynamite in their aprons feed the prisoners and clean the room once daily. Eight armed miners sit outside the single entrance. The dynamite sticks are presumably to blow up the building and hostages if federal troops enter Catavi.
The hostages sleep on mattresses on the floor spending their days playing chess, dominoes and cards, in high spirits and optimistic about being released. The food leaves a great deal to be desired: beefsteak once a day, mashed potatoes, salad and coffee; lunch consists of a bowl of soup and a roll and breakfast is coffee with milk and a roll.
Zavala asks if Rifkin, the oldest hostage, who suffers from ulcers, can be released. She is met with an adamant “no.”
Bolivia's President, Paz Estensoro, warns the tin miners that the government will cut off their food supply if they do not release the hostages by the following night. This is followed by a 24-hour ultimatum given by the miners to the government to release the two jailed union leaders or “suffer the consequences.”
With government troops constantly threatening to storm the mine, each new threat heightens the guards' anxiety and their threats to kill the hostages.
On Dec. 10, concerned with my father's health, my 23-year-old-brother Erik flies to La Paz with the intention of taking his place as a hostage.
Upon his arrival at the airport, he is recognized and questioned by the press, is sparing with what he shares, and later meets up with U.S. government personnel, “who are furious, insisting I return to the U.S. immediately. They threaten me with jail; I have no choice but to return home,” he says.
My mother is on a remote trip with friends, with no access to communication.
At some point my older brother Paul, 21, flies to Bolivia to be with my mother back from her trip.
Vice President Juan Lechin returns from the mine to La Paz and, bowing to the threat of federal force, indicates he is ready to negotiate. In order to prevent a “blood bath,” the hostages will be freed without the release of the miners' leaders and Lechin says he is willing to resign if the imprisoned leaders are released.