In 1975, the Bolivian Interior Ministry—a publicly acknowledged subsidiary of the CIA—drew up a master plan with the help of Vatican officials for the elimination of liberation theology. Dubbed the “Banzer Plan”—after Hugo Banzer Suárez, Bolivia’s right-wing dictator, who fancied himself the “defender of Christian civilization,” the scheme was adopted by ten Latin American governments.29 Banzer had come to power in Bolivia as the result of a three-day coup in August 1971 that left 110 people dead and 600 wounded. The coup, as recently declassified US State Department documents show, was funded
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