Three Steps to the Front

Introduction: The monument, representing the Heroic Cadet of the Military Army College, was
erected in homage to the more than fifty thousand young lives that were sacrificed in the war
contest called Three Steps to the Front in the Chaco War.

History: On October 6, 1933, the cadets of the Military College were summoned to the courtyard
of honor. They were first, second and third year students of the Military College, between 15 and
17 years old, trained in the schoolyard and the Commander asked that they take three steps
forward who were willing to go to the Chaco war. Everybody did. The question was repeated three
times and on three occasions the cadets took all three steps, even though they were warned of
the dangerous loss of life

Hence the name Battalion "Three Steps Forward".

Once they arrived in Tarija, they were taken to the next. They danced and then the cadets went to
the Chaco arenas to face death, face to face, in different military units.

In total 174 cadets to war, only 110 returned. Some returned invalid and psychologically trauma,
others were taken prisoner in Paraguay.

Conclusion: Students don't know what the Chaco War is today. "They are teaching them foreign
things, they should give them books of Bolivian history, they show them who Ernesto (Che)
Guevara and Hugo Chavez are, who has no relationship with Bolivia," he complains.

Toy is only one cadet left of that group that went to war: Numa del Carpio, 105 years old, who is in
Santa Cruz. "He's the last of the cadets, he's very lucid. He doesn't walk, he's in a wheelchair, he
remembers everything

For the children and grandchildren of the benevolents having gone to war, the cadets are a very
great sacrifice, so they deserve to be decorated in life, the dead have no value. as interesting as
last sculture in my town