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Judi Lynn

(160,217 posts)
Tue Feb 16, 2021, 10:35 PM Feb 2021

Luis Arce's Bolivia and the new regionalism in Latin America

Is the renewed ascendancy of leftism in countries like Bolivia and Ecuador a sign that the ‘Pink Tide’ is returning?
Owen Schalk / February 16, 2021



Bolivian President Luis Arce speaks during the 2015 International Economic Forum on Latin America and the Caribbean. Photo courtesy the OECD Development Centre/Flickr.

“Our movement is unique in the world,” said former Bolivian president and leader of the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) Evo Morales upon his return from exile on November 9, 2020. “The Indigenous sector is the one most threatened with extermination, discriminated, marginalized, and we promoted and created a political movement for the liberation of our country.” Although it is true that the MAS movement is “unique in the world” as Morales stated, largely owing to Bolivia’s unique demographics (approximately half of the population identify as Indigenous), its success is also an inspiring indication of progressive resistance across Latin America and the Caribbean.

The MAS’s fight for Indigenous, anti-imperialist interests has continued, but without Morales at the helm. Luis Arce, a left-wing economist and Minister of Economy and Public Finance under Morales (2006-2019), was sworn in on November 8, 2020, following almost one year of right-wing violence from an authoritarian coup government supported by the United States, Canada, the European Union, and the Organization of American States under Luis Almagro (who has also followed Washington’s line on Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua). The coup government of Jeanine Áñez oversaw a program of privatization, immense borrowing from the International Monetary Fund, and suppression of Indigenous movements, as well as isolation from regional organizations intended to limit the influence of the Global North on Latin American and Caribbean economic policy, such as the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) and the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR).

ALBA and UNASUR are important organizations for the integration of left-wing, anti-imperialist governments in Latin America. In his speech at the United Nations in 2011, Hugo Chávez labelled this push for integration “[the] new regionalism,” and said that ALBA exists as an “experiment of progressive and anti-imperialist governments, seeking ways to break the prevailing international order,” while UNASUR is “a political bloc that federates the 12 sovereign States of South America with the purpose of grouping them under what the Liberator Simón Bolivar called ‘a Nation of Republics.’” This new regionalism is what the US-backed government of Áñez tried, and failed, to destroy in Bolivia. The MAS won the 2020 election with a staggering 55 percent of the vote (the next most popular party, headed by Carlos Mesa, received 28 percent) and President Arce promptly asserted his mandate by rejoining these alliances for the economic integration of progressive Latin American governments.

ALBA used to include Manuel Zelaya’s Honduras and Rafael Correa’s Ecuador, but Honduras left following the 2009 coup and Ecuador withdrew during the neoliberal reign of Lenin Moreno. Furthermore, it is important to note that the three observer states to ALBA are Haiti, Iran, and Syria. These observer nations gesture toward the greater threat that new regionalist organizations pose to US hegemony. In the Middle East, Iran and Syria represent two of Washington’s biggest targets due to their independent economic policy and refusal to bow to Western imperialism. Their observer status in ALBA indicates the larger counter-hegemonic trends that are developing across the Global South and help to explain why the right-wing coup government of Áñez was so quick to reverse these Morales-era alliances.



Former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa (middle) and Evo Morales (right) in Cochabamba, Bolivia, June 4, 2012. Photo courtesy the Cancillería del Ecuador/Flickr.

More:
https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/arces-bolivia-and-the-new-regionalism-in-latin-america



The little Teflon Assassin, Massacre-Meister, Alvaro Uribe, manipulator of spies and death
squads, not comfortable with non-fascists during inauguration of Evo Morales, in Bolivia.













"May I be excused?"



President Luis Arce and Vice President David Choquehuanca, Native Bolivians, still referred to as "llama abortions, "f***ing Indians" by the ruling minority class, the Europeans. Their parents, grandparents weren't allowed to vote or even walk on the same sidewalks with the white minority rulers before a revolution in 1952.

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Luis Arce's Bolivia and the new regionalism in Latin America (Original Post) Judi Lynn Feb 2021 OP
Reiminder of their VERY recent past: Bolivia coup led by Christian fascist paramilitary leader and m Judi Lynn Feb 2021 #1
K&R just for the pics but the text is fine too! abqtommy Feb 2021 #2
Thank you, abqtommy! Isn't it sad so much happens using U.S. taxpayers' $$$ while we are never told Judi Lynn Feb 2021 #3

Judi Lynn

(160,217 posts)
1. Reiminder of their VERY recent past: Bolivia coup led by Christian fascist paramilitary leader and m
Tue Feb 16, 2021, 11:13 PM
Feb 2021

Bolivia coup led by Christian fascist paramilitary leader and millionaire – with foreign support
MAX BLUMENTHAL AND BEN NORTON·NOVEMBER 11, 2019



Members of Bolivia's extreme-right Santa Cruz Youth Union (Unión Juvenil Cruceñista, or UJC), and Luis Fernando Camacho (on right)


Bolivian coup leader Luis Fernando Camacho is a far-right multi-millionaire who arose from fascist movements in the Santa Cruz region, where the US has encouraged separatism. He has courted support from Colombia, Brazil, and the Venezuelan opposition.


When Luis Fernando Camacho stormed into Bolivia’s abandoned presidential palace in the hours after President Evo Morales’s sudden November 10 resignation, he revealed to the world a side of the country that stood at stark odds with the plurinational spirit its deposed socialist and Indigenous leader had put forward.

With a Bible in one hand and a national flag in the other, Camacho bowed his head in prayer above the presidential seal, fulfilling his vow to purge his country’s Native heritage from government and “return God to the burned palace.”

“Pachamama will never return to the palace,” declared the pastor to his side, referring to the Andean Mother Earth spirit. “Bolivia belongs to Christ.”



Far-right Bolivian opposition leader Luis Fernando Camacho in Bolivia’s presidential palace
with a Bible, after the coup

Bolivia’s extreme right-wing opposition had overthrown leftist President Evo Morales that day, following demands by the country’s military leadership that he step down.

Virtually unknown outside his country, where he had never won a democratic election, Camacho stepped into the void. He is a powerful multi-millionaire named in the Panama Papers, and an ultra-conservative Christian fundamentalist groomed by a fascist paramilitary notorious for its racist violence, with a base in Bolivia’s wealthy separatist region of Santa Cruz.

Camacho hails from a family of corporate elites who have long profited from Bolivia’s plentiful natural gas reserves. And his family lost part of its wealth when Morales nationalized the country’s resources, in order to fund his vast social programs — which cut poverty by 42 percent and extreme poverty by 60 percent.

More:
https://thegrayzone.com/2019/11/11/bolivia-coup-fascist-foreign-support-fernando-camacho/

So glad to see this article! It has information about events in Bolivia I've posted here over years! I was so happy to see it has lined up some important historical information the US corporate media has ALWAYS misrepresented, mangled, or simply ignored! It's very important. If you have the time, you'll do yourself a favor to get a great summary of Bolivian people's struggle over the last 20 years or so. Please read, if you have time.

Judi Lynn

(160,217 posts)
3. Thank you, abqtommy! Isn't it sad so much happens using U.S. taxpayers' $$$ while we are never told
Wed Feb 17, 2021, 05:29 AM
Feb 2021

what the hell is being DONE in our names, with our tax dollars, and it has always been completely ignored, or lied about?

Truly about time the power-mad, racist, greedy right-wing gets eased out of controlling all of the Americas.

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