“Another Bloody Drama”: The Yáńez Massacre and the Attempted Eradication of the Belcista Movement

“Another Bloody Drama”:

The Yáñez Massacre and the Attempted Eradication of the Belcista Movement

Heather Thiessen-Reily, PhD

Western State Colorado University

In January 1861 Bolivia’s political fortunes were buffeted once again by the fickle winds of political change as José María Linares found himself ousted from power and General José María de Achá seized the presidency.   Later in the year, in response to a small but unnerving uprising in La Paz, Achá convened a war council in the capital and had  supporters of former president Manuel Isidoro Belzu arrested, imprisoned and kept incommunicado in various jails throughout the city.  The following day, former President Córdova and other Belcistas, including Belzu’s brother were detained and held at the Loreto. The detainees’ connections to the aforementioned rebellion were tenuous at best but the men were held for numerous days without formal charges being laid.  During the night of 23 October a most disturbing and uncharacteristic event occurred, when the local commander, Colonel Yáñez oversaw the murders of Jorge Córdova, Francisco Paula de Belzu and 38 others.  Despite an earlier assassination attempt against Manuel Isidoro Belzu while President in 1850, what was disturbing about the Yanez Massacre was how violently uncharacteristic such an action appeared despite the deep hostile rivalries between political factions in Bolivia.  The “Matanzas de Yáñez” provoked a violent reaction of the cholo population of La Paz and thus entered into the extensive chronology of 19^th century Bolivian political violence.  However, the massacre should be understood as more than an excessive anomaly of Bolivian politics. Rather it was part of a developing trend in Bolivian politics: the movement away from political exile of political leaders to their eradication.