Villa Tunari massacre
1988 mass killing in Bolivia
The Villa Tunari Massacre was a 27 June 1988 mass murder committed by UMOPAR (Rural Patrol Mobile Unit) troops in response to a protest by coca-growing peasants (cocaleros) in the town of Villa Tunari in Chapare Province, Bolivia. The cocalero movement had mobilized since late May 1988 in opposition to coca eradication under Law 1008, then on the verge of becoming law. According to video evidence and a joint church-labor investigative commission, UMOPAR opened fire on unarmed protesters, at least two of whom were fatally shot, and many of whom fled to their deaths over a steep drop into the San Mateo River. The police violence caused the deaths of 9 to 12 civilian protesters, including three whose bodies were never found, and injured over a hundred. The killings were followed by further state violence in Villa Tunari, Sinahota, Ivirgarzama, and elsewhere in the region, including machine gun fire, beatings, and arrests.
The massacre helped bring about the consolidation of Chapare coca growers' unions into the Coordinadora of the Six Federations of the Tropic of Cochabamba.
Representatives of the National Congress, Catholic Church, Permanent Assembly for Human Rights, and the Central Obrera Boliviana labor federation formed a joint "multisectoral commission" to investigate the repression in the Chapare, which traveled to the region on 30 June 1988.
Background
UMOPAR, a police unit with military training, was created in 1983 for the purpose of overseeing coca eradication in Bolivia. They received tactical and technical support from the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) who maintained an operational base in the Chapare region of the country as did the Bolivian coca eradication and substitution agency Direccion de Reconversion Agricola (DIRECO). UMOPAR and the US conducted the joint Operation Blast Furnace in 1986, in an unsuccessful effort to eradicate cocaine processing labs from the Chapare.
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