Bolivian Coup
Bolivian Coup
What we know about the attempted coup and what preceded it .
There is a lot going on in Bolivia . The June 26th coup against the nations elected President Luis Arce was quickly ended when the President and his ministers confronted the leader of the putsch General Jose Zunigas in a dramatic scene inside the Capitol building in La Paz while scores of mobilized Bolivian citizens chased the military units involved out of the area .
The General who now sits in jail was head of the Bolivian armed forces . A position he was appointed to by President Arce 2 years ago. Many questions remain about why the coup was undertaken. Were there outside agitators involved in its planning ? Who exactly is the leader of the coup General Zunigas ?
As of now there are two theories put forth by the media as to what is going on in Bolivia who is involved and why .
1.General Zuniga was ordered to undertake the uprising by Arce himself to help unite the Bolivian populace, possibly to distract them from the political and economic crises that have befallen the nation.
The Bolivian people are extremely sensitive to attacks on their nations democracy after the recent 2019 coup of the extremely popular former President Evo Morales. The deposed leader was the first in the nations modern history of indigenous heritage . His terms in office brought unprecedented economic prosperity to the nation marked by large portions of the population raised out of poverty and investments in social programs and national infrastructure.
Morales was replaced by the unelected white, Christian far-right senator , Jeanine Áñez, who is from the country’s minority European decended community of Bolivias wealthiest region. Her new, unelected government then murdered dozens of Indigenous1 protesters and then gave the responsible soldiers immunity.
2.That the coup was instigated and organized by multinational corporations and foreign governments like the United States to exacerbate the political disagreements between former President Morales and his former finance minister President Arce . The goal of exploiting that rift would be brining to power a more right wing conservative leadership who would be open to foreign ownership of Bolivian mineral wealth .
A little over a week after the attempted ouster of Arce and there is no definitive answer to the what and why of the events of June 26th. The day after the dramatic scenes in La Paz the former elected President Evo Morales openly questioned what to call the events that unfolded.
“I don’t know what kind of coup it is? A coup with zero wounded, zero gunshots, zero deaths.” -Evo Morales 2
Morales was also one of the first people to alert President Arce to the irregular troop movements in the early mourning hours preceding the attempted putsch.
The issues between the MAS leaders and their supporters are electoral and economic. Morales and Arce both plan on running in the 2025 Presidential election. Another main issue is how to deal with the worsening economic situation that faces the South American nation.
Either way the split between the former and current Presidents and their supporters leaves the current government of Arce and the party weaker and less able to deal with the economic and social unrest caused by the nations dwindling supply of natural gas the countries main legal export.
There is more natural gas to be discovered in Bolivia . The nations Bolivian state-owned oil firm YPFB found a new source in 2022 .4However the rift in the MAS party between the current and former President ,( possibly with the help of a right wing minority with ties to U.S. elites and multinational corporations) has stagnated further exploration and development of that resource hurting the nations economy.
If the current economic and political crises are not dealt with the wedge between the Arce faction and the Morales faction of their MAS party could cause the countries economy to worsen. That rift could open the door to other more right wing political groups who might be more open to selling the rights to the nations mineral wealth.
Arce wants to take on more debt to help ease the crisis. Morales and his supporters do not.
Foreign entities want what Bolivia has, mineral and agricultural resources. The small South American nation has the largest deposit of lithium in the world, natural gas and is the third largest producer of coca . The plant used to make the illicit drug cocaine. President Arce and the former President Morales disagree on how to deal with the illicit narcotics trade which has seen rapid growth since Morales was forced to resign .
Loans from U.S. / foreign banks where the terms make it almost impossible for them to be repaid with the collateral being the nations natural resources are a time tested tactic of predatory capitalism and US empire .
The US based multinational resource extraction corporations as well as the groups who engage in the international drug trade are willing to be patient with their plans and play the long game . That is the historical pattern that has repeated itself throughout much of Latin American and the rest of the world since the proclamation of the Monroe Doctrine and the end of WWII .
The 2019 coup of Evo Morales
President Morales was forced to flee the country in November 2019 where he found asylum in Mexico after winning the October Presidential election of that same year by 10 points , the threshold under Bolivian election law where a runoff is not mandated .
The evidence used to invalidate Morales victory was an OAS ( Organization of American States) report which stated that there were irregularities consistent with election fraud. That report was immediately publicly supported by the statements of CIA chief Mike Pompeo and pieces in neoliberal media outlets like The Atlantic, The Economist, as well as by College Professors and former Obama officials .
In a June 8th 2020 article in The Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald wrote “On the day the preliminary OAS report was released, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo cited it both on Twitter and on the official State Department website to demand new elections:
Pompeo, in January of this year, visited OAS’s Washington office and heaped praise on the organization for the role its audit played in forcing Morales from the country — a move which Pompeo heralded by invoking the long Orwellian U.S. tradition of depicting pro-U.S. military coups as “pro-democracy”:
More recently, the OAS honored the former Bolivian government’s request to conduct an audit of the disputed election results. The probe conducted uncovered proof of massive and systemic fraud. It helped end the violence that had broken out over the election dispute. It helped the Bolivian Congress unanimously establish a date and conditions for a new election. And it honored – importantly, it honored the Bolivian people’s courageous demand for a free and fair election, and for democracy.
U.S. media outlets and foreign policy commentators dutifully echoed the U.S. State Department’s line, as they typically do, by depicting the violent military coup as an advancement of freedom and democracy for the Bolivian people (the same Bolivian people who had just voted for Morales to be their president). A Washington Post op ed in February by two MIT scholars noted: “The media has largely reported the allegations of fraud [from the OAS] as fact. ”5
This led to a now infamous tweet by Tesla founder Elon Musk where he responded to criticism of US interference in the 2019 Bolivian elections with “ we will coup who we want to coup , deal with it”
That OAS ( long know throughout Latin America as a tool of the U.S. State Department ) report cited by Pompeo and other US corporate media was later refuted by an article in the NYT which stated that the report was “marred by grave irregularities,” making it “impossible to guarantee the integrity of the data and certify the accuracy of the OAS claims.” The Times summarized “A close look at Bolivian election data suggests an initial analysis by the OAS that raised questions of vote-rigging — and helped force out a president — was flawed.6
Two days ago President Arce made a public statement where he accused without naming directly that it was outside forces who had instigated the coup attempt of June 26th . We will have to wait and see what the truth is.
However it’s impossible to deny that whenever the United States wants elected leaders removed “ concern for preservation of Democracy and the rule of law” are the reasons stated publicly . The real motive of US regime change in Bolivia and Latin America was revealed in a 2014 NYT editorial on Morales re-election win with this candid sentence: “This regional dynamic has been dismal for Washington’s influence in the region.”7
https://apnews.com/article/jean-united-nations-caribbean-ap-top-news-elections-530280a8d9674f58ad19af8d3f00edee
(https://amp.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/29/bolivias-president-accused-of-plotting-coup-against-himself-to-boost-popularity)
https://apnews.com/article/bolivia-coup-arce-morales-military-army-la-paz-b41453606ccd31c8f0cc4b3b7e3732ca#
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/bolivia-heralds-major-new-gas-find-amid-production-slump-2022-02-05/
https://theintercept.com/2020/06/08/the-nyt-admits-key-falsehoods-that-drove-last-years-coup-in-bolivia-falsehoods-peddled-by-the-u-s-its-media-and-the-nyt/
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/07/world/americas/bolivia-election-evo-morales.html#click=https://t.co/HGrEx2Yd1h
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/17/opinion/evo-morales-of-bolivia-and-democracy.html