A 471-page report by the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts for Bolivia (GIEI-Bolivia) recently presented to Bolivian President Luis Arce in La Paz on Tuesday this week confirms the U.S.-backed coup’s persecution of opponents, including “systematic torture and summary executions” in 2019. The report is based on interviews with 400 victims of the Anez regime and other witnesses, as well as 120,000 files related to abuses between September 1 and December 31, 2019.

The findings prompted Bolivian prosecutors to charge the self-styled “interim leader” Jeanine Anez with genocide. Anez faces charges over the massacres in Sacaba and Senkata, where 20 protestors were killed by the security forces.

At the announcement of her arrest in March this year, Anez tweeted, “They are sending me to detention for four months to await a trial for a ‘coup’ that never happened.”

Yet the U.S. was swift to recognize Anez as interim president as well as to endorse the Organization of American State’s (OAS) report in 2019, which alleged electoral fraud in Bolivia with the intent to keep Evo Morales in power.

The former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s address to the OAS office in Washington gives quite a succinct summary of U.S. interference in Latin America – a twisted narrative of alleged democratic intent trickling down from the U.S., when the facts speak otherwise. Pompeo spoke of the U.S. role in recognizing Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s interim president and how members of the OAS followed suit, as well as a historical overview which attempted to disfigure the leftist movements in Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s as “producing repression for their own kind at home.”

Pompeo also described Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela as the countries through which “we face stains of tyranny on a great canvas of freedom in our hemisphere,” before moving on to praise the OAS for its role in ousting Morales. And as is typical of the U.S., with its long history of supporting military coups in the region, not a word was uttered about Anez’s persecution of the indigenous in Bolivia.

Yet the OAS report was denounced by the New York Times as having “relied on incorrect data and inappropriate statistical techniques.” The Center for Economic and Policy Research’s Co-Director Mark Weisbrot declared, “If the OAS and Secretary General Luis Almagro are allowed to get away with such politically driven falsification of their electoral observation results again, this threatens not only Bolivian democracy but the democracy of any country where the OAS may be involved in elections in the future.”

The GIEI report has established that the Anez regime committed summary executions, torture and sexual violence against indigenous people. Through the report, the Sacaba and Senkata massacres were revisited and will once again form part of Bolivia’s most recent memory of U.S.-backed violence. Just a day prior to the Sacaba massacres, on November 14, 2019, Anez signed a decree which established impunity for Bolivia’s armed forces.

Contrary to the rushed way in which the Trump Administration had recognised Anez as Bolivia’s legitimate leader, the U.S. is reluctant to comment on the GIEI report findings which established the U.S.-backed regime as having committed human rights violations. In March this year, however, the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken issued a statement in March after Anez’s arrest, stating he was “deeply concerned by growing signs of anti-democratic behavior and politicization” with regard to Bolivia’s quest for justice.

Of Bolivia’s quest for justice now, the U.S. can hardly be expected to voice support. Yet the report goes a long way in overturning the U.S. intervention narrative. Bolivia’s victims are victims of a U.S.-backed coup, and U.S.-funded political violence should equally share the spotlight now highlighting Anez’s short-lived legacy of human rights violations in Bolivia.

Can an arrest be considered an “opposition crackdown” if the individual is a U.S.-backed coup plotter who served as alleged “acting president” in the ousting of former Bolivian President Evo Morales? According to mainstream media, the designation is legitimate. Leading headlines from Europe have been swift to legitimise statements from Jeanine Anez, former interim president, or dictator, depending on how one views the foray by the Trump administration to meddle in Latin America by replicating the foreign interference of past decades.

Anez, who was not handcuffed at the time of her arrest and escorted by the Bolivian police for questioning, downplayed her role in the U.S.-backed coup. “This is an abuse,”Anez claimed. “There was no coup d’etat, but a constitutional succession.”

But the White House under former U.S. President Donald Trump stated otherwise, in a thinly veiled statement which signalled involvement, and a warning to other Latin American countries. “These events send a strong signal to the illegitimate regimes in Venezuela and Nicaragua that democracy and the will of the people will always prevail,” Trump had said. “We are now one step closer to a completely democratic, prosperous, and free Western Hemisphere.”

The UN and Human Rights Watch (HRW) have lent their support to Anez and other Bolivian officials involved in the 2019 coup. HRW’s Americas Division Director, Jose Miguel Vivanco, stated that the arrest warrants issued for Anez and other officials do not contain evidence of terrorism.

If the “crackdown” discourse was reversed, the recent amnesty granted by the Bolivian government to over 1,000 people rounded up by Anez’s government speaks volumes about which political entity embarked upon state terrorism and persecution. Not to mention the violence unleashed upon Bolivia’s indigenous population in the aftermath of the coup, as well as the massacres of Sacaba, for which the former Police Commander Jaime Zurita is being charged.

HRW criticised the Bolivian government’s amnesty bill, stating it opens avenues for abuse, while acknowledging that Anez’s regime persecuted MAS supporters in politically motivated cases.” In a previous report, the organisation also criticised Anez for “disproportionate charges against Morales.”

What is missing is the political context which human rights organisations mostly prefer not to wade through. While Morales lost support over his decision to stand for a fourth presidential term, Anez herself lacked any political majority in Bolivia and it was through state-sanctioned terror that the interim period was governed, at the expense of Bolivia’s indigenous. In October 2020, Bolivians voted the MAS back into power, restoring order under a new presidency and repudiating U.S. influence.

Standing against what the coup sought to achieve, which included bringing Bolivia under the clutches of the International Monetary Fund, is what the international community should have done. The monopoly instigated by the U.S. of what constitutes a democracy has been subverted by the U.S.’s own purportedly “democratic” involvement in foreign intervention to bring dictatorships into action.

Reconstructing democracy, for Anez, meant a government without indigenous representation, despite the fact that over 60 percent of Bolivians are indigenous. Pacification, for the right-wing coup, was built upon ostracization and oblivion. If the indigenous are not represented, the government can deny their existence. Opponents of Morales and the MAS heeded Anez’s call, burning the indigenous flag in the streets as a prelude to the violence unleashed in the aftermath.

If human rights were really a concern for those opposing Anez’s arrest, the same critics would have intervened on an equal level over the violence unleashed in the aftermath of the coup. But that wouldn’t do for the likes of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, for example, who expressed concern over the arrest and failed to spare any for Anez’s victims – the indigenous, same as Bolsonaro’s targets and victims. Bolivia has upheld its promise to deliver justice over foreign intervention through a democratic framework, and its critics would do well to heed the process.

Communtarian-indigenous based Movement toward Socialism (MAS) regained governmental control of the country, October 18, 2021, defeating the U.S.-backed rightest coup government. (1)

Luis Arce, President Evo Morales’ (2006-2019) minister of economy and public finance, and David Choquehuanca, Morales’ foreign minister, won the presidency and vice-presidency with 55% of the vote (3.4 million). The closest opposition candidate was former conservative president Carlos Mesa (2003-5), with 28%, followed by rightest coup-maker Luis Fernando Camacho, with 14%. Coup dictator, Jeannie Áñez, dropped out of the campaign when polls showed her with a possible 8%.

MAS also regained control of both houses of parliament: 75 of 130 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, and 21 of 36 seats in the Senate. The Senate now has a female majority. MAS did not, however, accomplish a two-third majority as occurred during Morales tenure.

In November 2019, Áñez, a right-wing senator, assumed leadership of the coup when military leaders threatened to remove Evo Morales by force. He went into exile (first in Mexico, then Argentina), in order to avoid massive bloodshed, as he foresaw would occur had he stayed.

Within days of this U.S.-backed coup, pro-Morales protestors were shot to death by military soldiers and helicopter gunners. At least three dozen anti-coup activists, mostly indigenous people, were murdered during the year-long dictatorship.

Evo returned to his country the day after the new government was inaugurated, November 8. He told his people in the state of Cochabamba, “The transnationals do not forgive us for having nationalized our natural resources…Lithium is why the U.S. backed the coup.”

Morales resumed chairmanship of MAS but is not part of the new government.

Early Reforms Underway

Jeannie Áñez’s rule was marked by authoritarian assaults and a pattern of insults to Bolivia’s indigenous peoples. She called Ayamara’s celebrations “satanic”, which gave a helping hand to racists who burned indigenous peoples Wiphala flag.

Bolivia’s coup government left the people with a foreign and domestic debt of 4.9 billion dollars. The coronavirus pandemic, and dictatorial rule—marked by regressive economic policy, cuts in taxes for the rich—is predicted to cause a 6% economic contraction World Bank forecasts for 2021.

Luis Arce was born in a middle class family of teachers. He got his university degrees in economy. During the first decade as Morales’ head of economy Arce’s plans, including nationalization of natural gas & oil, reduced extreme poverty form 38% to 17% of population. Quién es Luis Arce, el presidente electo de Bolivia – Noticias económicas, financieras y de negocios – El Cronista

Arce is not considered to be indigenous, and is seen as a moderate Marxist.

“I have had my ideas since I was 14 years old and I started reading Karl Marx. Since then I have not stopped having the same ideological position and I am not going to change for anything,” Arce told Reuters in an interview in October. In Evo’s shadow, Bolivia’s new president Luis Arce promises moderate socialism (msn.com)

President Luis Arce inauguration. TeleSUR You Tube photo.

As economy minister, Arce pushed for nationalization of many sectors, which steered Bolivia to an average annual growth rate of 4.6%, one of the best in Latin America. Bonuses were paid to pregnant women, school children, the elderly, and huge investments industrializing natural gas and lithium for batteries and nuclear physics.

Arce has reinstituted a new “Bonus against Hunger”, which will help over four million people. The beneficiaries will be people over 18, who do not receive income from public or private institutions, people with disabilities, mothers, and people who collect the Universal Bonus. Bolivia: President Arce Approves Bonus Against Hunger | News | teleSUR English.

Arce has promised not to cut public spending, though he acknowledges that some austerity measures will be needed. He also declared the “process of change [will be resumed] without hate, and learning and overcoming our errors as MAS.”

Half of all revenues still come from natural gas and oil. Agricultural production is second. Arce wishes to diversify the economy. He has stopped the exportation of food, in order to assure that all Bolivians are well fed. He has fixed the currency rate of exchange to curb inflation.

“With a new [U.S.] government we predict better relations that will translate into the well-being of our peoples,” Arce wrote on his Twitter account. The Obama government cut off ambassadorial relations upon assuming the presidency in 2008.

Vice-President David Choquehuanca, leader of the Confederación Sindical Única de Campesinos de Bolivia and the Movimiento Campesino Indígena, was born in 1961, in an Aymara community of La Paz. The former foreign minister learned to speak Spanish at the age of seven. During his years in Morales cabinet, he assumed the general secretariat of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA). Bolivia has returned to ALBA after Áñez had withdrawn from the cooperative-oriented alliance of eight Latin American countries. The state has also resumed diplomatic and fraternal relations with Iran, Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua leftist governments. Áñez had also expelled Cuba’s 700 doctors and medical workers.

Half the population is indigenous (some sources place the percentage even higher). In the beginning of the Morales presidency, a new constitution was created with grass roots participation. It recognizes 36 peoples as indigenous, and made three of their languages, along with Spanish, official languages of the nation. Quechua people make up half the indigenous population; Ayamara’s 41%.

Yet of the 17 ministers, only one is indigenous and four are women. Sabina Orellana, a Quechua union activist, was appointed Minister of Cultures, Decolonization and Depatriarchalization.

Ten days following assumption of the presidency, Arce fired military right-wingers loyal to the coup-makers and to the U.S. He replaced them with officers purportedly loyal to the people and the constitution.

Corona prevents full recovery

Western mainstream media (MSM) have ignored most developments in Bolivia since the election other than some coverage about corona and floods. MSM puts Bolivia in bed with Russia, because it is supplying Sputnik V vaccine to Bolivia—one of 50 countries to buy this inexpensive vaccine. Russia to supply Algeria, Bolivia with Sputnik V vaccine | Coronavirus pandemic News | Al Jazeera

The government has also ordered Western made vaccines such as Astra Zeneca, which charges three times more than the Russian vaccine.

At the beginning of February, 218,000 people had tested positive. The population is 11.5 million. Around 50 persons are dying daily. Evo Morales’ sister, Ester, died from the virus at age 70.

Fearing an economic collapse, Arce has not shut down as much business as many people desire. Health workers are upset. Hospitals are filled to near overflowing. Health workers in the most conservative Santa Cruz region conducted a partial 24-hour strike (February 2), demanding a greater lockdown of society, in order to prevent more spreading of the virus and its mutations. Médicos bolivianos hacen paro en región golpeada por COVID – Infobae.

Many people also wish to postpone the planned regional and municipal elections scheduled for March 7. The government intends to maintain the date despite fears of more corona infections.

Coup-makers to be tried

Ten days following the election victory, the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate approved a final report on the “massacres of Senkata [and] Sacaba.” The report recommended that Añez be prosecuted for genocide and proposed criminal indictments of 11 of her ministers. Senate president Eva Copa specified that the report would be submitted to prosecutors for possible proceedings.

Several coup-makers, including dictator Áñez, key cabinet ministers and top military officers have been detained temporarily and prevented from leaving the country as the new anti-corruption prosecutor, Luis Atanacio, prepares charges. Proceedings are barely beginning, and have been largely postponed due to the corona epidemic. President Luis Arce Appoints New Military Leadership in Bolivia | News | teleSUR English.

Notes:

1. MAS was founded by Evo Morales, in 1998, an outgrowth of coca farmers struggles to maintain the indigenous tradition of chewing its leaves (not cocaine) as a stimulant, especially used by chauffeurs. MAS’ struggles included the right to have free access to water, and to change the extreme greedy competitiveness of capitalism.Communitarianism aspires to collective decision-making and a cooperative economy, connecting the individual with the community and rejecting laissez-faire policies. Some see this form of a visionary society as “utopian socialism”, or “socialism of the 21^st century”. The thought is to avoid 18^th, 19^th, 20^th century violent revolutions. Working class rule would be replaced with all citizens rule without capital/corporate rule. Direct voting at assemblies is the preferred manner to select leaders, who should not become permanent leaders.

   Communitarianism is an outgrowth of the pan-Hispanic liberation movement led by the Venezuelan military and political leader Simon Bolivar (1783-1830). Insurrections threw out Spanish colonial rule in Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia (Panama). The Gran Colombia was formed in 1821 under Bolívar’s leadership. This federation included much of what is now Venezuela, Colombia, Panama and Ecuador. In 1824, he was named dictator of Peru, followed by the creation of Bolivia in 1825.

Creative Commons photo: Bolivians and internationalists at World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth.

Biden’s selection of Anthony Blinken as his first secretary of state and Jake Sullivan as National Security Adviser may even achieve the impossible: He may make the world long nostalgically for the Lost Golden Age of those intellectual giants Mike Pompeo and Mark Esper.

Yet while Blinken and Sullivan will certainly sleepwalk the world off the cliff of destruction from Eastern Europe to the Middle East and East Asia, there is one corner of the world where their complacent, intellectually dead brains may do some good – across the Western Hemisphere.

That is because Biden is determined to restore all the foreign policies of the Obama administration, the handful of sensible ones as well as all the awful and catastrophically bad.

Obama and Biden were both inordinately proud of their pathetic, miniscule openings towards Cuba after more than half a century of relentless hatred, economic embargoes and other ruinous policies imposed by every U.S. administration since and including that of John F. Kennedy.

The 2014-16 much touted opening to Havana – like everything Obama did – was timid to a pathological degree and did virtually no material good for real live breathing human beings. But at least it was a wave of the little finger in the direction of sanity.

Biden is determined to repeat that toothless initiative And because it is not new, has been done before and failed before, his top officials Blinken and Sullivan will be all for it.

However, even pretending to be friendly to Cuba carries much wider ramifications.

Havana will not dignify any such pathetic move unless it actually raises sanctions and brings some economic benefit to the people of Cuba who have already survived petty U.S. enmity for so long.

There is no way Biden will be able to get any move to liberalize relations with Cuba through Congress if Republicans still hold the Senate so much depends on the outcome of the Senate elections in Georgia.

Unless and until the Democrats win those races and reach 50-50 seat parity with Republicans in the Senate, the Eternal Mitch McConnell will continue to preside over his perpetual, though wafer-thin Republican majority there, ready to block any legislative openings to Havana.

Therefore the only way Biden can actually make good on any vague promises to Havana may be through Executive Orders.  And judging on his – and Barack Obama’s – track record during their eight years as at least figureheads of U.S. power, they will not even dare to try much.

Far more important, however, Cuba has made consistently clear that it will not deign to even pretend to talk to Washington until the Trump administration’s unending – though also buffoonish and inept – efforts to topple the democratically elected, lawful government of Venezuela are scrapped.

In other words, Biden’s already repeatedly stated clear ambition to renew at least the beginnings of a thaw with Cuba automatically demand the scrapping of President Donald Trump’s witless and totally unsuccessful policies in the Western Hemisphere.

Cuban demands will likely force Biden to scrap at last Trump’s manifestly failed efforts to topple President Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela and replace him with ludicrous U.S. figurehead boy toy Juan Guaido – a fictional president obsessively created by that Master of Incompetence John Bolton during his own hilarious – and mercifully brief – slapstick term as National Security Adviser of the United States.

Even among the fearful, long-beaten and abused mediocrities who man the supposedly prestigious desks of the State Department in the aptly named location of Foggy Bottom, the stomach to keep up the charade of pretending that Guaido is a real president and a credible leader is nonexistent. Everyone wants to be free of that embarrassment. Even the military-industrial complex will not be sorry to leave Venezuela alone.

Talking to Cuba therefore leads directly to disengagement from Venezuela for Biden. And that in turn increases the likelihood that he will actually leave the miracle of the return to democratic constitutional government in Bolivia alone.

But as I have noted in these columns before, despite its small size and remote, landlocked location, Bolivia in the 21st century has repeatedly proved to be an example and inspiration – and political trend setter – for even the largest nations in Latin America.

Where Bolivia goes today, Brazil may well go tomorrow.

This vast nation has more than 200 million people, most populous in Latin America and a major player under two twice-democratically-elected presidents in the BRICS bloc with Russia, China, India and South Africa. To the eternal shame of the U.S. media, public and certainly of the Democratic Party, the Trump administration was allowed to outrageously topple the democratically elected Social Democratic government that had been legitimately elected four times under two popular and respected presidents.

However, today, discredited President Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil president now for only two years (though it certainly seems like far, far longer) no longer enjoys credibility even from his own army. He boasted of his closeness to Trump so loudly and so often that Biden, who has personal pride and steel behind that misleadingly affable exterior will certainly not forget. Bolsonaro is about to pay the price – fast – for clinging to Trump so closely – a destiny that may also politically doom Prime Minister Boris Johnson in Britain.

A cautious and uncharacteristic expression of hope, then, for Joe Biden’s policies in the Western Hemisphere. At best he may offer a benign neglect which will certainly be welcome.

The only problem is that to the rest of the world, he will present a relentless concern that will be unremittingly malign.

Áñez was astoundingly prevented from boarding a plane at the Jorge Henrich Arauz airport in the city of Trinidad, as she was trying to go to a border city and then flee to Brazil. There is likely to be more to this story, involving a small deal with Trinidad & Tobago’s financial intelligence service, the FIUTT, who appears to have informed a left-leaning activist group with ties to Bolivia and Venezuela, to make the ‘citizen’s arrest’, so as to separate the state from the actual arrest.

From Deutsche Bank to Citibank – Espionage: Moves against Morales

At issue here is that Puerto España’s FIUTT service is apparently aware of Áñez’s money laundering to an offshore account under their watch, connected also to the US and its own Citibank. The tip from the FIUTT financial intelligence in Trinidad and Tobago on an eyebrow raising transaction was relayed directly to vectors within the Movement for Socialism (MAS-IPSP).  Because of Áñez has accounts either frozen or under scrutiny in Bolivia, it appears she had suddenly accessed or moved a high amount of money in an offshore account, as she prepared to leave from the Trinidad region (Bolivia) to Brazil. She was likely attempting to travel using false documents.

For its part, the Bolivian BIP or the Special Security Group would not be the best party involved in making the arrest themselves directly, as this could connect that a tip-off from Trinidad and Tobago’s FIUTT had cooperated with Bolivia’s Special Security Group, (or worse, likely, the MAS-IPSP itself) which in turn is conducted under the Ministry of the Interior.  Activities of the Ministry of the Interior are under scrutiny, and moreover there are divisions and potential leaks within them, and could sully the legal case against Áñez. Because of the very same relationships and allegiances that made the coup possible from within the military and police would also apply to Bolivian intelligence activities under the Ministry of the Interior.

Because the Special Security Group and the Multipurpose Intervention Brigade (BIP) may be compromised and could then inform Áñez that her plans were known and an arrest was imminent, where she could have avoided being at the airport that day and would look instead at other ways of crossing the border perhaps by land, the moves here on the part of the Movement for Socialism are better understood.

The charges against Áñez include corruption, and her defense will revolve around claims that the evidence is politically motivated or was arrived it illegally, without proper warrants. Thus, a problem could arise between Sucre and La Paz. The judiciary in Sucre would look at La Paz for making a politically motivated prosecution and prosecutors would then be in a position of engaging in parallel construction of the evidence, one that circumvented the actual direct relationship between MAS-IPSP and Puerto España’s FIUTT. The fact that MAS would claim that problems within the Ministry of the Interior and Bolivia’s own intelligence service were the reason for this.

Trinidad is a member of the US led Caribbean Basin Security Initiative (CBSI), invites significant US foreign investment, and is likely not to want to be seen as overtly involved themselves. Here, the role of Citibank in Trinidad’s non-citizen banking system where offshore accounts are possible, cannot be understated.

To wit, much of the thrust of 21^st Century Socialism has been part of a transatlantic agreement wherein Citibank is in an investment partnership with other transatlantic banks within the IMF structure, prominently Deutsche Bank, in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. In exchange, Deutsche Bank subsidiaries and partners in France and Spain are the primary western banks on call for Latin American countries belonging to the so-called ‘pink tide’.

And so this counter-coup against Áñez is as much a European banking effort against its ‘frenemy’ in the form of Citibank and New York City.

The Failed Coup

These exciting events are now transpiring as the result of what has become an ultimately failed coup attempt in Bolivia, a tragic year-long period where democratic rule was upended.

Indeed, last month something incredible happened. The Globalist’s golpe de estado failed, in what has been a series of incredible failures world-wide. Among their sought after bounty was Bolivia’s lithium wealth, valued in billions. Bolivia is known to have somewhere between 50 to 80 percent of the world’s lithium.

Morales (L) and Áñez (R)

Goldman Sachs says that the global market demand for lithium could in fact triple to some 570,000 tons a year in the next 10 years due to electric vehicles. It’s no wonder that Elon Musk’s hands were all over it.

But nevertheless, Evo Morales made a come-back in at the end of October 2020, and was able to overturn a coup (by way of law-fare) imposed on the country from the Globalist deep state.

Summarizing it succinctly, Ramona Wadi wrote for SCF last month;

“Bolivia has managed to overturn the neoliberal agenda which the U.S. attempted to force upon the nation in the 2019 coup, which ousted former President Evo Morales to install the far-right wing Jeanine Añez as president, or dictator. While Chile was dealing with its state violence, the Bolivian coup was out in the streets exerting its vengeance on the country’s indigenous population. For months, Bolivians protested against state violence and police repression. It is now the new government’s obligation to bring the perpetrators to justice, while retracing Bolivia’s path to its revolutionary progress.”

Besides being involved in an unconstitutional coup, where the armed forces and the police conspired with US Deep-State agents to overthrow Evo Morales, Jeanine Áñez is also wanted in particular for killing of civilians in Senkata and Sacaba.

And yet despite all this, western media – in backing the coup – painted her as a symbol of a woman “breaking the glass ceiling”, and then she doubled-down on virtue signaling by claiming without evidence that she had ‘contracted the coronavirus’, in what was no doubt both a sympathy ploy and a signal to globalist elites that she was still their man, or woman, rather.

Of course we face a strange and newly arisen contradiction in our terminology, where in Latin America ‘far-right’ means almost nothing like what it means inside the US. In Latin America, it describes an agent of the bankers and foreign interests who undermine sovereignty, and who employ the tactics of death squads and mass repression. In Latin America, it is the ‘far right’ who view the common people as the ‘deplorables’, and tend to view themselves as trying to maintain a vestige of privilege bestowed on them by the legacy of Spanish colonialism on the continent.

Despite her own obviously indigenous features, Jeanine Áñez Áñez is among a certain upwardly mobile demographic of La Paz’s urban petit-bourgeoisie whose blonde hair comes from the bottle and not from the mother. While perhaps a seemingly trivial point for those outside of Latin America, this ‘personality tick’ of hers has become a symbolic focus of outrage against her coup, as it is emblematic of the disastrous neoliberal policies of its petit-bourgeoisie who fetishize the downplaying of any indigenous roots. For these reasons and more, the big news of her detention on November 24^th was widely celebrated by Bolivia’s underclass.

Will Justice Fall on Áñez? Musk’s Puppet and her Crimes against Humanity

But others from her administration have already successfully escaped justice. Defense Minister Fernando Lopez who was critical in organizing the coup and who is believed to have received millions from Elon Musk, has escaped to Brazil. Last week, former de facto government minister Arturo Murillo, facing corruption charges and more, successfully fled the country and arrived in Panama. As a result of this, three officials of the Bolivian Migration Directorate were arrested for allowing these wanted fugitives to escape. Presently Bolivia is in both diplomatic talks and litigation to push Panama and Brazil to return the ‘asylum seekers’ to face justice in La Paz.

Following the inauguration of Morales’ ally, the newly-elected Bolivian President Luis Arce, the corruption that prevailed during the de facto government has been further revealed. At present, there are some 24 cases open and being reviewed by courts.

Last October the Plurinational Legislative Assembly moreover recommended that the Public Prosecutor’s Office (Fiscalía) open a lawsuit against Añez for the massacres of Cochabamba, Senkata, Sacaba, and El Alto, which all occurred in November 2019. She stands accused of committing the crimes of genocide, torture, and kidnappings.

November 2019, Mourners in Bolivia make prayers for citizen’s killed by Añez’s coup forces – Photo credit – The Associated Press

Elements from within the armed forces and the police were the primary ‘on the ground’ actors of the coup d’état of November 10th, 2019, and would have also involved actors within the Ministry of the Interior including the BIP or perhaps the Special Security Group. At the time in exile in Argentina and fearing his own life, Evo Morales repeatedly called for charges against those responsible for the massacre in El Alto. Morales has denounced Bolivia’s high military commands for decorating and honoring the “coup leaders,” who now stand accused in the massacring of citizens.

The aim of these killings ordered by Áñez was to strike fear in indigenous communities, because of the mechanisms of the coup. Many coup tactics are employed during elections, as being seen right now in the US against Donald Trump. It is an opportune time because electronic voting devices, or the much older method of controlling local political machines, are used to throw the vote towards an otherwise unpopular leader – such as Biden.

But in the case of Bolivia, with Añez who was backed by American plutocrat Elon Musk, the coup had to be arranged after the election because the re-election of the wildly popular Morales was hard to contest. But in Bolivia, where indigenous communities live protected from many of the depravities of modernity, it is difficult to widely use electronic voting. And more, the local political machines are controlled by indigenous people who saw Evo Morales as one of their own.

And so the coup relied upon the mid-century fascist tactics of the death squad, torture, and classical repression.

Elon Musk’s hopes were that the then upcoming October 2020 elections could see a continuation of the Añez junta, if sufficient numbers of Bolivian populists could be murdered.

But now with the come-back success of Morales’ party with the assumption of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) into power with Morales ally Luis Arce, the promises to investigate the various crimes committed the year that Áñez was in government are now coming to fruition.

Elon Musk, in search of ever-cheaper access to lithium, got behind this brazen gilded-age act of imperialist violence. He was eager to oppose the will of millions of Bolivian voters, a base widely backed by its indigenous population with its pre-Columbian culture.

SPACEX CEO ELON MUSK SHOWS PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA AROUND THE COMPANY’S CAPE CANAVERAL ROCKET PROCESSING SITE IN 2010. (CREDIT: BILL INGALLS / NASA)

Now the character of Elon Musk has been difficult for some to discern, but what is abundantly clear is that he represents a breed of ‘entrepreneurs’ in name only, who in fact rely on ‘socialism for the rich’, on subsidies and government largesse. He has angled on themes that suit his own interests, and his own interests alone. At times appearing to align with Trump’s populism on space technology or against lockdowns, but in fact got his start from deep connections with the Obama administration’s mini ‘Green New Deal’, and the privatization of NASA resources that made Tesla Motors and Space-X a possibility.

It is lamentable, or at the very least hypocritical, that he would work so hard to subvert any kind of socialism for the poor, as was the case when he so enthusiastically supported the coup against Bolivian President Evo Morales.

The successful prosecution of Áñez, who faces murder and kidnapping charges, will help bring closure to a troubled, if brief, chapter in the long trajectory of independence, national liberation, and self-determination for Bolivia and its 11 million people.

The return of Evo Morales to Bolivia on Monday, November 9, one day after President Luis Arce’s inauguration, marked the formal end of last year’s U.S.-backed coup. What does his return mean for Bolivia, and for the world? Is he just a former president who the media will turn to periodically for comment? Is he yesterday’s news to his party? The answers to those questions remain unclear, but what is clear is that his three-day return tour was a statement that he intends to provide strong leadership for social movements in Bolivia and abroad.

Corporate media, both national and international, have been promoting a narrative that Morales is somehow in conflict with the incoming government of Luis Arce. A recent piece in the New York Times stated, “Mr. Morales return now risks undermining Mr. Arce’s efforts to bring the nation together to overcome the crisis,”’ and Reuters classified Arce as being “in Evo’s Shadow.”

Of course, Bolivia’s coup government knew that Evo Morales would strengthen, not weaken, any future MAS government. They understood that he was, and is, the leader of Bolivia’s powerful social movements. They knew they had to keep him out of the country, so they piled on more than 20 criminal charges and a warrant for his immediate arrest if he ever set foot on Bolivian soil. The charges included terrorism, sedition, genocide, and more.

Morales was forced to escape to Mexico after the coup, he then moved to Argentina where he was also given asylum. The absurdity of the charges was proven when the coup regime, through its own hubris, took them to Interpol in an effort to force Morales’ adopted country to hand him over. Of course, Interpol rejected the two attempts to place a ‘red alert’ on Morales, as they considered the charges against him to be political and without any legal basis.

Thrown out by international bodies, the legal persecution against Morales also collapsed at home. Just after the October 18 election results handed a victory to MAS, the power of the regime to pressure Bolivia’s courts immediately evaporated, and his arrest warrant was lifted just days after the election.

The stage was now set for his return to Bolivia. The 9th of November was a carnival fit for a king. He crossed the border on foot, from the Argentinian town of La Quiaca to the Bolivian town of Villazon with tens of thousands of supporters ready to receive him. As one of the many reporters there, I was naive enough to believe that the crowds would be kept at bay by the union activists from the Chapare region who were the designated security, but I quickly lost my good position as the masses of assembled supporters immediately overwhelmed the burly men who were supposed to form a protective ring around Evo.

Looking to the future

Our cameras jolted about as we were dangerously squashed by the sheer weight of those trying to touch him or at least take a photo. His victory parade went from the border to the town’s central plaza, about five blocks from the bridge through which he entered.

When asking those at the rally what Morales meant to them, the answers were not describing a loved, but has-been figure, most spoke in the future tense. Juan, a miner from Potosi, said, “We have to receive him and make sure he gets here ok, because he’s our leader, at both the national and international level. I want to salute [President] Arce and [VP] Choquehuanca, but our true indisputable leader is Evo Morales Ayma and he always will be.”

BREAKING: Evo Morales has crossed over the Quiaca-Villazón international border, marking his return and the social movements’ victory over the 12 month coup. pic.twitter.com/leIi8pPHrW

— Kawsachun News (@KawsachunNews) November 9, 2020

A union activist from Argentina crossed the border for the Villazon rally and told me that “Evo is a Latin American leader and he’ll be the key for building a unified continent that’s strong, sovereign and for the people, for workers. That’s why we’re here, this concerns us too.

Morales’ first speech in Bolivia, delivered at the plaza in Villazon, struck a similar tone, discussing the future rather than reminiscing about past glory. “We have to keep working, our task now is to protect President Arce and our process of change, because the right doesn’t sleep and the empire is always looking at our natural resources, but we use our experience to go forward even stronger.”

So how does he plan to go about doing that? Morales is not just another private citizen. He has now assumed his role as the President of the 6 Federations of the Tropico, the powerful Chapare region rural workers union that he led throughout the 1990s and from which he founded the MAS. He’s also still the president of the MAS, the Movement Towards Socialism. He’s not the leader of the state, but he is the political leader of the ruling party.

A hero’s welcome

Following the Villazon rally, Morales and his comrades, and those of us covering the tour, jumped into our vehicles and sped away for what was the beginning of a long and physically taxing three-day road trip. Gone were the days of Evo being shipped around in a helicopter. After more than eight hours of driving through the freezing Potosi highlands, we got to the rally in the mining town of Atocha, making only a brief stop before getting back in the car for another hour to the town of Uyuni, arriving at 11:30 pm. Considering the rally was supposed to take place at 6 pm, and that temperatures had now dropped to 7 degrees celsius, I assumed that the event had been called off or that everyone would have gone home. I was wrong. Thousands were densely packed, filling the entire square.

Huge crowd for Evo Morales in the town of Uyuni at 11.30pm, 7 degrees celsius. This is where Bolivia’s lithium reserves are, the people here have been fighting off the coup regimes attempts to privatize their natural resources. pic.twitter.com/cuzivibu9y

— Ollie Vargas (@OVargas52) November 10, 2020

We got to know the grueling schedule that has long been the norm for Evo. Throughout his time as president and before, he’s been famous for working from 4 am to midnight, without taking weekends off. That night, we all got to bed at 3 am and had to be up and ready before 7 am for his morning press conference, during which he addressed the issue of the country’s lithium reserves, referencing Elon Musk’s Twitter outburst regarding his participation in the coup. Morales stated clearly:

The coup was for lithium, imperialism doesn’t want us to develop value-added products within Bolivia, they want the transnational corporations to take it all.”

Нe then explained that just last week he had meetings with Argentina’s Science Minister to draw up a binational plan to process the natural resource. Of course, he isn’t a government official so he cannot sign off on any agreement, but his participation in such meetings is evidence of his relationship to the new MAS government, assisting where possible, but with the newly elected executive firmly in control. That approach is in accordance with what Luis Arce laid out in an interview with the BBC when he stated that “Evo Morales is very welcome to help us, but it doesn’t mean he’ll be in government.”

Those in the media desperately searching for an example of Morales overshadowing the new government, or of Morales being left out in the cold, are still seeking evidence of it. Meanwhile, Evo continues his work on what was always his stated goal, to help Luis Arce, and to strengthen the MAS from his position as a social movement leader and president of the party.

The rest of the caravan was equally taxing, driving the whole day through Potosi to Evo’s home village of Orinoca in Oruro, where he visited his childhood home constructed of dried mud and a straw roof. Orinoca, though, is not his only home.

Evo Morales went to his hometown in Oruro yesterday and danced with his people. Due to poverty, his family then migrated to the Trópico of Cochabamba where he became a union leader. He’s now back in the Trópico for a huge rally later today in his political home. pic.twitter.com/tgo4e4jVOP

— Ollie Vargas (@OVargas52) November 11, 2020

As a child, his family left the village, driven out by the extreme poverty that most rural Bolivians faced during the twentieth century. They finally settled in the Chapare region, where Morales became the leader of the coca-growers union during the struggle against the presence of USAID and the DEA in the region.

After a very short rally in the nearby city of Oruro, we drove overnight without stopping to his Evo’s political home, the Chapare, also known as the Tropico of Cochabamba. Arriving at 5 am the next day, Morales rested for just two hours before heading out at 7 am for meetings with local senators and mayors.

Giant rally in the Trópico of Cochabamba to welcome home Evo Morales. One year in exile, but now back as leader of Bolivia’s social movements. pic.twitter.com/1uKqOm2rR6

— Kawsachun News (@KawsachunNews) November 11, 2020

What came after was the giant closing rally in Chimore Airport, the airbase in the Chapare region where Morales left for Mexico last year. More than half a million people filled the landing strip where he delivered a blistering speech laying out his politics:

We are anti-imperialist, that’s not up for debate. But sisters and brothers, listen to me closely, it’s not about being ‘populist’ or ‘progressive’ or ‘in solidarity.’ If you’re not anti-imperialist then you’re not revolutionary. Get that in your head brothers and sisters.’’

What does Evo’s future hold?

The dust has now settled, with no more huge rallies nor travel by car. Evo has set up base in the town of Lauca Ñ in the offices of the 6 Federations of the Tropico and home to their union’s media outlet, Radio Kawsachun Coca.

The large crowds are no longer gathering, but the real political work has begun. Every hour has been filled with private meetings with every local leader of the MAS from each region of the country. Though, just as important, has been the international work.

Morales has been receiving delegations from the indigenous movement in Ecuador, as well as the principal worker’s unions of Argentina, where they put the call out for a Latin America wide congress of social movements, with the purpose of creating a new international indigenous organization and launching projects for regional integration on the basis of ‘plurinationalism’ and anti-capitalism. After launching the call for the international congress, Leonidas Iza, a leader of Ecuador’s indigenous CONAIE organization, said of Evo ‘’We feel represented by him, he’s not just recognized in Bolivia, but in all the continent.”

It’s clear that Morales has a future as a political leader in Latin America. Freed from the bureaucratic trappings of power, he can guide social movements at a national and international level, using the experiences he’s accumulated successfully leading social struggles to power, and helping defeat a coup after just one year. Those achievements alone make him an obvious figurehead for a project of unification of the Latin American left in particular. Those around the world looking to replicate such success could do worse than to turn to him as a figure that can orientate and provide leadership to those who need it.

mintpressnews.com

Less than a year after the United States and the U.S.-backed Organization of American States (OAS) supported a violent military coup to overthrow the government of Bolivia, the Bolivian people have reelected the Movement for Socialism (MAS) and restored it to power.

In the long history of U.S.-backed “regime changes” in countries around the world, rarely have a people and a country so firmly and democratically repudiated U.S. efforts to dictate how they will be governed. Post-coup interim president Jeanine Añez has reportedly requested 350 U.S. visas for herself and others who may face prosecution in Bolivia for their roles in the coup.

The narrative of a rigged election in 2019 that the U.S. and the OAS peddled to support the coup in Bolivia has been thoroughly debunked. MAS’s support is mainly from indigenous Bolivians in the countryside, so it takes longer for their ballots to be collected and counted than those of the better-off city dwellers who support MAS’s right-wing, neoliberal opponents.

As the votes come in from rural areas, there is a swing to MAS in the vote count. By pretending that this predictable and normal pattern in Bolivia’s election results was evidence of election fraud in 2019, the OAS bears responsibility for unleashing a wave of violence against indigenous MAS supporters that, in the end, has only delegitimized the OAS itself.

It is instructive that the failed U.S.-backed coup in Bolivia has led to a more democratic outcome than U.S. regime change operations that succeeded in removing a government from power. Domestic debates over U.S. foreign policy routinely presume that the U.S. has the right, or even an obligation, to deploy an arsenal of military, economic and political weapons to force political change in countries that resist its imperial dictates.

In practice, this means either full-scale war (as in Iraq and Afghanistan), a coup d’etat (as in Haiti in 2004, Honduras in 2009 and Ukraine in 2014), covert and proxy wars (as in Somalia, Libya, Syria and Yemen) or punitive economic sanctions (as against Cuba, Iran and Venezuela) – all of which violate the sovereignty of the targeted countries and are therefore illegal under international law.

No matter which instrument of regime change the U.S. has deployed, these U.S. interventions have not made life better for the people of any of those countries, nor countless others in the past. William Blum’s brilliant 1995 book, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, catalogues 55 U.S. regime change operations in 50 years between 1945 and 1995. As Blum’s detailed accounts make clear, most of these operations involved U.S. efforts to remove popularly elected governments from power, as in Bolivia, and often replaced them with U.S.-backed dictatorships: like the Shah of Iran; Mobutu in the Congo; Suharto in Indonesia; and General Pinochet in Chile.

Even when the targeted government is a violent, repressive one, U.S. intervention usually leads to even greater violence. Nineteen years after removing the Taliban government in Afghanistan, the United States has dropped 80,000 bombs and missiles on Afghan fighters and civilians, conducted tens of thousands of “kill or capture” night raids, and the war has killed hundreds of thousands of Afghans.

In December 2019, the Washington Post published a trove of Pentagon documents revealing that none of this violence is based on a real strategy to bring peace or stability to Afghanistan – it’s all just a brutal kind of “muddling along,” as U.S. General McChrystal put it. Now the U.S.-backed Afghan government is finally in peace talks with the Taliban on a political power-sharing plan to bring an end to this “endless” war, because only a political solution can provide Afghanistan and its people with the viable, peaceful future that decades of war have denied them.

In Libya, it has been nine years since the U.S. and its NATO and Arab monarchist allies launched a proxy war backed by a covert invasion and NATO bombing campaign that led to the horrific sodomy and assassination of Libya’s long time anti-colonial leader, Muammar Gaddafi. That plunged Libya into chaos and civil war between the various proxy forces that the U.S. and its allies armed, trained and worked with to overthrow Gaddafi.

A parliamentary inquiry in the U.K. found that, “a limited intervention to protect civilians drifted into an opportunist policy of regime change by military means,” which led to “political and economic collapse, inter-militia and inter-tribal warfare, humanitarian and migrant crises, widespread human rights violations, the spread of Gaddafi regime weapons across the region and the growth of Isil [Islamic State] in north Africa.”

The various Libyan warring factions are now engaged in peace talks aimed at a permanent ceasefire and, according to the UN envoy “holding national elections in the shortest possible timeframe to restore Libya’s sovereignty”the very sovereignty that the NATO intervention destroyed.

Senator Bernie Sanders’ foreign policy adviser Matthew Duss has called for the next U.S. administration to conduct a comprehensive review of the post-9/11 “War on Terror,” so that we can finally turn the page on this bloody chapter in our history.

Duss wants an independent commission to judge these two decades of war based on “the standards of international humanitarian law that the United States helped to establish after World War II,” which are spelled out in the UN Charter and the Geneva Conventions. He hopes that this review will “stimulate vigorous public debate about the conditions and legal authorities under which the United States uses military violence.”

Such a review is overdue and badly needed, but it must confront the reality that, from its very beginning, the “War on Terror” was designed to provide cover for a massive escalation of U.S. “regime change” operations against a diverse range of countries, most of which were governed by secular governments that had nothing to do with the rise of Al Qaeda or the crimes of September 11th.

Notes taken by senior policy official Stephen Cambone from a meeting in the still damaged and smoking Pentagon on the afternoon of September 11, 2001 summarized Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld’s orders to get “”best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit S.H. [Saddam Hussein] at same time – not only UBL [Osama Bin Laden]” Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not.”

At the cost of horrific military violence and mass casualties, the resulting global reign of terror has installed quasi-governments in countries around the world that have proved more corrupt, less legitimate and less able to protect their territory and their people than the governments that U.S. actions removed. Instead of consolidating and expanding U.S. imperial power as intended, these illegal and destructive uses of military, diplomatic and financial coercion have had the opposite effect, leaving the U.S. ever more isolated and impotent in an evolving multipolar world.

Today, the U.S., China and the European Union are roughly equal in the size of their economies and international trade, but even their combined activity accounts for less than half of global economic activity and external trade. No single imperial power economically dominates today’s world as overconfident American leaders hoped to do at the end of the Cold War, nor is it divided by a binary struggle between rival empires as during the Cold War. This is the multipolar world we are already living in, not one that may emerge at some point in the future.

This multipolar world has been moving forward, forging new agreements on our most critical common problems, from nuclear and conventional weapons to the climate crisis to the rights of women and children. The United States’ systematic violations of international law and rejection of multilateral treaties have made it an outlier and a problem, certainly not a leader, as American politicians claim.

Joe Biden talks about restoring American international leadership if he is elected, but that will be easier said than done. The American empire rose to international leadership by harnessing its economic and military power to a rules-based international order in the first half of the 20th century, culminating in the post-World War II rules of international law. But the United States has gradually deteriorated through the Cold War and post-Cold War triumphalism to a flailing, decadent empire that now threatens the world with a doctrine of “might makes right” and “my way or the highway.”

When Barack Obama was elected in 2008, much of the world still saw Bush, Cheney and the “War on Terror” as exceptional, rather than a new normal in American policy. Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize based on a few speeches and the world’s desperate hopes for a “peace president.” But eight years of Obama, Biden, Terror Tuesdays and Kill Lists followed by four years of Trump, Pence, children in cages and the New Cold War with China have confirmed the world’s worst fears that the dark side of American imperialism seen under Bush and Cheney was no aberration.

Amid America’s botched regime changes and lost wars, the most concrete evidence of its seemingly unshakeable commitment to aggression and militarism is that the U.S. Military-Industrial Complex is still outspending the ten next largest military powers in the world combined, clearly out of all proportion to America’s legitimate defense needs.

So the concrete things we must do if we want peace are to stop bombing and sanctioning our neighbors and trying to overthrow their governments; to withdraw most American troops and close military bases around the world; and to reduce our armed forces and our military budget to what we really need to defend our country, not to wage illegal wars of aggression half-way round the world.

For the sake of people around the world who are building mass movements to overthrow repressive regimes and struggling to construct new models of governing that are not replications of failed neoliberal regimes, we must stop our government–no matter who is in the White House–from trying to impose its will.

Bolivia’s triumph over U.S.-backed regime change is an affirmation of the emerging people-power of our new multipolar world, and the struggle to move the U.S. to a post-imperial future is in the interest of the American people as well. As the late Venezuela leader Hugo Chavez once told a visiting U.S. delegation, “If we work together with oppressed people inside the United States to overcome the empire, we will not only be liberating ourselves, but also the people of Martin Luther King.”

opednews.com

Chileans and Bolivians are turning the tide away from coup governments imposed on them by right-wing national militarists and the US State Department / CIA.

Within the past week, we have witnessed an overwhelming Chilean victory to rewrite the constitution forced upon them by General Augusto Pinochet, in 1980, and Bolivia’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal confirmation that former President Evo Morales’ political party, Movement for Socialism (MAS), won the election on October 18.

The new Bolivian president, Luis Arce, and vice-president, David Choquehuanca, beat right-winger coup-makers Carlos Mesa (a former president) and Luis Fernando Camacho: 55% to 29% and 14%.
Both houses of parliament will also have a MAS majority.

Meanwhile, just days earlier, seventy-eight percent (78%) of Chileans voting said yes to a new constitution; opposed 22%. While the ayes were expected to win, such huge support was unforeseen.

This shows how much Chileans want a different nation than that forced upon them by the bloody coup d’état, September 11, 1973, which was guided by then Richard Nixon’s hatchet man, Henry Kissinger. They murdered at least three thousand people the first days of the military coup. Thousands more “disappeared” or arrested died in prisons, tortured by the fascist Pinochet government. Over 100,000 people are known to have been arrested for political motivations.

Spanish National Court judge Baltasar Garzón sought to arrest and prosecute Pinochet for crimes against humanity. (1)

A new constitution will be written by a Constitutional Convention with new representatives elected by the people, on April 11, 2021. A year later, there will be an “exit” ratification plebiscite to repeal the Pinochet constitution.

Vice-President David Choquehuanca (l) and President Luis Arce. (Heraldodepueblo.com photo)

This popular victory comes on the heels of grassroots protests and resistance movements last year, during what was called the “Chilean Spring.” For months, tens of thousands protested nearly daily. One day there were over one million in the streets. After two months of actions, the government estimated that a fourth of the nation’s nearly 13 million people were protesting hikes in public transportation costs, and, generally, economic inequality and “elitism”.

The government of Sebastián Piñera declared a state of emergency and police killed three dozen protestors, wounded hundreds, and imprisoned 30,000. Piñera was forced by the people to make concessions. He fired several ministers, including the head of military and police, and allowed a referendum to keep or change the Pinochet-created constitution.

Not Forgotten: CIA’s Murder of Allende’s Commander-in-Chief

October 22, 1970, armed thugs working for the CIA intercepted and shot to death Chilean army commander-in-chief, General René Schneider, as he drove to the Ministry of Defense in Santiago, Chile.  “The next day, CIA Director Richard Helms convened his top aides to review the covert coup operations that had led to the attack. “[I]t was agreed that … a maximum effort has been achieved,” and that “the station has done excellent job of guiding Chileans to point today where a military solution is at least an option for them,” stated a SECRET cable of commendation transmitted that day to the CIA station in Chile. “COS [Chief of Station] … and Station [deleted] are commended for accomplishing this under extremely difficult and delicate circumstances.”

The National Security Archive (NSA) reposted declassified documentation about Kissinger and the CIA’s role in the assassination. The intent was to prevent the newly elected socialist Salvador Allende from assuming power. Here are excerpts from the article, “The CIA and Chile: Anatomy of an Assassination,” posted in recognition of the 50^th anniversary of the General’s murder.

“CBS ‘60 Minutes’ segment, ‘Schneider vs. Kissinger,’ drew on the declassified documents to report on a ‘wrongful death’ lawsuit filed in September 2001 by the Schneider family against Henry Kissinger for his role in the assassination. The ’60 Minutes’ broadcast aired on September 9, 2001, and has not been publicly accessible since then. In preparation for the 50^thanniversary of the Schneider assassination, CBS News graciously posted the broadcast as a “60 Minutes Rewind” on October 21, 2020.”

Henry Kissinger was secretly supervising the CIA’s coup operations, and had cajoled President Richard Nixon into letting him prepare for a violent overthrow of the popularly democratically elected Allende.

“In Chile, the assassination of General Schneider remains the historical equivalent of the assassination of John F. Kennedy: a cruel and shocking political crime that shook the nation. In the United States, the murder of Schneider has become one of the most renowned case studies of CIA efforts to ‘neutralize’ a foreign leader who stood in the way of U.S. objectives,” wrote NSA.

The CIA also murdered President Kennedy. (2)

The CIA’s murderous covert operations to, as CIA officials suggested, “effect the removal of Schneider,” were first revealed in a 1975 Senate report on Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders.  At the time, investigators for the special Senate committee led by Idaho Senator Frank Church were able to review the Top Secret CIA operational cables and memoranda relating to ‘Operation FUBELT’—the code name for CIA effort.”

General Schneider was targeted for his defense of Chile’s constitutional transfer of power.

As the commander-in-chief of the Chilean army, and the highest-ranking military officer in Chile, Schneider’s policy of non-intervention created a major obstacle for CIA efforts to implement President Nixon’s orders to foment a coup that would prevent the recently elected Socialist, Salvador Allende, from being inaugurated.

Brighter Future for Bolivia

Argentina’s President Albert Fernández announced that he would be traveling to Bolivia for the inaugural ceremony. “It will be a dream fulfilled,” he told national media.

Bolivian Senator Andrónico Rodríguez stated that Evo Morales will return to his country from exile in Argentina, on November 9, the day after the inaugural ceremony. That will be one year exactly since he was forced into exile (November 10, 2019) by the military generals and some police.

Judge Jorge Quino, head of Departmental Court of Justice in La Paz, dismissed coup government charges of “terrorism” and “sedition” against Evo Morales. The October 26 decision is expected to be finally approved by the Plurinational Constitutional Court on the day of Arce’s inauguration or the day following.

Bolivia’s President-elect has joined growing calls for the resignation of Organization of American State’s chief Luis Almagro. In an interview with “La Razon”, a Bolivian newspaper, Arce said that Almagro must go for “ethical and moral reasons”, because of the discredited 2019 OAS report that claimed there had been electoral fraud under the last Morales government.

Almagro is known for acting in favor of US interests. Arce said, “We do not agree that an important body be in the hands of people wearing the shirt of a political party or of a political ideology in the region. There should not be interference in the internal affairs of a country. If Almagro did that in Bolivia, imagine, he can do it with any other country, and we cannot allow that.”

President Donald Trump stated that he expected to work with the new government. A State Department spokesperson, Michael Kozak, even stated that the Bolivian election had been “peaceful” “free and just”. US American politicians are infamously known in Latin American (and elsewhere) for speaking with forked tongues.

Researcher-journalist Ramona Wadi, who covers Latin America, cautioned about Bolivia’s perilous future: “The electoral triumph may not spell the end of US intervention in the country. The US is known to have used diverse tactics to instigate violence and unrest in Latin America, biding its time until it strikes again. The military and the police have yet to completely prove their alliance to the new government and against US designs on Bolivia.”

It is imperative that the new government reform the military and police, and find or train leaders who are loyal to their country’s sovereignty and not to the interests of US world domination.

Notes:

(1) Judge Garzón  issued an order, April 18, 2002, to question Henry Kissinger, in London where he was to attend a conference. Garzon wanted to question him about his role in the Chilean coup, and the CIA-organized “Operation Condor”, which killed and imprisoned tens of thousands of people in former military dictatorships in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay to persecute and eliminate their opponents during the 1970s and 1980s.

Britain refused Garzon’s request for permission to question Kissinger while he was in London. Kissinger, however, did not travel to Spain.

Garzon was also known for his pursuit of drug traffickers and terrorists in Spain and abroad. He best known for his arrest warrant for Pinochet, who was arrested on October 16, 1998, in London, for human rights abuses stemming the coup. Pinochet spent 16 months in London fighting extradition to Spain. He was allowed to return to Chile where a court ruled that he was mentally unfit to face trial.

Pinochet was not imprisoned while awaiting extradition in stark contrast to Julian Assange, who has rotted for 18 months in solidarity confinement in a maximum prison outside London. He is awaiting a British courts’ decision to extradite him to the US under alleged violations of Espionage Act 1917.

Another twist to this contrast is that the Spanish government removed Judge Garzón from the court, in 2011. He became an attorney for Assange, and was one of many spied upon by the CIA when Assange was in exile in the Ecuadoran embassy.

(2) There are hundreds of well-researched books, significant evidence, and lost evidence—such as JFK’s cranium, which would have shown bullet wounds contradicting the official one-man assassin lie. This can be seen in the Zapruder film, despite having been retouched by the FBI.

One of the CIA men involved, E. Howard Hunt, told his son, St. John, what happened on that fateful. See, “The Last Confession of E. Howard Hunt,” Rolling Stones, April 5, 2007,by Erik Hedegaard. Hunt was a key CIA hit man against Latin Americans who refused to conform to its domination. Hunt wrote on paper, and later recorded, several names of CIA and mafia men who participated in the conspiracy and murder of President Kennedy.

The Senate Church committee strongly suggested that there was more than one person involved in the JFK assassination. That committee had arranged for Chicago Mafia boss Sam (Mooney) Giancana to be transferred from his home to Washington DC, on June 19, 1975, to testify before the committee, on June 24. The committee wanted to learn about Ginacana’s “connection to the CIA’s Castro assassination plot”. What he might know about the murder of JFK could have cropped up. Just hours before committee members arrived at his home, someone Giancana obviously knew was let into his house. This person shot Mooney to death  to prevent his testimony. He had been confiding to his brother, Chuck, and nephew, Samuel M. Giancana, his life’s “works”, which included his involvement in the JFK assassination with other mobsters, counter-revolutionary Cubans in exile, and the CIA. He names names in the book, “Double Cross” by Sam and Chuck Giancana, Warner Books, NY, 1992. Mooney’s brother and nephew believe the CIA murdered him to be sure he did not “double cross” them when it was he they “double crossed”.

thiscantbehappening.net

In the following interview for Strategic Culture Foundation, veteran activist and author Ron Ridenour shares his insights on the prospects of war and peace. Ridenour has lived and worked as a journalist in several countries, including as a press aide to the governments of Cuba, Nicaragua and Bolivia. He was born in the U.S., “the devil’s own country”, as he puts it, in 1939. Ridenour joined the American air force in 1956 to “fight commies”. However, the failed American Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961 radicalized him. Over the next six decades he has worked as a journalist and anti-war activist all around the world. He has been jailed numerous times for his principles and sacked from jobs in the U.S. mainstream media due to blacklisting by the FBI. See his full bio here. Ridenour has authored numerous books, including Backfire: The CIA’s Biggest Burn, in which he exposes with firsthand knowledge the numerous covert terror plots conducted against Cuba. Our interview covers wide-ranging subjects in international politics and history, including the persecution of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. A central theme in Ridenour’s work and activism is why the United States under its prevailing capitalist system is obsessed with waging war against Russia over the past century. First though, we begin with his views on the recent stunning election victory in Bolivia.

INTERVIEW

Question: Would you like to comment on the recent election victory in Bolivia? The landslide win by Luis Arce of the Movement for Socialism (MAS) party seems a remarkable victory against the rightwing coup plotters and their backers in Washington who last year ousted former President Evo Morales.

Ron Ridenour: Luis Arce, and running mate David Choquehuanca Céspedes, victory is a victory for the majority of Bolivians, a victory for the world’s poor, the indigenous, and supporters of equality, bread and land for all, and world peace.

It could have been expected if the coup-makers did not fix the election, which, apparently, they did not. It would have been difficult as 55 per cent of the 11.7 million population are Amerindian. With some mestizos identifying as aboriginals, 60 per cent of the country is indigenous. Whites make up only 15 per cent, yet they have a lot of power, land and money. The largest province, Santa Cruz, has a strong racist separatist movement.

While abject racists will not desist being hateful and puppets of the U.S., the new government must put a stop to their violence and subversion.

The coup-makers, especially the “interim president” Jeanine Añez, did a lousy job governing: she lost 30 per cent of export income; became immersed in corruption scandals; treated the coronavirus like her soulmates Brazilian leader Jair Bolsonaro and Donald Trump. She also ordered rightest military and police to murder indigenous protestors. Three dozens were murdered.

Question: You previously worked as an aide to former President Morales, but at the same time you believe he made some critical errors while in office. Can you outline some of those errors, in your view? Do you think the new MAS-led government of Luis Arce will learn from these past mistakes?

Ron Ridenour: The greatest impact of Morales’ 13 years governing are mostly positive. His policies greatly decreased poverty and unemployment; increased life expectancy by seven years; educated Bolivians about the evils of capitalism and its wars; drafted a new constitution, making three indigenous languages official alongside Spanish; and brought stability to a nation used to chaos.

When I worked with him, I witnessed how he listened to his people, and they saw him as a brother not an elitist. Yet in later years, Morales focused power around his personality, reneged on promises, and made contradictory accommodations with some elite interests. He lost a referendum seeking a fourth term for presidency, but maneuvered around that decision. These errors immersed the country in political crises, and split leftists, including some indigenous peoples.

One of his greatest errors was not to have reformed the military and police, by placing anti-racists and pro-socialists in leadership. A year before his attempt to win a fourth term, Morales appointed General Williams Kaliman Romero to head the armed forces. Kaliman is one of six key Bolivian coup plotters who had been trained at the U.S. military School of the Americas at Fort Benning, in the U.S. state of Georgia. SOA was renamed Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation after dedicated American peace activists exposed its torture training methods, which, they say, continue.

Arce was Morales’ minister of finance and economy, and Choquehuanca was his foreign minister. They ran a campaign based on MAS’s program without much discussion concerning Evo Morales. They have no quarrel with the achievements made under his leadership. I got to know Choquehuanca a bit. I see him as an honest man, close to his people, who was able to disagree with Morales. I surmise that both Arce and Choquehuanca will be their own masters and not be subordinate to Morales. They are indigenous nation Aymarans (two million in Bolivia). I hope they make important appointments to other native peoples, especially the largest of them, Quechuas (2.5 million), and some whites. That would help heal some hard feelings.

The new government will drop the phony charges that the coup government leveled against former President Morales, charges of terrorism and sedition, and even “rape” for sexual relations with a 16- year-old consenting girl.

I’m nearly certain that they won’t try to prolong their stay in office in conflict with the constitution, and thereby they will need to prepare other people to be leaders. It is also possible that they might not be so forthrightly anti-capitalism as Morales was most of the time.

The left throughout Latin America has suffered severe losses in recent years. The new leadership will feel the need to bargain with conservative opponents and businessmen.

(See the excellent program promulgated by Evo Morales: 10 Commandments to Save the Planet, Humankind and Life (End Capitalism and Renounce Wars).

Question: What are the political implications for the wider Latin American continent from Bolivia’s return to socialist government?

Ron Ridenour: I think that many leftist parties and groupings will be encouraged especially because it is clear that their northern neighbor had little convincing effect on the majority of Bolivians. They want their own sovereignty. The “embassy of death”, as many Latinos call U.S. embassies, could not turn the tide their way.

Bolivia will resume fraternal relations with Venezuela’s elected government, with Iran and Cuba, which Añez had terminated. No Latino who needs medical care could possibly view Cuban doctors as “terrorists”, which is what that mad woman called those brave and highly skilled doctors and nurses Cuba sent to Bolivia.

This victory could also strengthen ALBA (Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas).

Question: Turning to other international affairs, it seems that the United States and its European allies are relentlessly pursuing a hostile policy towards Russia. We see new sanctions against Russia issued almost every week by the Western powers over dubious claims, such as the alleged poisoning of dissident figures or alleged violation by Russia of arms controls treaties. In your book, The Russian Peace Threat: Pentagon on Alert, you take a long historical view on what motivates Western animosity towards Moscow. Can you elaborate?

Ron Ridenour: The West, led by the U.S., endeavors to dominate the entire world. That is what “globalization” means. Some of us call that “imperialism”. A strong state that defends its sovereignty is an automatic threat to their global world plan, and Russia is the largest country in the world with nearly unlimited space and natural resources. However, all those goodies are not just for the taking under Vladimir Putin’s governing.

The U.S./UK concocted the “Cold War”, in order to dominate the world post WWII. At the very end of the war in Europe, Churchill even had a plan to invade Russia with nuclear weapons. His “Operation Unthinkable” was stopped, because he lost the July 1945 elections to Labour Party’s Clement Atlee. Labour did not want a new war. Furthermore, U.S. President Truman didn’t have enough atomic weaponry. He needed what he had to drop on Japan, and the Soviets were helping him on the ground in Japan at the same time.

I truly thank all those insiders who gave information to the Russians so they could get their own atomic weaponry fast enough before the U.S./UK could develop more atomic weapons, in order to pull off WWIII.

Skipping over the hot “Cold War” to its end when then Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev called his “friend” U.S. President George Bush I the night before he declared the collapse of the Soviet Union. Bush and Wall Street were ecstatic. Russia’s new leader Boris Yeltsin along with his “friend”, and capitalist comrade, U.S. President Bill Clinton decimated Russian sovereignty, increased poverty from 1.5 per cent to 50 per cent – that’s right, half the population – and life expectancy fell by five years from 69 to 64. Those are figures from the World Bank, a bastion of capitalism. Not to mention Yeltsin’s murdering hundreds of people, including parliamentarians, in an invasion of the parliament, in 1993, which Clinton encouraged.

After just one decade of this rape-of-a-nation, Vladimir Putin comes into power. At first, he was willing to be “friends” with George Bush II, helping him in Afghanistan against the Taliban, for one key example. But when Bush could not stop the CIA from conducting proxy terrorist attacks against Russian interests, Putin woke up. Since then the president of Russia has acted as a real president, and an overwhelming majority have supported him.

Putin has also clearly shown those who have their eyes open that he acts to prevent wars. He convinced his ally Syrian President Bashar-al Assad to hand over whatever chemical weapons Syria had, and he actually delivered them to the greatest chemical/biological warfare state in the world, the USA. Putin convinced Iran not to construct nuclear weapons but limit itself to nuclear energy, and now he is trying to get Azerbaijan (along with Turkey) and Armenia to end that armed conflict.

We need to know, to recall, how much the Russian people have suffered from wars to understand that they have no urge to go to war again.

During WWII, the British lost only 1 per cent of its population; the U.S. lost 0.32 per cent of its population.

In the first half of the 20th century – Russia-Japan war 1905, two world wars, the Russian civil war with U.S. and allies invading to support the aristocracy and its White Army – at least 40 million Soviets lost their lives and a similar number were seriously wounded. That number is the equivalent of 40 per cent of Soviets who survived WWII, and half the number of Russians living today. (See chapter 10 of The Russian Peace Threat.)

German Nazis, Italian and Spanish fascists were bankrolled, in large part, by the biggest capitalists in the U.S. The same capitalists who set about to overthrow President FD Roosevelt (The Business Plot, aka The Fascist Plot of 1933-4), exposed by Marine General Smedley Butler.

Henry Ford receiving Hitler’s Grand Cross of the German Eagle, 1938, for his support to the Nazis

It is not the Russians who are a threat to world peace!

While Russia is no aggressor, capitalism always needs enemies, in order to control its populations, and “earn” astronomical profits for the weapons industry, war rebuilding industry, fossil fuel, medical and drug industries. Capitalism cannot exist in a peaceful world nor one in which all people are equal. Owner-classes must stand over wageworkers and slave-workers else there will be no constant profit growth rates for the benefit of the few. So, there must always be inequities, rich and poor, haves and have nots. Racism and jingoistic nationalism are essential ingredients for capitalism to keep people afraid and divided.

None of this can be admitted by any of their politicians. To keep the population in wraps, the owner-class must control the state and politicians. Thus, the mass media must ignore these realities. People must be insecure and fearful of outside forces so they won’t see who is really exploiting and oppressing them. Enemies have to be made up.

The highest-ranking CIA officer to come over to our side, John Stockwell, wrote a book whose very title supports this analysis: In Search of Enemies. His title is analogous to what my own book is about, Russia, the “peace threat”.

Below is a succinct extract about this from Stockwell’s June 1986 lecture available here.

“You have to be asking yourself, why are we destabilizing 50 corners of the troubled world? Why are we about to go to war in Nicaragua, the Central American war? It is the function, I suggest, of the CIA, with its 50 de-stabilization programs going around the world today, to keep the world unstable, and to propagandize the American people to hate, so we will let the establishment spend any amount of money on arms…”

Question: What needs to happen, in your view, for Western nations to adopt a normal, cooperative foreign policy towards Russia?

Ron Ridenour: “Cooperative foreign policy towards Russia” has never been “normal”, not since the 19th century. Yeltsin’s period was abnormal. During the U.S. civil war, Russia’s Tsar Alexander II actually sent two naval fleets to U.S. waters to prevent an armed British-French military collaboration with the racist-slave confederacy. The Tsar had liberated, in fact, all 23 million Russian serfs, in 1861. He saw a similarity with slavery in the U.S., I suppose, while Britain and France were at their colonialist-slavery height.

At that time, capitalism had not developed to the point whereby one country could dominate the world. There were several centers of power, and they all needed allies, which shifted opportunistically. There was no one dominating intelligence agency as today with the CIA and its key allies Britain’s MI6 and Israel’s Mossad.

I think there can be no cooperative foreign relations with Russia as long as the latter remains independent and as long as corporate capitalism dominates the West and other areas of the world.

It doesn’t matter which political party rules, or whether the West’s national leaders are men or women, or whatever color. Obama, for instance, had seven wars going at one time, more than any other president in U.S. history. They all do what Wall Street/City of London demands.

Question: The same applies to Western relations with China, would you agree?

Ron Ridenour: Yes.

Question: Why has President Donald Trump’s past election promise to restore relations with Russia not materialized? Bilateral relations seem worse than ever. Surely Trump had executive authority to renew the New START treaty on strategic nuclear weapons, for example, but he procrastinated on the matter, thereby adding to tensions. Can Trump’s seeming reneging on improving bilateral relations with Russia be all attributed to “deep state” resistance?

Ron Ridenour: Deep State-Pentagon resistance is a part of it. After all, every American president must kowtow to these deadly militarists, something JFK tried to change. They murdered him and his brother, and there was no uprising. The people accepted this lethal coup in broad daylight.

While Trump is unusual in many ways, he is still a major capitalist with his own corporation and he is part of Wall Street. He has to play the game. Much of his clout comes from the same warmongering industries as all other Republican and Democrat leaders.

At first, Trump thought he could make profitable trade ventures with Russia. Some corporations, including some oil-gas magnates, could profit from competitive yet cooperative relations with Russia. However, other powerful capitalists want Russia as an enemy as do the militarists. The fracking industry also views the Russian-German Nord Stream natural gas partnership as a threat to potential profits.

Question: Do you have a view on how a Joe Biden administration, if the Democrat contender is elected on November 3, will impact on U.S. foreign policy and relations with Russia in particular?

Ron Ridenour: Biden-Harris foreign policy will be as always the juggernaut’s. I think they will step up conflicts with Russia. After all, it was the Democratic Party leadership (Clinton-Obama and his CIA director John Brennan) that started “Russiagate”. The FBI is now spreading the new fantasy that both Russia and Iran are intruding in the election campaign. This is pure psychological projection.

Furthermore, if they win, Trump will continue to encourage his racist hinterland. The KKK, neo-fascists, militias will grow. If Harris takes over the presidency from Biden either through sickness, death or the following election, I believe that the racists-fascists will start a race war. That is what the real left, and a conscious working-class in U.S. America must prepare for already now. Part of that preparation is for the left to prioritize building working-class consciousness on the job.

Question: You have written passionately about the persecution of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and how it represents a mortal threat to human rights for all citizens in Western nations. You contend that if Assange is extradited to the U.S. from Britain, he will not receive a fair trial over fabricated spying charges and will therefore be imprisoned for the rest of his life. That infers it is imperative that the British public mobilize to halt his extradition which is slated to be ruled on in January of next year. What can be done to win justice for Julian Assange?

Ron Ridenour: The need to support Julian Assange is the same necessity we all have to protect whatever free press there is left. Every human being, who wants that fundamental right and need, must act, must resist his extradition to the U.S. gulag.

First and foremost, people in those countries whose leaders are conspiring to kill him – U.S., Britain, Sweden, Ecuador, Australia – must stand up and be heard. They must let those snobby aristocratically robed British magistrates and judges dare not let this hero of democracy be tortured to death either in British or American inhumane prisons.

Here are some suggestions to support freeing Julian Assange:

1. Write letters-to-editors
2. Contact media to cover the hearings
3. Organize actions/happenings at U.S./UK government buildings
4. Donate to his legal defense fund at this link.

Question: I remember hearing you speak at a public forum in Cambridge, England, to antiwar activists. That was nearly 30 years ago. Are you more or less optimistic for the prospects of peace, justice and international solidarity prevailing than you were back then? What needs to be done?

Ron Ridenour: Optimistic? Absolutely not. At the time of that forum, 1992, I was living in Cuba and working for national media. Fidel was still alive. Cubans were practicing real solidarity, in order to survive due to the negative economic and political consequences of the collapse of the Soviet Union. A decade later, Fidel and Hugo Chavez started ALBA and soon eight Latin American countries were working together, trying to gradually transform capitalist economies to socialist ones. Today, a large majority of Cubans want social welfare with capitalism, trade with and “help” from the U.S. And ALBA is weak.

True, one optimistic development is the anti-racist, anti-police brutality movement of some millions of brave and energetic people in U.S. streets, and many others in some European countries resisting police brutality and left-over colonialism. There are more protesters today than in my youth in the U.S., but there is hardly any direction, hardly any socialist alternatives being advanced. Leaders of the Black Lives Matter are in the hands of the Democratic Party and some of their big capitalists’ payroll.

The Democratic Party is the party that absorbs or smashes real opposition movements. Bernie Sanders and his lot confuse people with a false socialist rhetoric with no real socialist and anti-war substance.

Right-wing nationalism, as always based on racism and divide-and-conquer strategies, is rising violently in many countries. We “real leftists” are not well organized, are not unifying.

I see this historic moment similar to the 1920s-30s in Mussolini’s fascist Italy.

Europeans must reject being dominated by all U.S. governments and Wall Street. They need to retake their sovereignty. They need to come out in large numbers against wars, and also engage in civil disobedience actions. The climate movement must resist wars as the number one polluter of the planet, as well as murdering millions of people, causing other millions to flee and become unwanted refugees. Even most European social democrats have turned their backs on these poor, desperate human beings, because of the wars that create refugees instead of opposing the causes.

The first priority of every person who wishes to live in a peaceful world with justice and equality is to act against wars of aggression for domination and profit.

I wish I could end on a positive note. I can’t find anything better to offer than what our soulmate singer-songwriter the late Leonard Cohen who tells us: “There’s a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in!”

Mainstream propaganda attempted to justify the coup by spreading a false narrative of the people rejecting Morales’s government. However, when faced with a choice between the two main candidates, the former right-wing president Carlos Mesa and the MAS former Economy Minister Luis Arce, voters opted for the a future governance that has consistently rejected U.S. and international interference. The elections gave the MAS a resounding victory, with a bigger margin than the 2019 elections in which Morales was elected.

Arce will officially take power in December this year. Senate candidate Leonardo Loza described the forthcoming path towards justice thus: “We will not be a government of persecution. But there will be no forgetting or forgiving for those wo got killed in Senkata and Sacaba during the 2019 coup.”

In Senkata and Sacaba, at least 19 people were killed by the military in the aftermath of the coup. In addition, the coup instigated a climate of extreme repression and violence, reminiscent of earlier dictatorship practices in Bolivia itself and in Latin America.

Añez has reportedly asked the U.S. to provide 350 visas for officials involved in the 2019 coup, in a bid to avoid prosecution. As soon as the MAS victory was evident, Añez recognised the electoral result and asked the socialist party “to govern with Bolivia and democracy in mind.”

Democracy also requires justice. Añez’s request, undoubtedly part of the U.S. narrative of “restoring democracy to Bolivia” albeit through a coup leading to dictatorship, had still not differentiated between the people’s democracy and coercive neoliberal violence – the latter being the brand which her government promoted and which the people so clearly rejected.

Arce has also called for the resignation of Luis Almagro, the OAS Chief who alleged electoral fraud in the 2019 elections which saw Morales return to power. The call for resignation is regional – Almagro’s vested interests in promoting the U.S. agenda opens up Latin America to imperialist interference. “There should not be interference in the internal affairs of a country. If Almagro did that in Bolivia, imagine, he can do it with any other country, and we cannot allow that,” Arce explained. Morales also declared he would be pursuing judicial action against Almagro.

The Bolivian elections have illustrated the centrality of social movements to the political process. While the coup attempted to push the indigenous people to the periphery, the elections provided an opportunity to reverse the changes desired and envisaged by the U.S., and a strong return to the MAS. However, the new government faces the task of curbing the right-wing reactionary groups which are supported by the U.S.

However, the electoral triumph many not spell the end of U.S. intervention in the country. The U.S. is known to have used diverse tactics to instigate violence and unrest in Latin America, biding its time until it strikes again. The military and the police have yet to completely prove their allegiance to the new government and against U.S. designations on Bolivia. Añez also subjugated the country to an IMF loan of $327 million. Regional and international solidarity with Bolivia is imperative in order to isolate U.S. interference and to allow Bolivia to rebuild itself from the deprivation ushered in a single year of U.S.-backed dictatorship rule.