Underdog Stories / Football history

What happened to The Strongest in the 1969 Viloco crash?

The Strongest 1969 plane crash at Viloco killed 74 people, including 17 players. Here is how the Bolivian club rebuilt, with help from Boca and rival Bolívar.

By Brett Hanson · Underdog Podcasts · September 4, 2026

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In April 1908, twelve students in La Paz started a football club and then spent a while arguing about what to call it. The first version was "Strong Football Club." Somebody said strong wasn't good enough. So they added the article and the superlative, and The Strongest was born, which is a bold name for a team that had not yet played a match.

Sixty-one years later the name got tested. On 26 September 1969, a plane carrying the team home from Santa Cruz hit a mountain near Viloco, and everyone on board died. That included 17 players and the coach. The club had almost no team left. It rebuilt with loans from Boca Juniors and its rival Bolívar, and won the 1970 and 1971 La Paz titles.

Why is the club called The Strongest?

Twelve students founded the club on 8 April 1908, with José León López Villamil as its first president. Chris Horwedel makes a good point on Why We Love This Club. Most clubs hide their ambition inside a saint's name or a neighbourhood. These teenagers put theirs on the badge.

The colours have two origin stories. Horwedel's episode says yellow and black came from an earlier local side, Thunder. The club's own histories tell it differently. A friend sent a green-and-yellow shirt from Germany, and one founder said the colours looked like a local bird, the Chayñita. Nobody seems to have a signed letter settling it.

The name did earn its keep early. The club won the first football tournament in Bolivian history, the Copa Prefectural, in 1911. In 1930, as the episode tells it, they won the championship unbeaten without conceding a goal. They also beat Universitario 4-1 in the match that opened the original Estadio Hernando Siles.

Then came a war. In the Chaco War, around 600 players, staff and members enlisted in the army. The battle of May 1934 is remembered as Cañada Strongest. Horwedel is careful here. Legend says the battle was named because the team's players won it. He says the real story is messier, since an army is bigger than a club. But the link was not invented.

What happened in the Viloco plane crash in 1969?

This is the core of the Strongest plane crash story. The team had been invited to an exhibition game in Santa Cruz on a local holiday. They played a four-team friendly tournament and lost both games, 0-3 to Cerro Porteño and 0-4 to a Santa Cruz combined side.

The Lloyd Aéreo Boliviano DC-6B left Santa Cruz for La Paz with five crew and 69 passengers. It hit Mount Choquetanga, killing all 74 aboard. The wreck lay in the Cordillera Tres Cruces, near the mining community of Viloco.

The player count is where sources part ways. Horwedel says 17 footballers, plus coach Eustaquio Ortuño, a staff member and a club delegate. Wikipedia's wording is sixteen players plus one on loan. NBC's list says 16 players. The 17 holds if you count the loanee.

Three players were not aboard. Luis Gini and Marco Antonio Velasco were injured, and Rolando Vargas had a personal errand. The investigation found no clear reason for the crash. It speculated about bad weather and poor visibility.

One life shows the scale better than 74 does. Horwedel says midfielder Oscar Flores was due to marry the next day. According to Bolivian press accounts he cites, Flores sent his father a telegram that morning reminding him to come to La Paz for the wedding.

The same day, Bolivia had a military coup. General Alfredo Ovando Candia overthrew President Luis Adolfo Siles Salinas. Sports editor Miguel Velarde recalled that the plane news covered everything and made the coup almost an anecdote.

The funeral was held on 30 September at the cathedral, and thousands lined up to pay their respects.

How did The Strongest rebuild after Viloco?

“Strength in this club is not about avoiding the worst day. It's about refusing to let the worst day become its final day.”
— Chris Horwedel, on Why We Love This Club

Not like a film. Horwedel is blunt about this: catastrophe, montage, trophy is the story we like, but real rebuilding is slower. Families needed support. The club still had debts, employees and frightened supporters.

The man who took the job was Rafael Mendoza, known as Don Rafo, the club's president. He had built the Oriental soft drinks company and become one of the richest businessmen in Bolivia, though many Bolivians called him "the only good millionaire." He asked for help. He got it.

Bolívar, the city rival, contributed players to the new side, called The Strongest Símbolo. Horwedel's line about this is the best in the episode: Bolívar helped when The Strongest were broken, then went back to trying to beat them.

Help came from further away too. CONMEBOL's president donated $20,000, and Brazil's João Havelange organised a Flamengo-Fluminense match to raise money for the club. In the episode, Boca Juniors holds a benefit match and its president, Alberto J. Armando, opens the club's player pool to Mendoza.

Mendoza told his own version of that deal. Armando sent him to a Boca training ground, where the 20 best youth players were waiting. Mendoza could pick the three he liked best and take as many of the others as he wanted. He was interested in four. Two of them, Bastida and Romerito, became idols. The photo Bolivians still remember, Don Rafo at the wheel of his pickup, loaded with new players, shows how it looked at the time.

Did The Strongest win titles after the 1969 crash?

Yes, and fast. The club took the La Paz titles of 1970, 1971 and 1974, finished national runner-up in 1970, and won the 1974 national title unbeaten.

It was not all glory. Peñarol thrashed them 9-0 in the 1971 Libertadores, a score Luis Fernando "Zorro" Bastida would rather forget.

The club also built for the long term. In 1970, Mendoza recalled, they swapped a 7,000-square-metre plot in Obrajes for a 50,000-square-metre one in Alto Achumani. The stadium there was built and rebuilt between 1974 and 1986, because a river kept eating the foundations. It now carries Mendoza's name.

Then came the 1977 league. The Strongest won the first Liga title with a 3-1 final win over Oriente Petrolero. Bastida was in that side. Dates need care here. That first tournament ran from 17 September 1977 to 29 March 1978. So the "1977 title" was settled in the spring of 1978.

Horwedel's point is that the rebuilding produced players, buildings and a new generation of champions. He does not claim the disaster made the club better. "Disaster didn't do anything," he says. People died, and families lived with the absence.

How does The Strongest remember Viloco today?

The episode says the memory is physical. A mausoleum in La Paz's general cemetery holds the memory of the dead. September is for remembrance, not for slogans.

Gratitude has outlasted the loans. Journalist Ricardo Bajo said "Los stronguistas somos hinchas de 'boquita'," meaning Strongest fans are Boca fans too.

The trophy count carries on. The 2023 title was the club's sixteenth. Horwedel's modern list says 15, and the difference is how you count older national competitions. The count matters less than the dates.

The 50th anniversary, in 2019, had a small detail. The club honoured Amanda Angelaccio, born an hour after the accident that killed her father, the goalkeeper Armando Angelaccio. She is older than the club's modern history. You can hear the whole story in Horwedel's Why We Love This Club episode, "Club The Strongest — The Club That Had to Become Its Name."