[Any presidential candidate who claims to represent workers and
marginalized communities, who even nominally opposes U.S. imperialism,
should be able to identify a coup as such. ] [[link removed]]

BERNIE SANDERS' STANCE ON BOLIVIA MATTERS  
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Jacob Sugarman
November 19, 2019
Truthdig
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_ Any presidential candidate who claims to represent workers and
marginalized communities, who even nominally opposes U.S. imperialism,
should be able to identify a coup as such. _

Since Morales’ forced resignation, the response of leading
Democrats and presidential hopefuls has been one of almost total
silence, even among the party’s putative progressives., CNN

 

Toward the end of Saturday night’s Democratic forum
[[link removed]] hosted by the Spanish
language network Univision, moderator Jorge Ramos posed what can
charitably be called a leading question to 2020 hopeful Bernie
Sanders. Ramos, who cemented his place in the public consciousness
when then-candidate Donald Trump had him tossed from a news conference
[[link removed]] in 2015, noted that
Sanders had called the overthrow of Bolivian President Evo Morales a
“coup,”
[[link removed]]
but that others maintain that Morales was attempting to become a
dictator. So what does Sanders think?

In a Democratic field that seems to grow more
[[link removed]]
crowded
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by the month if not the week, the Vermont senator’s answer was
nothing short of revelatory. “I don’t agree with that
assertion,” he said. “I think Morales did a very good job in
alleviating poverty and giving the indigenous people of Bolivia a
voice that they never had before. Now we can argue about his going for
a fourth term, whether that was a wise thing to do. … But at the end
of the day, it was the military who intervened in that process and
asked him to leave. When the military intervenes, Jorge, in my view,
that’s called a ‘coup.'”

Since Morales’ forced resignation, the response of leading Democrats
and presidential hopefuls has been one of almost total silence
[[link removed]],
even among the party’s putative progressives. As video
[[link removed]]
emerged of right-wing protesters burning the flag
[[link removed]]
of the indigenous Wiphala and pro-coup police officers gleefully
cutting it off their uniforms
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Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., declined to comment publicly despite
the gruesome precedent
[[link removed]] in
the region. (She has since issued a tepid tweet
[[link removed]] calling on
Bolivian security forces to “protect demonstrators, not commit
violence against them.”) The same can be said of Rep. Tulsi Gabbard,
D-Hawaii, who has made opposition to U.S. regime change the
centerpiece of her campaign, although her anti-imperialism has always
been questionable at best
[[link removed]]. Chris
Murphy, D-Conn., an outspoken critic
[[link removed]]
of the U.S.-backed Saudi war in Yemen, could only muster the following
on social media:

Chris Murphy @ChrisMurphyCT

The drama isn't just in Washington today. Unrest is growing in Latin
America, and the Trump Administration needs to pay attention. In
Bolivia, the U.S. needs to support a civilian-led transition of power
at a perilous moment. We can't botch this like we did Venezuela.

Given that the U.S. has repeatedly backed coup attempts in Venezuela,
most recently throwing its support behind President of the National
Assembly Juan Guaidó, the last line of that tweet seems confusing at
best and ominous at worst. What, after all, is the United States’ to
botch? By contrast, British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn instantly
condemned
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Morales’ removal from office as an assault on “democracy, social
justice and independence.” Both Trump and Prime Minister Boris
Jonson have officially recognized Bolivia’s interim government.

In the week since, the crisis in Bolivia has grown increasingly
deadly. The Bolivian military has slaughtered dozens of demonstrators
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and over the past two days, hand-picked president, Jeanine Áñez, has
issued a pair of disturbing edicts. The first is that the Bolivian
military will not be prosecuted for crimes committed in the
suppression of protests, providing it with what members of the
socialist MAS party are calling a “license to kill”
[[link removed]]; the
second is the creation of a “special government apparatus”
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to detain MAS lawmakers, who constitute a two-thirds majority
[[link removed]] in the
Bolivian legislature. Meanwhile, Argentinian journalists have been
chased from the country under the threat of violence
[[link removed]].

Ánez, whose deceptively named Democratic Social Movement Party won
just 4.2%
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the vote in the October elections, has called a New Year’s
celebration of the Aymara people “satanic”
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and has referred to Morales as a “pobre indio” (a poor Indian).
Upon assuming office, she declared that “La Biblia vuelve al
palacio”
[[link removed]] (“the
Bible has returned to the presidential palace”), bearing an
oversized scripture to re-enforce the point. The New York Times notes
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that she has made her speeches “shadowed by an aide carrying a
cross.”

None of this absolves Morales of his apparent illiberalism or real
missteps
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in office. As his critics in Western media eagerly
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observe
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he narrowly lost a 2016 referendum
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his eligibility for a fourth term, receiving approval instead from his
country’s Supreme Court. Along similar lines, the U.S.-backed
Organization of American States
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reported irregularities in 2019’s presidential elections, although
those remain in dispute
[[link removed]].
As “Empire’s Workshop”
[[link removed]]
author and Latin American historian Greg Grandin recently wrote
[[link removed]],
“there has never been a coup in Latin America where the president
being overthrown wasn’t considered ‘problematic.’ (Yes, not even
[Salvador] Allende.)” Indeed, The Economist blamed
[[link removed]]
the Chilean president directly for Augusto Pinochet’s seizure of
power in 1973.

It seems telling, then, that the military asked Morales to resign
after he agreed—likely under duress—to a second election
[[link removed]].
And while the current Secretary General of OAS Luis Almagro will not,
former Secretary General José Miguel Insulza has said that
Bolivia’s democratic interregnum meets the political definition of
“un golpe”
[[link removed]]
(a coup).

So why can’t Democrats do the same? Whether the Trump administration
is directly responsible for Morales’ overthrow or the U.S. is merely
the passive beneficiary of a new market-friendly
[[link removed]]
and increasingly Christofascist regime
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is, ultimately, beside the point. (A passing familiarity with Bolivian
history or Operation Condor
[[link removed]] more broadly point to
the former, to say nothing of the attempts in Venezuela earlier this
year, although I am loath to speculate.) Any presidential candidate
who claims to represent workers and marginalized communities, who even
nominally opposes U.S. imperialism, should be able to identify a coup
as such. If they can’t, why should we trust them to implement a just
and holistic foreign policy?

It’s a basic test that the party has, to date, failed
miserably—one that not only illuminates the threat Sanders poses to
America’s two-party duopoly but renders absurd the notion that he
shares the politics of Warren or any other 2020 contender.

JACOB SUGARMAN [[link removed]] is
the acting managing editor at Truthdig. He is a graduate of the Arthur
L. Carter Institute of Journalism whose writing has appeared in Salon,
AlterNet and Tablet, among other publications.

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