Judi Lynn
Judi Lynn's JournalBolivia: Anatomy of a Coup
NOVEMBER 29, 2019
Bolivia: Anatomy of a Coup
by JEFF MACKLER AND LAZARO MONTEVERDE
On Sunday, October 20 Evo Morales was re-elected president of Bolivia with 46.85 per cent of the vote against his nearest competitor, Carlos Mesa, who received 36.74 percent. In anticipation of a Morales victory the U.S. corporate media launched a fake news disinformation barrage nine days earlier aimed at discrediting the result and setting the stage for a well-orchestrated fascist-led coup. Presented to the world as a popular democratic revolution against a dictator, the coup was led by fascist groups in alliance with Bolivia’s defecting police and army. The relentless media watchdog, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), aptly reported: “The New York Times’ editorial (11/11/19) accused Morales of “brazenly abusing the power and institutions put in his care by the electorate. The Washington Post (11/11/19) alleged that ‘a majority of Bolivians wanted [Morales] to leave office’ –a claim for which they provided no evidence – while asserting that he had ‘grown increasingly autocratic’ and that ‘his downfall was his insatiable appetite for power.’ The Wall Street Journal (11/11/19) argued that Morales ‘is a victim of his own efforts to steal another election,’ saying that Morales ‘has rigged the rules time and again to stay in power.’” FAIR’s corporate media accounting goes on to list several major media outlets in the country that dutifully sang the same song. Not a single major daily challenged these baseless accusations. These “manufacturing consent” specialists were unanimous in denouncing Morales and his re-election long before the votes were tallied. The Bolivian coup was conceived as a relatively quiet U.S.-supported regime change endeavor in comparison to the overt and monstrous full court failed coup that U.S. imperialism conducted against the Venezuelan government of Nicholas Maduro several months earlier.
On November 10, twenty-one days after his election victory Morales, in the name of “peace” and to avoid “violence and bloodshed,” resigned the presidency and fled to Mexico at the invitation of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. On November 22 Morales told a New York Times reporter in Mexico that the coup leaders had placed a $50,000 “wanted dead or alive” price tag on his capture. Mexico’s air force jet sent for the rescue operation arrived via a circuitous route including a stop in Paraguay after several nations – including U.S.-allied Peru and Ecuador – denied flyover or refueling rights. Mexico’s Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard, who greeted Morales upon his arrival, denounced the coup as well as the concerted interference with Mexico’s effort to retrieve Morales. No doubt the U.S.-backed coup makers had informed their allies of Morales’s departure plans, while evaluating the merits and demerits of arresting, if not murdering him by the still-undeclared formal coup leaders.
While Morales’s political party, Movement Toward Socialism (MAS), held a majority in Bolivia’s congress, right wing Senator Jeanine Añez Chavez declared herself interim president in violation of Bolivian succession laws and via a meeting conducted without a required quorum. Senators and congressional representatives from MAS, which holds a majority in congress, were physically excluded from the meeting. With nobody from the Morales’ ruling party present to object Añez promoted herself to the head of the Senate, a position that she said put her in line to be the country’s interim president since both Morales and his vice president had resigned. Appearing later at the presidential residence wearing the presidential sash, Añez hoisted a Bible as she appeared on the balcony to signify Bolivia’s return to its white racist Christian conqueror past. “This Bible is very important to us,” said Añez. “Our strength is God. Power is God.” The fascist coup leader Luis Fernando Camacho (See below.) was more explicit stating, “The Bible returns to the presidential palace. The Pachamama (Mother Earth in the Quechua language) will never be back to the government. Bolivia belongs to Jesus Christ,” not to the heathen natives, me might have added.
Invoking a Christian god as the source of political power was aimed at repudiating Morales and his Aymara indigenous roots in a nation where 62 percent of the population are of indigenous origin, mostly Aymara, Quechuan and Guarani, with indigenous peoples speaking 37 native languages, all formally recognized by the 2009 constitution approved during the Morales presidency. Another 20 percent of the population are Mestizos – people with mixed ancestry (indigenous and white Europeans). An estimated 10-15 percent are white. Bolivia’s 2009 constitution changed the country’s name from the Republic of Bolivia to the Plurinational State of Bolivia in recognition of the multi-ethnic nature of the country and the enhanced position of Bolivia’s indigenous peoples.
More:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/11/29/bolivia-anatomy-of-a-coup/
"We want justice": Chilean protesters with police-caused eye injuries organize
November 29, 2019 Sandra Cuffe Americas, Story
Eliecer Flores has been out in the streets of Santiago protesting Chile’s political and economic model since day one. He had to take a break, though, after one of the pellet projectiles fired by police hit him in the right eye.
“My eyeball burst,” Flores, 30, told Toward Freedom. “I got to keep the eye, but not any vision.”
A father of a nine-month-old baby and proud stepdad of a 13-year-old, Flores is originally from Cañete, a city of 34,000 in the Biobio region, 400 miles south of the capital. Growing up in poverty, Flores witnessed injustice and theft by the government, he said.
“I always promised myself that if I had the chance to do something about it, I would,” he said.
Flores got his chance last month. Secondary students in Santiago engaged in mass fare evasion and other actions to protest a metro fare increase. Within 24 hours the whole country erupted in protests against inequality, education and health care privatizations, low pensions and wages, and the neoliberal model itself.
More:
https://towardfreedom.org/story/we-want-justice-chilean-protesters-with-police-caused-eye-injuries-organize/
Cuba and EU discuss imposition of unilateral coercive measures
Havana, Nov 29 (Prensa Latina) Cuba and the European Union (EU) are discussing the imposition of unilateral coercive measures on Friday, giving continuity to a meeting on that issue held in Brussels, Belgium, in November 2018.
The meeting is taking place as the administration of US President Donald Trump is tightening the blockade against Cuba, including threats and sanctions against third countries, even European Union companies and interests, one of the major investors in Cuba.
Representatives of Cuba and the EU are meeting at Havana's Hotel Nacional to discuss the imposition of these unilateral coercive measures as a means to exert political and economic pressure on States.
They will also debate the legal and practical frameworks of the European Union's legislation to counter the extraterritorial enforcement of laws imposed by third countries.
More:
https://www.plenglish.com/index.php?o=rn&id=49460&SEO=cuba-and-eu-discuss-imposition-of-unilateral-coercive-measures
'20 students missing', 1 injured after US endorsement triggers brutal repression of Colombia's peace
’20 students missing’, 1 injured after US endorsement triggers brutal repression of Colombia’s peaceful protest
by Adriaan Alsema November 27, 2019
Colombia’s police returned to brutal repression on Wednesday after the US government expressed its support for President Ivan Duque, who has been facing mass anti-government protests for a week.
According to the District University Human Rights Network, police arrested approximately 20 students near three bus terminals in Bogota. At least one student was seriously injured.
. . .
Attacks follow day of peaceful protests and US endorsement
The sudden outbreak of violence and wave of arrests followed hours after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted his support for Duque, who has been under fire over violent attempts to repress peaceful protests.
The top US official said he supported Duque’s “National Conversation.” The talks have been rejected by strike leaders, however, because the president allegedly refused to attend concerns on which they have been trying to negotiate since a month prior to the beginning of last week’s national strike.
More:
https://colombiareports.com/20-students-missing-1-injured-after-us-endorsement-triggers-brutal-repression-of-colombias-peaceful-protest/
Painting in the Americas before European colonization
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Tepantitla at Teotihuacan. The Mountain of Abundance mural, also known as the “Paradise of Tlaloc”. Circa 450-600 AD, original fresco.
Painting in the Americas before European colonization is the Precolumbian painting traditions of the Americas. Painting was a relatively widespread, popular and diverse means of communication and expression for both religious and utilitarian purpose throughout the regions of the Western Hemisphere. During the period before and after European exploration and settlement of the Americas; including North America, Central America, South America and the islands of the Caribbean, the Bahamas, the West Indies, the Antilles, the Lesser Antilles and other island groups, indigenous native cultures produced a wide variety of visual arts, including painting on textiles, hides, rock and cave surfaces, bodies especially faces, ceramics, architectural features including interior murals, wood panels, and other available surfaces. Many of the perishable surfaces, such as woven textiles, typically have not been preserved, but Precolumbian painting on ceramics, walls, and rocks have survived more frequently.
The oldest known paintings in the South America are the cave paintings of Caverna da Pedra Pintada, in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest that date back 11,200 years.[1] The earliest known painting in North America is the Cooper Bison Skull found near Fort Supply, Oklahoma, dated to 10,200 BCE.[2]
Painting in the Americas before colonization
Main articles: Native American art, Maya art, Pre-Columbian art, and Indigenous peoples of the Americas
Each continent of the Americas hosted societies that were unique and individually developed cultures; that produced totems, works of religious symbolism, and decorative and expressive painted works. African influence was especially strong in the art of the Caribbean and South America. The arts of the indigenous people of the Americas had an enormous impact and influence on European art and vice versa during and after the Age of Exploration. Spain, Portugal, France, The Netherlands and England were all powerful and influential colonial powers in the Americas during and after the 15th century. By the 19th century cultural influence began to flow both ways across the Atlantic.
Mesoamerica
See also: Mesoamerican writing systems, Oasisamerica, Aridoamerica, and Aztec calendar stone
The murals of Teotihuacan that adorn the archaeological site (and others, like the Wagner Murals, found in private collections) and from hieroglyphic inscriptions made by the Maya describing their encounters with Teotihuacano conquerors are the source of most of what is understood about that ancient civilization. The painting of the murals, perhaps thousands of them, reached its zenith between 450 and 650 CE. The painters' artistry was unrivalled in Mesoamerica and has been compared with that of Florence, Italy.[3]
More:
https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Painting_in_the_Americas_before_European_colonization
Also posted in Anthropology:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/12295125
Bolivia coup led by Christian fascist paramilitary leader and millionaire - with foreign support
November 11, 2019
Bolivia coup led by Christian fascist paramilitary leader and millionaire – with foreign support
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.
By Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton
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.”
. . .
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.
More:
https://thegrayzone.com/2019/11/11/bolivia-coup-fascist-foreign-support-fernando-camacho/
This article offers a ton of information in one place which would take you a long time, and many articles to discover for yourself, researching. It's well worth the time it takes to read it.
Bolivian Police Gas Funeral March in Latest Crack-Down
NOVEMBER 27, 2019
by OLIVIA ARIGHO-STILES
La Paz, Bolivia
Last Thursday thousands of people descended into La Paz from El Alto carrying the caskets of eight people shot dead by police earlier that week. Emotions were running high and protestors had tears streaming down their faces. They had assembled peacefully to demand justice.
“Áñez, murderer. We want your resignation”, they shouted. “Justicia!”. It was not a march in support of a political party; it was a march of grief and fury.
Around thirty minutes later, the police dropped cans of tear gas over the marchers, forcing the families to abandon the coffins on the ground under the hot sun. As the tear gas floated across Plaza San Francisco, people implored “calma, calma” to prevent a crush as the crowd fled.
The dead had been among those blockading the natural gas plant at Senkata, El Alto in protest at the new interim government of Bolivia. In total, nine were shot by state forces on Tuesday in a military operation to unblock the plant, which supplies most of La Paz’s gas.
. . .
Meanwhile, the government, headed by religious conservative Jeanine Áñez, continues its McCarthy-esque purge of officials appointed under the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS), issuing highly politicized and seemingly arbitrary arrest warrants. It should be remembered that Áñez’s party only received 4% of the popular vote in the election.
More:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/11/27/bolivian-police-gas-funeral-march-in-latest-crack-down/
Behind The Racist Coup In Bolivia - OpEd
November 26, 2019 COHA
By COHA
By Danny Shaw*
On Sunday, November the 10th, at approximately 4pm (eastern standard time) the democratically elected president and vice president of Bolivia, Evo Morales and Álvaro García respectively, were forced to resign from power. This was no voluntary resignation as CNN, the New York Times and the rest of the corporate media is reporting, nor has it been accepted by the Legislative Assembly as required by the Constitution of Bolivia.[1] This was a coup that employed threats and brutality against Morales, García, members of the cabinet, congressional representatives, and their families. Both the commander in chief of the military and head of the Bolivian Police requested, in no uncertain terms, the resignation of Morales.[2] The coup forces, led by Pro-Santa Cruz Committee president Luis Fernando Camacho, continues to target Movement for Socialism (MAS) activists, progressive social movements, and Indigenous peoples of Bolivia.
Behind the Misleading Headlines
The corporate press has predictably given one-sided coverage of the unfolding situation in the Plurinational State of Bolivia, a resource-rich Andean nation of 11.5 million, of which approximately 50% are Indigenous[3]. While the mainstream media act as cheerleaders for the unrest in Hong Kong and magnify any sign of discontent in Venezuela or any other country perceived by the US government as “enemy”, it has largely ignored the popular uprisings in Haiti, Chile, Ecuador and beyond. Now, in the case of Bolivia, conservative circles in the Americas are celebrating an opportunity to take power back from a president, administration and people who have been a regional driving force for the advancement of Indigenous, environmental, women’s and workers’ rights. Bolivia has enjoyed one of the most stable economic growth rates in the Americas, between 4% and 5% in the last years, and decreased poverty among millions of Bolivians, from 59% to 39%, according to official data from the World Bank.[4]
A Call for Solidarity
On Thursday, October 24th, Bolivia’s election panel declared Morales the winner with 47.07% of the votes and Carlos Mesa the runner up with 36.5% of the votes.[5] According to a Center for Economic and Policy Research, Morales had a sufficient margin of victory to be declared the victor in the elections.[6] The Organization of American States presented findings that the election had irregularities and that the “auditing team could not validate the electoral results and were thus, recommending another election.”[7] The opposition contested the election, led by extreme right wing leader of the Santa Cruz Committee, Luis Fernando Camacho. Camacho is involved in the continental corruption case known as “The Panama Papers”[8]. He also has links with terrorist and separatist Branko Marinkovic, who enjoys safe harbor in Brazil, which is governed by the right-wing presidency of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil[9]. In response to charges that the election was not valid, Morales invited the United Nations and the Organization of American States (OAS) to conduct an audit.[10] The opposition rejected these calls, reiterating their demands for Morales to step down.[11] Morales responded to the OAS audit, which claimed there were irregularities, by calling for new elections and a reconstitution of the electoral commission but the coup leaders rejected all of these concessions.[12]
. . .
In the town of Vinto, protestors brutally attacked, cut off the hair and marched MAS mayor Patricia Arce through the streets to humiliate her. Anti-government forces have picked up arms and burned down the homes of MAS activists and family members. In response, Morales said: “Burn my house. Not those of my family. Seek vengeance with me and Alvaro. Not with our families.”[13]
More:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/26112019-behind-the-racist-coup-in-bolivia-oped/
Brazil: Halt illegal cattle farms fuelling Amazon rainforest destruction - new report
26 Nov 2019, 03:01am
. . .
Cattle farming is the main driver of illegal land seizures on Reserves and Indigenous territories in Brazil’s Amazon, fuelling deforestation and trampling on the rights of Indigenous and traditional people living there, Amnesty International said in a new report today [26 November].
The 29-page report - Fence off and bring cattle: Illegal cattle farming in Brazil’s Amazon - was released as Amnesty, alongside Indigenous leaders from the Amazon, presented a petition with more than 162,000 signatures to Brazilian authorities calling on them to stop illegal seizures of protected land in the Amazon.
Richard Pearshouse, Amnesty International’s Head of Crisis and Environment, said:
“Illegal cattle ranching is the main driver of Amazon deforestation. It poses a very real threat, not only to the human rights of Indigenous and traditional peoples who live there, but also to the entire planet’s ecosystem.
“While the Bolsonaro administration slashes environmental protections at the Federal level, some state authorities are effectively enabling the illegal cattle farming which destroys protected areas of the rainforest.
More:
https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/brazil-halt-illegal-cattle-farms-fuelling-amazon-rainforest-destruction-new-report
Looking back to the future in Bolivia
November 23, 2019
Over the years, Bolivians dreamed of and struggled for a better world alongside, against, and beyond Evo Morales. But it was not supposed to end like this.
AUTHOR
Ben Dangl
It was not supposed to end this way.
A white supremacist president and her right-wing allies were not supposed to replace Evo Morales in a coup earlier this month. A de facto regime was not supposed to absolve military and police of their crimes as they shot peaceful protesters. The wiphala flag, a symbol of Bolivia’s many indigenous nations, was not supposed to be burned and torn down by racists seizing power. The new minister of communication was not supposed to threaten to round up “seditious” journalists. And the blood from the more than 25 dead and hundreds wounded from military and police bullets was not supposed to flow in the streets.
The days of Bolivian right-wing dictatorships were supposed to be over.
I remember the dream before this nightmare. I remember the street barricades against neoliberal tyrants in the early 2000s, when people fought for and envisioned a Bolivia free of corporate looting, free of the military violence of the drug war, and free of racist presidents ruling over an impoverished majority. I remember the euphoria of Evo’s impossible rise to the presidency, when an Indigenous union leader arrived at the presidential palace to “govern by obeying” the people.
I remember the street fights to defend the new constitution against the violence of the right, the long meetings and marches against feminicides, environmental disasters, and government corruption. I remember talking with Morales supporters who cried when casting their votes for a president who finally, they said, cared about the poor and indigenous people, a leader who made concrete advances in empowering marginalized sectors of society.
More:
https://roarmag.org/essays/looking-back-to-the-future-in-bolivia/
Found a couple of videos showing the Aymara Hip Hop artist and friend mentioned in the article, Abraham Abraham Bojorquez, with his band:
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