Tupac Katari Guerrilla Army

The Tupac Katari Guerrilla Army (Ejército Guerrillero Túpac Katari, or EGTK) was an Indian terrorist group that operated in Bolivia during the early 1990s.

Sharing a border with Brazil, Peru, Chile, Argentina, and Paraguay, Bolivia occupies a central place in both the South American continent and in Latin American history. Like its neighbors, the majority of its population is Indian or of Indian descent, and a substantial proportion of them live in poverty. Land reform is a major political issue. Bolivia is also one of the world's major producers of cocaine, and narcotrafficking and the corruption and lawlessness it engenders remain problems. A nation for 157 years, Bolivia's government has seen more than 200 coups in that time. Despite its chronic political instability, however, Bolivia has for the most part escaped the lengthy and traumatic guerrilla warfare that has plagued its neighbors— with the short and ineffective career of the National Liberation Army-Bolivia (founded by Che Guevara in 1966), being the exception.

The Tupac Katari Guerrilla Army was founded in Bolivia in the early 1990s. Starting on July 4, 1991, it carried out more than 40 attacks around the country, with the most devastating being a series of bombings of electricity pylons and oil pipelines near La Paz, the capital; two EGTK members were killed while trying to dynamite an electricity pylon in April 1992. The group's robberies are believed to have netted it more than $500,000.

In April 1992, more than a dozen of the group's leaders were arrested and jailed. The arrests seem to have crushed the fledgling group, and though intelligence reports predicted a resurgence in its activity in 1997, no new bombings occurred. After his release in 1997, one of the group's leaders, Alvaro García Linera, went on to become vice president of Bolivia, serving under president Evo Morales in 2006.

Little is known about the group's motivations or ideology. They were named after Tupac Katari, a member of Inca royalty who rebelled against the Spanish in the eighteenth century. The similarities between their methods of attack and that of the [Page 589]Peruvian terrorist group the Shining Path, as well as the fact that the EGTK first made itself known when Shining Path activity on the Peru-Bolivia border was increasing, led to much speculation about the existence of links between the two groups. While imprisoned, however, the EGTK's leader denied any such connection. Stricter border controls and the arrest of the Shining Path's leader in September 1993 would seem to have put an end to any possibility of aid or support from that group, and the EGTK appears unlikely to pose a threat to Bolivia in the future.