The Charamokho ambush occurred in 2019 when the communist Kataris 26 guerrillas turned on their erstwhile American allies and ambushed them in the village of Charamokho in Bolivia's Pucara department. While the guerrillas succeeded in capturing the CIA agent Karen Bowman and luring Ghost Recon's Kingslayer Team into a trap, the Americans fought their way out of the insurgents' ambush and moved out to take down Santa Blanca Cartel boss El Sueño before Kataris 26 leader Pac Katari could do so.
History[]
In 2008, the Santa Blanca Cartel, led by the visionary drug lord Rodrigo Carlos Pérez Morales (better known as "El Sueño"), relocated from Mexico to Bolivia to conquer one of the world's largest sources of illicit cocaine. As the cartel slowly killed the leaders of Bolivia's native cartels, expanded its control over Bolivia, and intimidated or killed the leader of cocalero (coca farmer) unions, indigenous resistance activists formed the Maoist-Katarist "Kataris 26" revolutionary movement to fight back. Pac Katari, a mestizo claiming descent from the 18th-century indigenous rebel Tupac Katari, became the group's leader, while his uncle Amaru served as its chief ideologue. After the failure of the Bolivian Drug War in 2017, the cartel and the government agreed to a ceasefire, and Santa Blanca formed a loose partnership with the Bolivian Army's corrupt La Unidad special forces unit, helping the cartel to clamp down on rebel activities across the countryside.
The United States, home to one of Santa Blanca's largest drug markets, attempted to dismantle the cartel through having DEA agent Ricky Sandoval infiltrate the group as its accountant. Sandoval quickly realized that the heavily militarized cartel could not be taken down through mere legal action, and, with the help of Pac Katari, he arranged the bombing of the American embassy in a false-flag attack implicating the cartel. Shortly after, he and the rebels attempted to assassinate El Sueño, only for the rebels to fail and for Sandoval to be captured, tortured, and executed. The embassy bombing and Sandoval's death led the United States to initiate Operation Kingslayer, a joint CIA-DEA-JSOC operation in which CIA agent Karen Bowman and Major Anthony Perryman's Ghost Recon squad would be dispatched to Bolivia to work with the Kataris 26 to dismantle and destroy the cartel.
Pac Katari meeting with the Americans
Pac Katari was willing to manipulate the Americans to help turn the tide of the conflict, even as his uncle Amaru opposed working with the USA. For that reason, Pac Katari secretly helped the cartel capture his uncle, who was imprisoned and tortured in Itacua. At the same time, he linked up with the American special forces team and persuaded them to rescue his uncle and help the rebels liberate Itacua. Gradually, the Americans earned the trust and support of the rebels, helping them by shutting down cartel communication relays, protecting rebel propaganda broadcasts in major towns, handing over captured cartel supplies, capturing medical equipment, comms tools, and gasoline from cartel convoys, and intimidating the cartel's sicarios. All the while, Pac Katari occasionally clashed with the Kingslayer Team due to his fierce nationalism and his opposition to their destruction of cartel cocaine, as he and his Shining Path allies in Peru sought to replace the cartel as masters of the South American drug trade.
After the Americans took down the cartel underbosses Rudolfo Yana and El Cardenal, El Sueño was spotted in Bolivia by Kataris 26 scouts. Confident that the cartel was on the back foot, Pac Katari made preparations for his group's takeover of Bolivia. He invited the Americans to help take down El Sueño, but Perryman instead decided to fully dismantle and destabilize the cartel before going after El Sueño. Following El Muro's capture, the Americans agreed to meet Pac Katari's contact at the Pre-Columbian Necropolis in Montuyoc.
Amaru's body
Instead of finding an ally, the Americans found the corpse of Amaru, whom Pac Katari had murdered due to his belief that Amaru's visions could not raise an army or win the war. The Americans tried to contact Pac Katari on their discovery of Amaru's body, but he did not pick up. Perryman then called Bowman, who said that Pac Katari was with her in Pucara. Worried, Perryman set out with his team to rendezvous with Bowman in Charamokho village.
Ambush[]
Perryman rescuing Bowman
Perryman and his team rushed to Charamokho, entering Bowman's safehouse and finding her badly beaten. Bowman revealed that the Americans had been lured to Charamokho as a diversion, as Pac Katari and his rebels had already set out to confront El Sueño at his mountaintop mausoleum. Perryman determined to hunt down El Sueño before Pac Katari could do so, and Bowman, while agreeing to meet him there, warned him that this meant that Pac Katari and his rebels would no longer be their allies.
As Perryman and his team exfiltrated by car, rebel fighters descended on Charamokho from a nearby slope and in trucks. Perryman, saddened by the rebels' betrayal, did not return fire and instead sped off with his team, losing his pursuers. As the Americans drove to the mausoleum, Pac Katari contacted them and told the Americans that he was doing what was right for his country; he said that the people, the government, and the other cartels had to know that the rebels were not the slaves of Americans and were strong on their own. He also said that, while Amaru was a man of brilliant ideals, ideals did not feed people, build armies, or take down corrupt governments. When Perryman told Pac Katari that getting his people killed also did not achieve that goal, Katari responded, "My people know that if they die today, they will return tomorrow as thousands and thousands." Pac Katari then said that he would soon teach El Sueño a lesson in pain, and he warned the Americans to leave the Bolivia unless they wished to share his fate. After thanking the Americans for their help, he hung up, and he proceeded to attack El Sueño's mausoleum and die in the process.