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254———National Liberation Army–Bolivia
Musawi, along with his wife and 5-year-old son. Bolivia, bordering on Brazil, Peru, Chile, Argentina,
Hezbollah members then elected Nasrallah to head and Paraguay, occupies a central place in Latin
the party. Under Nasrallah’s leadership, Hezbollah American history. The country has experienced more
grew into a great political force, holding seats in the than 200 coups in its 157 years as a nation. Because of
Lebanese Parliament and managing schools, hospi- its strategic location and chronic political instability, in
tals, and various media outlets. In 1997, Nasrallah’s 1966 Che Guevara chose Bolivia to attempt to repeat
18-year-old son Muhammad Hadi was killed in a fight the successes of the Cuban revolution.
with Israeli soldiers inside southern Lebanon. After Guevara’s foquista revolutionary theory held and
his son’s death, Nasrallah told a Beirut crowd that he his experiences in Cuba taught him that a mobile band
thanked God for choosing his son to be a martyr. of hardened guerrillas operating in the countryside
When the Israeli forces withdrew from southern could become the foco, or focal point, of peasant oppo-
Lebanon in May 2000, Nasrallah publicly announced sition to the government. Guevara arrived in Bolivia in
that his Hezbollah fighters had won the only Arab vic- March 1966 with a group of about 20 Cubans and
tory in the 50-year conflict with Israel. established a camp in the southern jungle, naming his
Hezbollah’s increased involvement in Lebanon’s new group the National Liberation Army. (A different
political and social life has led to a disagreement National Liberation Army was founded in 1964 in
among world governments about the group’s status. Colombia, where it is still operative.) Guevara hoped
The U.S. State Department included Hezbollah in its that a successful communist revolution in Bolivia
2000 list of world terrorist organizations, and froze would ignite continent-wide wars of liberation.
the group’s assets after the September 11, 2001, Guevara’s group was joined by about 20 Bolivian
attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City communists, but the Bolivian Communist Party
and the Pentagon near Washington, D.C. A 2001 list favored open political efforts over armed struggle and
of terrorist organizations released by the European refused to back his group. The largely Cuban forces
Union, in contrast, did not include Hezbollah. seem to have frightened the local peasants rather than
inspiring them to rebellion. Within weeks, Guevara’s
See also HEZBOLLAH
camp was discovered by the Bolivian armed forces,
and the revolutionaries were forced to go on the run.
Further Reading
Guevara’s health and that of his men declined rapidly
Drake, Laura. Hegemony and Its Discontents: United States in the jungle. After months of hardship during which
Policy Toward Iraq, Iran, Hamas, the Hezbollah and the force was split in two and suffered many casual-
Their Responses. Annandale, VA: United Association ties, Guevara and the remnants of the ELN were cap-
for Studies and Research, 1997. tured and executed by the Bolivian armed forces in
Fisk, Robert. Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War. London: October 1967.
Deutsch, 1990.
Jaber, Hala. Hezbollah: Born With a Vengeance. New York: A few of the group’s members escaped the final
Columbia University Press, 1997. military ambush, and for the next several years strived
to reestablish the ELN; Nestor Paz Zamora, brother of
future Bolivian president Jaime Paz Zamora, was killed
NASSER, ABDELKARIM HUSSEIN fighting for the ELN during this period. By the early
MOHAMED AL-. See AL-NASSER, 1970s, however, the group had been effectively crushed
by the Bolivian military.
ABDELKARIM HUSSEIN MOHAMED. In the late 1980s, a group calling itself the Nestor
Paz Zamora Commission and claiming to be a wing of
the ELN carried out several attacks in Bolivia. These
NATIONAL LIBERATION attacks included the 1990 kidnapping and murder
ARMY–BOLIVIA of Jorge Lonsdale, president of Coca-Cola’s Bolivian
division, and an October 1990 attack on a U.S.
Marines’ residence in Bolivia’s capital, in which a
The National Liberation Army–Bolivia (Ejercito de Bolivian police officer was killed. This reincarnation
Liberacion Nacional; ELN) was a Communist terror- of the ELN ceased operating sometime in the 1990s;
ist group that is now believed to be defunct. the U.S. State Department has dropped the group from