{"id":153727,"date":"2020-02-17T12:00:55","date_gmt":"2020-02-17T12:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=153727"},"modified":"2020-02-12T09:03:57","modified_gmt":"2020-02-12T09:03:57","slug":"bolivia-an-election-in-the-midst-of-an-ongoing-coup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/02\/bolivia-an-election-in-the-midst-of-an-ongoing-coup\/","title":{"rendered":"Bolivia: An Election in the Midst of an Ongoing Coup"},"content":{"rendered":"

10 Feb 2020 – <\/em>On May 3, 2020, the Bolivian people will go to the polls once more<\/a>. They return there because President Evo Morales had been overthrown in a coup in November 2019. Morales had just won a presidential election in October for a term that would have begun in January 2020. Based on a preliminary investigation<\/a> by the Organization of American States (OAS) that claimed that there was fraud in the election, Morales was prematurely removed from office; the term for his 2014 presidential election victory did not end until January. Yet, he was told by the military to leave office. An interim president\u2014Jeanine \u00c1\u00f1ez\u2014appointed herself. She said she was taking this office only on an interim basis and would not run for election when Bolivia held another election. She is a candidate for the May 3 election. (For more information on what is happening in Bolivia, see this overview<\/a> from Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.)<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Morales has been in exile in Argentina. His party\u2014the Movement for Socialism (MAS)\u2014has candidates for the presidency and the vice presidency, but their party cadres and followers are facing a difficult time making their case to the people. Their radio stations have been blocked, their leaders arrested or exiled (or sitting in foreign embassies waiting for asylum), their cadre beaten up and intimidated.<\/p>\n

The United Nations secretary-general\u2019s personal envoy Jean Arnault released a statement<\/a> on February 3 that expressed caution about the elections. The situation in Bolivia, Arnault said, is \u201ccharacterized by an exacerbated polarization and mixed feelings of hope, but also of uncertainty, restlessness and resentment after the serious political and social crisis of last year.\u201d This careful language of the UN needs to be looked at closely. When Arnault says there is \u201cexacerbated polarization,\u201d he means that the situation is extremely tense. When he asks that the interim government \u201coutlaw hate speech and direct or indirect incitement to violence or discrimination,\u201d he means that the government and its far-right followers need to be very careful about what they say and how much violence they use in this election.<\/p>\n

On February 6, Morales spoke in Buenos Aires, where he urged<\/a> an end to the violence so that the election could bring the fractured country together. He called for a national agreement between all sides to end the dangerous situation. In a pointed way, Morales called upon the government to respect diversity, noting that people wearing distinct clothes and wearing the signs of a certain political party were facing intimidation and violence. He meant the indigenous population of Bolivia, and the supporters of MAS; it is widely accepted that the violence has been coming from the far right\u2019s paramilitary shock troops, and the intimidation has been coming from the government.<\/p>\n

For instance, the Bolivian authorities have been routinely charging MAS leaders with sedition, terrorism, and incitement to violence. Morales faced these charges, along with dozens of important MAS leaders, most recently Gustavo Torrico<\/a> who has been arrested. Matters are so bad that the UN\u2019s special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, Diego Garc\u00eda-Say\u00e1n, took to Twitter<\/a> to express his concern at the \u201cuse of judicial and fiscal institutions for the purpose of political persecution. The number of illegal detentions grows.\u201d This has not stopped \u00c1\u00f1ez, who says she will move her government to investigate at least 592 people who held high office in Morales\u2019 14 years in government. This means that the entirety of the MAS leadership will likely face harassment between now and the May 3 election.<\/p>\n

U.S. Interference<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 2013, Morales expelled the U.S. government agency USAID; he accused USAID of working to undermine his elected government. Before that, Morales, as is his constitutional right, informed Salvador Romero\u2014the head of the election agency (TSE)\u2014that when his term ended in 2008, he would not be retained. This is a normal practice.<\/p>\n

Romero went to the U.S. Embassy to complain. He met<\/a> with U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg to complain about this and urged the U.S. to do something. It was clear that Romero and Goldberg knew each other well. When Romero left his post at the TSE, the U.S. establishment took care of him. He went to work at the National Democratic Institute in Honduras. The National Democratic Institute, based in Washington, is loosely affiliated with the U.S. Democratic Party, and is part of the universe that includes the National Endowment for Democracy. These are all U.S. government-funded agencies that operate overseas to \u201coversee\u201d what is known as \u201cdemocracy promotion,\u201d including elections.<\/p>\n

Romero essentially worked for the U.S. government in Honduras during the first election after the U.S.-instigated coup of 2009. During this election in 2013, violence against the supporters of Xiomara Castro, the candidate of the left-wing Libre Party, was routine. The day before the election, for instance, two leaders of the National Center of Farmworkers (CNTC)\u2014Mar\u00eda Amparo Pineda Duarte and Julio Ram\u00f3n Maradiaga\u2014were killed as they returned home from a training for Libre election workers. This was the atmosphere of this very tight election, which returned to power the U.S.-backed conservative candidate Juan Orlando Hern\u00e1ndez of the National Party. Romero, at that time, was quite pleased with the results. He told<\/a> the New York Times then that \u201cdespite \u2018the general perception of fraud,\u2019\u201d the election was just fine.<\/p>\n

Right after the coup in November, \u00c1\u00f1ez brought Romero back to La Paz as the head of the election court, the TSE. He has his old job back. This would have made Bruce Williamson, the U.S. charge d\u2019affaires to Bolivia, very happy. The U.S. has its man at the helm of the May 3 election in Bolivia.<\/p>\n

And then Trump said he is sending USAID to Bolivia to help prepare the ground for the election. On January 9, the USAID team arrived to \u201cgive technical aid to the electoral process in Bolivia.\u201d Technical aid<\/em>. The phrase should give a reasonable person pause.<\/p>\n

Ten days later, Trump\u2019s legal adviser Mauricio Claver-Carone arrived in La Paz and gave a series of interviews in which he accused<\/a> Morales of terrorism and creating instability. This was a direct attack at MAS and interference with Bolivia\u2019s electoral process.<\/p>\n

If the U.S. intervenes in Bolivia, that is just \u201cdemocracy promotion.\u201d<\/p>\n

But even with the violence from the government and its fascistic paramilitaries, even with Romero at the helm of the TSE, even with USAID on the ground, and even with the shenanigans of Claver-Carone, MAS is fighting to win. The candidates for MAS are Luis Arce Catacora (president) and David Choquehuanca C\u00e9spedes (vice president). Catacora was the minister of economy and public finance under Morales and the architect of the administration\u2019s economic success. C\u00e9spedes was the foreign minister in that government. He managed Bolivia\u2019s policy of international sovereignty and is an important person to Bolivia\u2019s indigenous and peasant movements. Early polls show that the MAS ticket is in first place.<\/p>\n

_______________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at <\/em>Globetrotter<\/a>, a project of the <\/em>Independent Media Institute. He is the chief editor of <\/em>LeftWord Books<\/a> and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. <\/em>He is the author of 20 books, including <\/em>The Darker Nations: A People\u2019s History of the Third World<\/a> (The New Press, 2007),<\/em> Arab Spring, Libyan Winter (AK Press, 2012), <\/em>The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South<\/a> (Verso, 2013),<\/em> The Death of the Nation and the Future of the Arab Revolution<\/a> (University of California Press, 2016) and<\/em> Red Star Over the Third World<\/a> (LeftWord, 2017).<\/em><\/p>\n

This article was produced by <\/em>Globetrotter<\/a>, a project of the <\/em>Independent Media Institute.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

10 Feb 2020 – On May 3, 2020, the Bolivian people will go to the polls once more. They return there because President Evo Morales had been overthrown in a coup in November 2019. Morales had just won a presidential election in October for a term that would have begun in January 2020. The Organization of American States claimed that there was fraud in the election and Morales was prematurely removed from office.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":148202,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[1140,1607,232,120,354,267,1126,487,1050,866,541,1625,780,551,109,287,103,329,70,126],"class_list":["post-153727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latin-america-and-the-caribbean","tag-bolivia","tag-bolivian-coup","tag-capitalism","tag-conflict","tag-economics","tag-geopolitics","tag-hegemony","tag-human-rights","tag-imperialism","tag-indigenous-rights","tag-latin-america-caribbean","tag-lithium","tag-military-intervention","tag-neocolonialism","tag-politics","tag-power","tag-racism","tag-resources","tag-usa","tag-violence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153727\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}