[Bolivia’s oligarchy launched an orgy of racist and fascist
violence to oust president Morales] [[link removed]]

THE BOLIVIAN COUP: WHAT THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA DON’T TELL YOU  
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Francisco Dominguez
November 11, 2019
Morning Star
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_ Bolivia’s oligarchy launched an orgy of racist and fascist
violence to oust president Morales _

Police detain a supporter of former President Evo Morales during
clashes on the south side of La Paz, Bolivia, today,

 

THE Comite Ciudadano (Citizens Committee), a right-wing coalition led
by Bolivia’s ex-vice-president, Carlos Mesa, and Luis Fernando
Camacho, a multimillionaire entrepreneur, leading the extreme
right-wing pressure group Comite Civico (Civic Committee) of Santa
Cruz, jointly launched a brutal wave of violence in many areas of the
country aimed explicitly at ousting democratically elected president
Evo Morales.

The violence is carried out by paid, armed thugs whose main target has
been public buildings, organisations associated with the government
(trade unions, co-operatives, poor communities and neighbourhoods
suspected of being pro-Morales bastions, community radio stations and
such like), individuals linked to the government (ministers, mayors
etc), and especially persons of indigenous origin who have endured the
brunt of their racism. They have targeted indigenous women the most.

This is a re-enactment of the racist wave of violence launched in
2008, aimed both at ousting democratically elected Morales and the
partition of the state into two, seeking to set up a non-indigenous
country in the territory’s eastern region, exactly where the rich
gas and oil deposits lie.

At the time, US ambassador Phillip Goldberg played a central role in
the operation. The US, as with the oil in Venezuela, has not abandoned
laying its hands on such riches, with the additional incentive that
Bolivia has the largest deposits of lithium in the world.

What prompted this was the electoral defeat Bolivia’s right wing
suffered at the national election on October 20 2019. The results gave
the victory to Morales’s Movement for Socialism (MAS) with 47.08 per
cent, against Carlos Mesa with 36.51 per cent and another candidate
who got 8.78 per cent. Additionally, MAS won absolute majorities in
both the Congress and Senate. The right-wing opposition refused to
recognise the results and, in typical Latin American right-wing
fashion, alleged fraud.

Elections in Bolivia are entirely manual. So the right wing seized on
the normal delay in Bolivian elections to give the definite results,
due to the time it takes for the mainly indigenous, rural vote to be
counted and its outcome to be sent to La Paz for the vote aggregation
by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), as evidence of foul play.

The right wing launched an intoxicating media campaign (with full
support of the world corporate media) that fraud had been committed.

Then the coup offensive began in earnest and by October 22, right-wing
thugs went on the rampage and, among other barbarities, set fire to
three electoral offices across Bolivia claiming “vote rigging.”

Their violence massively intensified when the TSE announced
Morales’s victory on the constitutional principle that if any
presidential candidate obtains over 40 per cent and at least 10 points
above the runner-up there is no need for a second round.

In order to defuse the tense situation Morales asked the TSE to invite
the Organisation of American States (OAS) to conduct an audit on the
election. Mesa, Camacho and their followers rejected this outright,
and instead demanded new elections and the resignation of Morales,
whilst continuing to egg on the racist thugs to conduct a nationwide
witch-hunt against MAS supporters.

Social media has been full of horrible images of racist violence
against indigenous women and men, such as the case of the MAS Mayor of
Vinto, in Cochabamba, Patricia Arce, who was detained by thugs who
shaved her hair, doused her with red paint (the colour of the right
wing in Bolivia), forced her to walk barefoot through the city, kneel
down by and ask for forgiveness for supporting Morales’s government.

She, bravely, refused to apologise, stood her ground and was
eventually rescued by law and order forces. In the meantime, other
armed racist thugs set the Vinto Town Hall on fire.

Similarly, the Town Hall of Oruro was also set on fire by opposition
thugs, so was the house of Victor Hugo Vasquez, Oruro governor, and
the same fate met the house of Esteban Urquizo, MAS governor of Sucre
in Chuquisaca.

Additionally, Victor Borda, president of Bolivia’s Congress,
resigned his post and even his position as an MP because armed
oppositionists in the city of Potosi kidnapped his brother.

He resigned to preserve his brother’s life and to contribute to the
country’s peace. This is a technique that has been used against
other prominent members of MAS, hence a number of resignations,
presented as a crisis inside of MAS. Even Bolivia’s right-wing media
are reporting this method.

In another racist outrage, the house of Esther Morales Ayma, Evo
Morales’s sister, in the city of Oruro, was also set on fire.

Right-wing mobs violently occupied the premises of Bolivia TV and
Nueva Patria Radio, both pro-government media, where they forcibly
expelled all the workers. Not a whisper from the corporate media about
this blatant attack on freedom of the press.

In another act of aggression, right-wing demonstrators took Jose
Aramayo, director of the Peasant Confederation’s radio station,
hostage after occupying the Confederation premises. He was brutalised
and tied to a tree in the street.

The wave of violence is almost identical to the US-led coup attempts
and extreme right-wing violence unleashed in Venezuela in 2014 and
2017 — and in Nicaragua in 2018.

What made it easier for the thugs to operate freely and with impunity
is that important sections of the police force, in what appears to be
a coordinated action, raised a number of economic demands
(equalisation of salaries to the armed forces’ level), retreated to
their barracks, and left the civilian population at the mercy of
racist thugs going on the rampage. Communities and Morales supporters
have organised their own defence, thus increasing the tension.

Most of the worst outrages have been carefully omitted by the
world’s corporate media who are presenting the crisis as a rebellion
against Morales’s government for the defence of democracy, a far cry
from the reality on the ground.

The government has correctly characterised it as a coup attempt led by
the country’s right wing with racist and fascist thugs perpetrating
wanton violence with the sole aim of ousting Morales.

On November 10 Morales called for fresh elections with a totally
renewed TSE aimed at bringing an end to the racist violence, and
called the opposition to a dialogue.

However, Carlos Mesa in a public statement said that both Morales and
his vice-president, Alvaro Garcia Linera, cannot continue in their
positions and must resign — nor can they be candidates in any fresh
election.

He also encouraged the opposition to continue and intensify the
pressure in the streets that has already inflicted so much pain —
primarily on the indigenous majority — and has brought the nation to
the verge of a civil war.

This was the real game plan. Not since 2008 has Bolivian democracy
been so much under threat. Then the army’s commander-in-chief called
on Morales to resign. Now Morales and vice president Alvaro Garcia
Linera have gone on TV and tendered their resignations, seeking to
bring about peace. The coup has been consummated.

We call upon the British labour movement to condemn the right-wing
coup and support democracy in Bolivia and Morales’s call for fresh
elections as a democratic and peaceful means to resolve the crisis the
coup has thrown the country into. No more Pinochets in Latin America!

_Francisco Dominguez is Chilean academic and activist Francisco
Dominguez. _

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