Hell or Highwater: Buddy Cianci and the Decade of Malice
- Thread starter ZeroFrame
- Start date
Thank you! Kiely IOTL was the commander of the Rhode Island National Guard.
Thank you! I'll make some edits today. Hope you have a good day at work.I'll have my detailed thoughts later (I'm on my way to work), but for the most part it looks spot on to how we would react.Just one minor quibble - RISDIC insured not just banks, but also credit unions who wanted to avoid falling under NCUA membership/jurisdiction - a key problem as Heritage Loan and Investment Trust was, officially, a credit union (even if it, along with Bonded Vault back in the day, was basically the Mafia's bank). Doesn't change a thing, but it should be pointed out.
Yes.
I'd be lying if the idea of Cianci's own state being one of the biggest thorns in his side isn't really fun as an idea. Honestly the speaker of the Rhode Island house was another case where I was like "Oh come, surely he's not that-- Oh he is. Never mind carry on". One does wonder, if Cianci can't get the two term limit repealed, what is his actual plan for after the Presidency ends? I mean the overall idea is that it never will but there has to be some kind of backup in his head at least.
It's actually rather fascinating that the 'Law and Order' brigade getting just a little bit more of what they want policy wise is actually getting a lot more flack than it does in OTL. In the same way that Ronald Reagan managed to become President for two terms but Jesse Helms would have absolutely been a step too far. Though I will say it's disappointing that Governor Hicks is still in office.
It's actually rather fascinating that the 'Law and Order' brigade getting just a little bit more of what they want policy wise is actually getting a lot more flack than it does in OTL. In the same way that Ronald Reagan managed to become President for two terms but Jesse Helms would have absolutely been a step too far. Though I will say it's disappointing that Governor Hicks is still in office.
Cianci's plan for the Presidency after 1988 is to have Dan Crane run in 1986 for Governor of Illinois (which he has a trick up his sleeve to make sure Crane wins) and then run in 1988 for the Republican nomination. From there he plans to continue to blackmail Crane and run the nation from the shadows.
IMO heavy handed tactics will always backfire if they don't actually do anything besides cause more death and destruction without decreasing crime. Which is what happening in ITTL as the Hilton Massacre and Cianci's scandals show how much Hicks and Cianci cared about "law and order."
Governor Hicks was elected in 1982 so 1986 will be the year she faces re-election. Now, she's incredibly unpopular due to the Hilton Massacre and police brutality but the Republicans are about as popular as the Democrats during the Civil War. So, this makes the race closer than usual as a candidate with around 29% approval ratings is facing a party with similar nationwide approval ratings. To make the race a bigger cluster fuck a member of the far left decides to run an independent campaign for Governor.
Could we see the rare combination of a more progressive and a more hated America? Usually those are mutually exclusive.
Yeah, pretty much. Granted when you launch a terrorist campaign that takes Operation Gladio to eleven your bound to piss off most nations.
Chapter XXXIII: Peace, Terrorism, and Nazis
The year of 1985 is well remembered throughout the world as one of the craziest and most unpredictable years in human history. The Diamond Hill Disaster, Five Against Wang, the attempted assassination of Pope Nicholas VI, Rhode Island Revolution, MOVE Bombing, Day of Crimson, and many more events happened in just 365 days.
One of the least stable and unpredictable areas in the world was Latin America where almost every nation was engulfed in flames. But at one point the flames had to be put out and 1985 was the climax of the Latin American Emergency. The Great Central American War, between Honduras, the Guatemalan government, the OPN, the Contras, and Panama against the socialist alliance between the El Salvadorian FDN, Panamanian FRS, Nicaragua, and Guatemalan URNG had been a stalemate for the past year. But in March of 1985 that all changed.
The Dictator of Guatemala, Efrain Montt had desperately attempted to destroy the URNG, describing his anti-URNG campaign as “If you are with us we feed you, if you are against us we kill you.” The campaign is now recognized as a genocide by the UN but at the time the US supported the campaign. The anti-URNG genocide, that targeted Mayan and other indigenous people in particular failed to crush the URNG, in fact it only emboldened them to destroy the Montt regime. After three years as Guatemala’s president, he was deposed by the military in a coup attempt, one that saw pro-Montt forces and anti-Montt forces fight each other as Montt denounced the coup as a Israeli plot (which was technically true, however it was also backed by Chile and the US). As Monttismo forces looked like they had gained the upper hand, securing Guatemala City, the US switched its support back to Montt as CIA Director Singlaub felt Montt had a better chance of destroying the rebels with his heavy handed and genocidal tactics.
The sudden switch only made the situation bloodier as both sides had US made artillery pieces and small missiles that they used against each other rather against the URNG. The Guatemalan Civil War turning into proxy war not just between the US and USSR, but the US and Israel allowed the URNG, which was united in its opposition to the far-right government. The three-way proxy war would allow the URNG to sweep the countryside, securing crucial railroad networks and eliminating thousands of Guatemalan soldiers. On March 12th, 1985, the URNG surrounded Guatemala City and trapped the Monttismo forces who fought till the bitter end. After a month of brutal urban warfare Montt was captured at the presidential palace and captured. Three days later on April 15th he was found guilty in what swiftly condemned by the US as a kangaroo trial. Granted, the outcome was never in doubt, but in this case the accusations against Montt were true and he was executed the same day for crimes against humanity, with his body being thrown into a ditch.
Montt shortly before his execution.
With the fall of Guatemala to Marxism Honduras’s position was precarious as the URNG threatened to invade Honduras if they did not immediately kick out all US soldiers in Honduras and pull out all soldiers from El Salvador. Fearing being surrounded by Communism Honduras refused and made a call to CIA Director Singlaub who put forward Honduras’s case to President Cianci who agreed to use the full might of the US military to protect Honduras from Communism. On April 27th, 1985, Daniel Ortega and the People’s Congress of Guatemala got a call from Secretary of State Oliver North who invoked the Monroe Doctrine and threatened to send US soldiers into both nations if they did not end the war in Honduras. Ortega and the People’s Congress initially refused but the US knew that they’d change their minds. The very next day Cianci hatched a plan to end the Great Central American War. To the shock of all three nations Cianci offered that Honduras pull out of El Salvador, which Honduras begrudgingly accepted. The thing is, El Salvador was already firmly in control of Roberto D’Aubuisson of the OPN. When the end to the Great Central American War was declared on April 28th, 1985, Nicaragua and Guatemala pretended that the war had been a victory, but it was a defeat for them along with anyone who wasn’t America.
In total 500,000 people had died in the Great Central American War and millions were made refugees. In El Salvador the JNP and FDN were crushed. The JNP had decided to join the OPN’s new far-right dictatorship, which would see a similar situation to the Guatemala Genocide where indigenous Salvadorians were systematically murdered by the US backed regime in the name of anti-Communism. It was only in 1989 that a coup would end D'Aubuissons reign of terror.
With the end of the Great Central American War a new crisis threatened to send another US ally into civil war. That was the Shining Path Insurgency in Peru.
For some context, Peru during the 80s was in an unprecedented economic crisis that saw over 80% of its population in poverty and a 50% unemployment rate. With such a terrible crisis crippling Peru’s people, it’s unsurprising some decided to join extremist movements. The most notorious was of course the Shining Path, which was exceptionally brutal, following the Maoist-Wangism of China and showing no mercy during its bombings and massacres. Originally, the Peruvian government did not view the Shining Path as a major threat, as the group only numbered a couple hundred people, and it was thought they could be defeated by the local police. Unfortunately, this underestimation of the Shining Path would cost tens of thousands of lives as the Shining Path overwhelmed the police and was able to recruit a 20,000 strong army to wage war against Peru. As if that wasn’t bad enough the Chinese government took notice of the group and smuggled weapons to the Shining Path, which allowed the Shining Path the chance to cement its presence in the Peruvian countryside. In 1981 President Fernando Belaúnde could not ignore the problem for any longer as the Shining Path’s guerrilla campaign inflicted heavy casualties on the police and military. On October 4th, 1981, he declared a state of emergency and announced that the military would engage the Shining Path. Belaúnde’s response however, much like his response to the economic crisis would fail as the Shining Path gained ground and the army failed to capture Chairman Abimael Guzmán.
Shining Path propaganda poster (1985).
Combined with the economic crisis, that thanks to the Iranian Civil War, years of economic mismanagement under the left-wing military dictatorship, and shut down of the Panama Canal only worsened. By 1983 Peru’s debt was skyrocketing and Peru was in a low-level civil war that saw multiple Communist insurgencies, most prevalent being the Shining Path who massacred villages and inspired by Pol Pot’s policies in Democratic Kampuchea Guzmán orchestrated a series of attacks on cities, particularly industrial centers in an effort to push more people to the countryside and depopulate them. During that year the US approved $100 million in military aid to Peru and advisors from the US Marine Corp were sent to help aid in the fight against the Shining Path.
Anti-Shining Path militia in Huanca Sancos.
In 1985 Peru was once again scheduled to vote for a new President. Fernando Belaúnde’s term had been an unmitigated disaster that had saw the economy sink further into its death spiral and the Shining Path gain ground in the Andes Mountains. Belaúnde had been a center-right president and the Peruvian people wanted someone who would be an anti-Belaúnde, one who they felt was more trustworthy and more effective at fighting the Shining Path. The three main candidates in the 1985 Peruvian election were Alan Garcia, of the APRA Party, a center-left party led by Alan García who was dubbed the Peruvian Kennedy due to his age, being only 36. The second main party was the United Left, led by Alfonso Barrantes who was the mayor of Lima and was an avowed socialist, advocating for turning back Belaúnde’s reforms and nationalizing key industries. The third major party was the Democratic Convergence Party, which was a Christian Democratic Party in the same vein as the Christian Democrats in Italy. Like the Christian Democrats, the Party had factions from the center-left, center, and right wing and was supported by the Catholic Church, making it a force within the nation. However, it was no secret in Peru that those who supported Liberation Theology generally supported Garcia over the Democratic Convergence candidate, Felipe Osterling who was viewed as a continuation of Belaúnde’s failed presidency. Thus, Garcia won in the first round, netting 54% of the vote to Barrantes’s 30% and Osterling’s 10%. Garcia’s presidency would be a short one as the Shining Path decided to organize its biggest attack yet. The attack would be called the “Day of Crimson.”
The Day of Crimson would begin in Lima when on August 16th, 1985, President Garcia met with electrical workers in the outskirts of Lima. There the Shining Path found out which power station he was at and attacked it. There a Shining Path militant fired an RPG at Garcia, and he was killed instantly. Next, the Shining Path assaulted the power plant with seventeen militants who massacred thirty-three workers and ten soldiers who were supposed to guard Garcia. An hour later the Shining Path attacked the US Embassy in central Lima. The assault on the embassy was a brutal one.
The assault started out with a car bomb and an assault by thirty Shining Path militants, who managed to push through the fifty marines who were tasked with defending the embassy. The car bomb had taken out half of them, but the remaining soldiers put up a brutal fight, with the Shining Path militants coming under heavy machine gun fire from the remaining Marines. Within twenty minutes the US Marines and Lima police had killed all thirty of the Shining Path militants but not before dozens of people were shot. The final death toll from the attack was seventy-seven and one-hundred fifty were injured.
The Day of Crimson succeeded in making the Shining Path more well known throughout the world, being praised by Pol Pot a day later and the attack succeeded in exposing the failures of the Peruvian government to crush the Shining Path, but it would also accelerate the defeat of the Shining Path. The US in the aftermath of the Day of Crimson would send $2 billion dollars' worth of military aid to Peru and accepted a request by Peruvian President Luis Alberto Sanchez to provide clandestine air support to destroy the Shining Path. The military offensive against the Shining Path was effective but brutal, with both the Peruvian army and Shining Path committing numerous atrocities that caused civilian deaths to rise into the thousands. The Shining Path’s capabilities were decreased however, they were still able to bomb power plants and mount attacks on population centers such as Lima. It would be under these conditions that the APRA Party would lose most of its support. As the 80s came to an end the people of Peru were looking for change and found it in a political outsider.
As Peru suffered under the terror of the Shining Path and political incompetence one nation became a symbol of hope for Latin America. As its neighbor Brazil was undergoing a political revolution Argentina found itself as the center of another upheaval.
After the Beagle War ended in a Chilean victory the people of Argentina found themselves with intense anger at the military junta that had ruled the nation since 1976. President Jore Videla had been removed on December 1st, 1983, for the failed war and the new president, Reynaldo Bigone decided to reluctantly hold free and fair elections. The 1984 Argentina General Election, held on April 7th was won by Raúl Alfonsín who won with 54% of the vote on a pro-democracy, social democratic platform.
President Alfonsin condemning the Meza regime (1985).
Argentina’s transition to democracy was swift and surprisingly bloodless, which could not be said for Bolivia. Bolivia had been in control of dictator Luis Garcia Meza, who was a far-right general who was allied with Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie. The Meza regime was by far the worst dictatorship in Latin American history, with Meza modeling the dictatorship after the Pinochet regime next door, torturing and murdering political opponents in brutal fashion and embarking in a bloody anti-communist campaign that saw thousands of left-wing Bolivians kidnapped and murdered. The most notorious of Meza’s mass murder sprees was the “free boat rides,” which put the Bolivian Navy to work, by torturing and murdering political opponents. In Meza’s second year as dictator in 1982, he came to the realization that some pesky foreign journalist could leak the brutal torture that was going on in the capital. So, he decided to instead torture people on naval ships off the coasts of lakes and then would proceed to throw the victim off the boat with cinder blocks chained to both their legs before being pushed off into the waters to never be seen again.
Meza’s regime was unsurprisingly unpopular in Latin America. Not only because it was being advised by a Nazi but also because of its role in drug trafficking, with Meza raising funds for his regime by trafficking drugs, primarily crack cocaine. Meza’s regime was shunned by most of Latin America for his alliance with Barbie and his drug trafficking, with even the man who he styled himself after shunning him as drug abuse ravaged Chile.
By 1983 a decent portion of the military despised Meza, noticing he was turning Bolivia into a pariah state on par with North Korea or South Africa. The cherry on top of Meza’s horrid dictatorship was that he was running the economy into the ground, privatizing the lithium industry and selling it off to foreign companies that took advantage of Bolivia’s lack of oversight to avoid paying the little taxes they already paid and dramatically cut wages for their workers. It was decided on by the moderates in the military that Meza and Barbie had to go, or they would be lynched in the streets just as Gualberto Villarroel had been in 1946 during the La Paz Riots (a prediction that can best be described as prophetic).
The coup was led by Guido Vildoso on May 6th, 1985, and it was a disaster. For starters, Meza had maintained the loyalty of the air force and Bolivia’s tank battalion, which he used to guard La Paz. Vildoso had expected to roll into the streets of La Paz and arrest Meza and Barbie with ease, so when his soldiers came under fire from tanks and fighter jets morale collapsed and the fight for La Paz consumed not only the capital but the nation. The putschists who were attempting to overthrow the government were not only banking on having support from the military but also the Bolivian people, who responded to the coup with indifference. After all, trading one dictator for another wasn’t going to improve their lives. Instead of siding with Vildoso the public listened to the exiled Marcelo Quiroga who returned from Peru to lead a rebellion against the Meza regime, a move that would inadvertently save the Meza regime as it allowed him to decisively rally the military to his side as socialists captured large swathes of the countryside.
Meza condemning the coup (1985). "These Marxist adjacent generals will face God's wrath but not before they face Bolivia's wrath!"
After three days of fighting La Paz was secured from Vildoso and he was tortured and given a free boat ride on the Uru Uru Lake, where he was drowned. The socialist rebellion in the poor countryside was swiftly crushed, with the rebellion receiving no foreign support except from Argentina, who despised Meza for giving fellow mass murderer Jorge Videla asylum. Furthermore, the rebellion stood no chance against the military who used the air force to bomb rebel positions and brutal drug cartels who embarked on a murderous campaign across the countryside, serving as a government backed militia to enforce martial law. At the same time drug cartels terrorized the countryside the streets of urban centers such as La Paz and Cochamba were filled with broken glass and blood as Meza, blaming the coup on a Jewish-Marxist conspiracy ordered soldiers to rob and attack Jews throughout Bolivia, with 300 Jews out of 1,000 Bolivian Jews being murdered over a one-year period along with another 17,000 suspected socialists, liberals, political opponents, and indigenous people. Today, due to the genocide against Jews in Bolivia, Bolivia has a Jewish population of only one hundred, with most fleeing to Peru or Argentina. As news of the genocide leaked outside of Bolivia, the UN adopted Resolution 1230, which officially suspended Bolivia from the UN, placed Meza under investigation for crimes against humanity, and called for Meza to be deposed by the nations of Latin America. Unsurprisingly, no nation invaded, and Meza's reign would last another three years.
The Meza Regime’s reign of terror had just begun but its days were numbered, with no nation supporting the rogue state, with even South Africa condemning the Meza Regime as antisemitic and a neo-Nazi ran cartel state. The only reason Meza’s regime hadn’t been destroyed was because Cianci refused to actively endorse the overthrow of Meza, due to the fact Meza was supported by P2. Furthermore, Peru, Chile, Brazil, and Argentina were either war torn, unstable, or both, with no country wanting to wage a bloody war against Bolivia. Meza’s positions were secure, but that would change when Quiroga returned for his second shot at a socialist revolution.
One of the least stable and unpredictable areas in the world was Latin America where almost every nation was engulfed in flames. But at one point the flames had to be put out and 1985 was the climax of the Latin American Emergency. The Great Central American War, between Honduras, the Guatemalan government, the OPN, the Contras, and Panama against the socialist alliance between the El Salvadorian FDN, Panamanian FRS, Nicaragua, and Guatemalan URNG had been a stalemate for the past year. But in March of 1985 that all changed.
The Dictator of Guatemala, Efrain Montt had desperately attempted to destroy the URNG, describing his anti-URNG campaign as “If you are with us we feed you, if you are against us we kill you.” The campaign is now recognized as a genocide by the UN but at the time the US supported the campaign. The anti-URNG genocide, that targeted Mayan and other indigenous people in particular failed to crush the URNG, in fact it only emboldened them to destroy the Montt regime. After three years as Guatemala’s president, he was deposed by the military in a coup attempt, one that saw pro-Montt forces and anti-Montt forces fight each other as Montt denounced the coup as a Israeli plot (which was technically true, however it was also backed by Chile and the US). As Monttismo forces looked like they had gained the upper hand, securing Guatemala City, the US switched its support back to Montt as CIA Director Singlaub felt Montt had a better chance of destroying the rebels with his heavy handed and genocidal tactics.
The sudden switch only made the situation bloodier as both sides had US made artillery pieces and small missiles that they used against each other rather against the URNG. The Guatemalan Civil War turning into proxy war not just between the US and USSR, but the US and Israel allowed the URNG, which was united in its opposition to the far-right government. The three-way proxy war would allow the URNG to sweep the countryside, securing crucial railroad networks and eliminating thousands of Guatemalan soldiers. On March 12th, 1985, the URNG surrounded Guatemala City and trapped the Monttismo forces who fought till the bitter end. After a month of brutal urban warfare Montt was captured at the presidential palace and captured. Three days later on April 15th he was found guilty in what swiftly condemned by the US as a kangaroo trial. Granted, the outcome was never in doubt, but in this case the accusations against Montt were true and he was executed the same day for crimes against humanity, with his body being thrown into a ditch.
Montt shortly before his execution.
With the fall of Guatemala to Marxism Honduras’s position was precarious as the URNG threatened to invade Honduras if they did not immediately kick out all US soldiers in Honduras and pull out all soldiers from El Salvador. Fearing being surrounded by Communism Honduras refused and made a call to CIA Director Singlaub who put forward Honduras’s case to President Cianci who agreed to use the full might of the US military to protect Honduras from Communism. On April 27th, 1985, Daniel Ortega and the People’s Congress of Guatemala got a call from Secretary of State Oliver North who invoked the Monroe Doctrine and threatened to send US soldiers into both nations if they did not end the war in Honduras. Ortega and the People’s Congress initially refused but the US knew that they’d change their minds. The very next day Cianci hatched a plan to end the Great Central American War. To the shock of all three nations Cianci offered that Honduras pull out of El Salvador, which Honduras begrudgingly accepted. The thing is, El Salvador was already firmly in control of Roberto D’Aubuisson of the OPN. When the end to the Great Central American War was declared on April 28th, 1985, Nicaragua and Guatemala pretended that the war had been a victory, but it was a defeat for them along with anyone who wasn’t America.
In total 500,000 people had died in the Great Central American War and millions were made refugees. In El Salvador the JNP and FDN were crushed. The JNP had decided to join the OPN’s new far-right dictatorship, which would see a similar situation to the Guatemala Genocide where indigenous Salvadorians were systematically murdered by the US backed regime in the name of anti-Communism. It was only in 1989 that a coup would end D'Aubuissons reign of terror.
With the end of the Great Central American War a new crisis threatened to send another US ally into civil war. That was the Shining Path Insurgency in Peru.
For some context, Peru during the 80s was in an unprecedented economic crisis that saw over 80% of its population in poverty and a 50% unemployment rate. With such a terrible crisis crippling Peru’s people, it’s unsurprising some decided to join extremist movements. The most notorious was of course the Shining Path, which was exceptionally brutal, following the Maoist-Wangism of China and showing no mercy during its bombings and massacres. Originally, the Peruvian government did not view the Shining Path as a major threat, as the group only numbered a couple hundred people, and it was thought they could be defeated by the local police. Unfortunately, this underestimation of the Shining Path would cost tens of thousands of lives as the Shining Path overwhelmed the police and was able to recruit a 20,000 strong army to wage war against Peru. As if that wasn’t bad enough the Chinese government took notice of the group and smuggled weapons to the Shining Path, which allowed the Shining Path the chance to cement its presence in the Peruvian countryside. In 1981 President Fernando Belaúnde could not ignore the problem for any longer as the Shining Path’s guerrilla campaign inflicted heavy casualties on the police and military. On October 4th, 1981, he declared a state of emergency and announced that the military would engage the Shining Path. Belaúnde’s response however, much like his response to the economic crisis would fail as the Shining Path gained ground and the army failed to capture Chairman Abimael Guzmán.
Shining Path propaganda poster (1985).
Combined with the economic crisis, that thanks to the Iranian Civil War, years of economic mismanagement under the left-wing military dictatorship, and shut down of the Panama Canal only worsened. By 1983 Peru’s debt was skyrocketing and Peru was in a low-level civil war that saw multiple Communist insurgencies, most prevalent being the Shining Path who massacred villages and inspired by Pol Pot’s policies in Democratic Kampuchea Guzmán orchestrated a series of attacks on cities, particularly industrial centers in an effort to push more people to the countryside and depopulate them. During that year the US approved $100 million in military aid to Peru and advisors from the US Marine Corp were sent to help aid in the fight against the Shining Path.
Anti-Shining Path militia in Huanca Sancos.
In 1985 Peru was once again scheduled to vote for a new President. Fernando Belaúnde’s term had been an unmitigated disaster that had saw the economy sink further into its death spiral and the Shining Path gain ground in the Andes Mountains. Belaúnde had been a center-right president and the Peruvian people wanted someone who would be an anti-Belaúnde, one who they felt was more trustworthy and more effective at fighting the Shining Path. The three main candidates in the 1985 Peruvian election were Alan Garcia, of the APRA Party, a center-left party led by Alan García who was dubbed the Peruvian Kennedy due to his age, being only 36. The second main party was the United Left, led by Alfonso Barrantes who was the mayor of Lima and was an avowed socialist, advocating for turning back Belaúnde’s reforms and nationalizing key industries. The third major party was the Democratic Convergence Party, which was a Christian Democratic Party in the same vein as the Christian Democrats in Italy. Like the Christian Democrats, the Party had factions from the center-left, center, and right wing and was supported by the Catholic Church, making it a force within the nation. However, it was no secret in Peru that those who supported Liberation Theology generally supported Garcia over the Democratic Convergence candidate, Felipe Osterling who was viewed as a continuation of Belaúnde’s failed presidency. Thus, Garcia won in the first round, netting 54% of the vote to Barrantes’s 30% and Osterling’s 10%. Garcia’s presidency would be a short one as the Shining Path decided to organize its biggest attack yet. The attack would be called the “Day of Crimson.”
The Day of Crimson would begin in Lima when on August 16th, 1985, President Garcia met with electrical workers in the outskirts of Lima. There the Shining Path found out which power station he was at and attacked it. There a Shining Path militant fired an RPG at Garcia, and he was killed instantly. Next, the Shining Path assaulted the power plant with seventeen militants who massacred thirty-three workers and ten soldiers who were supposed to guard Garcia. An hour later the Shining Path attacked the US Embassy in central Lima. The assault on the embassy was a brutal one.
The assault started out with a car bomb and an assault by thirty Shining Path militants, who managed to push through the fifty marines who were tasked with defending the embassy. The car bomb had taken out half of them, but the remaining soldiers put up a brutal fight, with the Shining Path militants coming under heavy machine gun fire from the remaining Marines. Within twenty minutes the US Marines and Lima police had killed all thirty of the Shining Path militants but not before dozens of people were shot. The final death toll from the attack was seventy-seven and one-hundred fifty were injured.
The Day of Crimson succeeded in making the Shining Path more well known throughout the world, being praised by Pol Pot a day later and the attack succeeded in exposing the failures of the Peruvian government to crush the Shining Path, but it would also accelerate the defeat of the Shining Path. The US in the aftermath of the Day of Crimson would send $2 billion dollars' worth of military aid to Peru and accepted a request by Peruvian President Luis Alberto Sanchez to provide clandestine air support to destroy the Shining Path. The military offensive against the Shining Path was effective but brutal, with both the Peruvian army and Shining Path committing numerous atrocities that caused civilian deaths to rise into the thousands. The Shining Path’s capabilities were decreased however, they were still able to bomb power plants and mount attacks on population centers such as Lima. It would be under these conditions that the APRA Party would lose most of its support. As the 80s came to an end the people of Peru were looking for change and found it in a political outsider.
As Peru suffered under the terror of the Shining Path and political incompetence one nation became a symbol of hope for Latin America. As its neighbor Brazil was undergoing a political revolution Argentina found itself as the center of another upheaval.
After the Beagle War ended in a Chilean victory the people of Argentina found themselves with intense anger at the military junta that had ruled the nation since 1976. President Jore Videla had been removed on December 1st, 1983, for the failed war and the new president, Reynaldo Bigone decided to reluctantly hold free and fair elections. The 1984 Argentina General Election, held on April 7th was won by Raúl Alfonsín who won with 54% of the vote on a pro-democracy, social democratic platform.
President Alfonsin condemning the Meza regime (1985).
Argentina’s transition to democracy was swift and surprisingly bloodless, which could not be said for Bolivia. Bolivia had been in control of dictator Luis Garcia Meza, who was a far-right general who was allied with Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie. The Meza regime was by far the worst dictatorship in Latin American history, with Meza modeling the dictatorship after the Pinochet regime next door, torturing and murdering political opponents in brutal fashion and embarking in a bloody anti-communist campaign that saw thousands of left-wing Bolivians kidnapped and murdered. The most notorious of Meza’s mass murder sprees was the “free boat rides,” which put the Bolivian Navy to work, by torturing and murdering political opponents. In Meza’s second year as dictator in 1982, he came to the realization that some pesky foreign journalist could leak the brutal torture that was going on in the capital. So, he decided to instead torture people on naval ships off the coasts of lakes and then would proceed to throw the victim off the boat with cinder blocks chained to both their legs before being pushed off into the waters to never be seen again.
Meza’s regime was unsurprisingly unpopular in Latin America. Not only because it was being advised by a Nazi but also because of its role in drug trafficking, with Meza raising funds for his regime by trafficking drugs, primarily crack cocaine. Meza’s regime was shunned by most of Latin America for his alliance with Barbie and his drug trafficking, with even the man who he styled himself after shunning him as drug abuse ravaged Chile.
By 1983 a decent portion of the military despised Meza, noticing he was turning Bolivia into a pariah state on par with North Korea or South Africa. The cherry on top of Meza’s horrid dictatorship was that he was running the economy into the ground, privatizing the lithium industry and selling it off to foreign companies that took advantage of Bolivia’s lack of oversight to avoid paying the little taxes they already paid and dramatically cut wages for their workers. It was decided on by the moderates in the military that Meza and Barbie had to go, or they would be lynched in the streets just as Gualberto Villarroel had been in 1946 during the La Paz Riots (a prediction that can best be described as prophetic).
The coup was led by Guido Vildoso on May 6th, 1985, and it was a disaster. For starters, Meza had maintained the loyalty of the air force and Bolivia’s tank battalion, which he used to guard La Paz. Vildoso had expected to roll into the streets of La Paz and arrest Meza and Barbie with ease, so when his soldiers came under fire from tanks and fighter jets morale collapsed and the fight for La Paz consumed not only the capital but the nation. The putschists who were attempting to overthrow the government were not only banking on having support from the military but also the Bolivian people, who responded to the coup with indifference. After all, trading one dictator for another wasn’t going to improve their lives. Instead of siding with Vildoso the public listened to the exiled Marcelo Quiroga who returned from Peru to lead a rebellion against the Meza regime, a move that would inadvertently save the Meza regime as it allowed him to decisively rally the military to his side as socialists captured large swathes of the countryside.
Meza condemning the coup (1985). "These Marxist adjacent generals will face God's wrath but not before they face Bolivia's wrath!"
After three days of fighting La Paz was secured from Vildoso and he was tortured and given a free boat ride on the Uru Uru Lake, where he was drowned. The socialist rebellion in the poor countryside was swiftly crushed, with the rebellion receiving no foreign support except from Argentina, who despised Meza for giving fellow mass murderer Jorge Videla asylum. Furthermore, the rebellion stood no chance against the military who used the air force to bomb rebel positions and brutal drug cartels who embarked on a murderous campaign across the countryside, serving as a government backed militia to enforce martial law. At the same time drug cartels terrorized the countryside the streets of urban centers such as La Paz and Cochamba were filled with broken glass and blood as Meza, blaming the coup on a Jewish-Marxist conspiracy ordered soldiers to rob and attack Jews throughout Bolivia, with 300 Jews out of 1,000 Bolivian Jews being murdered over a one-year period along with another 17,000 suspected socialists, liberals, political opponents, and indigenous people. Today, due to the genocide against Jews in Bolivia, Bolivia has a Jewish population of only one hundred, with most fleeing to Peru or Argentina. As news of the genocide leaked outside of Bolivia, the UN adopted Resolution 1230, which officially suspended Bolivia from the UN, placed Meza under investigation for crimes against humanity, and called for Meza to be deposed by the nations of Latin America. Unsurprisingly, no nation invaded, and Meza's reign would last another three years.
The Meza Regime’s reign of terror had just begun but its days were numbered, with no nation supporting the rogue state, with even South Africa condemning the Meza Regime as antisemitic and a neo-Nazi ran cartel state. The only reason Meza’s regime hadn’t been destroyed was because Cianci refused to actively endorse the overthrow of Meza, due to the fact Meza was supported by P2. Furthermore, Peru, Chile, Brazil, and Argentina were either war torn, unstable, or both, with no country wanting to wage a bloody war against Bolivia. Meza’s positions were secure, but that would change when Quiroga returned for his second shot at a socialist revolution.
Cambodia will get a chapter soon, but with Vietnam being a Chinese puppet state Pol Pot is given free rein to do whatever he wants as no nation cares enough to liberate Cambodia, not to mention China has promised to protect Cambodia/Kampuchea. IOTL Cambodia's genocide was as bad as the Holocaust and that when it was stopped by Vietnam. Since Pol Pot's reinstated by the Chinese, the best way to describe the genocide is as apocalyptic.
I’d just like to apologize for the lack of a chapter. Last week I had 11 hour marching band practice for five days, which naturally deeply cut into my writing time. Combined with working on the weekend, more band practice, doing other hobbies I enjoy, and vacationing for Labor Day weekend I have had little time to write. My apologies for the long delay and I thank everyone for their patience.
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mortonofski
Donor
You owe us nothing, @ZeroFrame, but you're writing a great story, and I (for one) am grateful for what you've done so far. Take your time, and we look forward to your next post when you're ready!