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Category: bolivia

  • Bolivian Agricultural Production Company Created To Strengthen Food Sovereignty

    Bolivia’s MAS government has created the Bolivian Agricultural Production Company through decree to strengthen food sovereignty and boost agricultural production. This company, which will be under the supervision of the Ministry of Rural Development and Lands, will have the purpose of generating economic surpluses to promote productive economic development to finance the country’s social policies. Its main activity will be the production, processing and transformation of agricultural and livestock products, as well as the marketing of its products in the domestic and foreign markets.

    The post Bolivian Agricultural Production Company Created To Strengthen Food Sovereignty appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Video: The left’s resurgence in Latin America

    After a series of setbacks in 2015-19 suggested to many observers that the era of leftist governance in Latin America was over, the picture today is very different. A recent Alborada forum looked at what lies behind the Latin American left’s resurgence.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • The left can win!

     It’s not all doom and gloom, as Pablo Navarrete explains, Latin America offers the left hope and inspiration.

    Video transcript

    While the political horizon in the UK looks bleak with little real choice beyond business as usual, there is hope if we look further afield.

    In Latin America, 2021 saw presidential election victories for progressive candidates in Peru, Honduras, and Chile. This has come on top of a wave of recent advances in the region that have reinvigorated those fighting for a better world internationally.

    Latin America is showing us that the right can be defeated and is providing us with much needed hope and inspiration.

    In Bolivia, a November 2019 US and UK-backed coup that overthrew left-wing president Evo Morales was overturned in less than a year. Relentless grassroots mobilisations against the coup were key to its eventual defeat. People hit the streets even in the face of brutal repression by the security forces of the far-right Jeanine Añez coup regime that ousted Morales.

    Añez was forced to offer new elections and Luis Arce, a key minister for most of Morales’s presidency, won a landslide victory and became president in November 2020. Bolivia is now making great strides to recover from the economic and social devastation caused by the coup regime.

    In the UK it’s only the non-stop protesting and campaigning by the Kill The Bill movement over the last ten months that has seen some of the worst aspects of the draconian Police Bill put on hold for now.

    Whether it’s in Bolivia or the UK, people protesting on the streets can make a massive difference to overcoming the forces of reaction.  

    In Chile, defeating the right and the violent imposition of neoliberal economics associated with them is taking much longer but some key recent wins have excited many around the world.

    Left-winger Gabriel Boric, a 35-year-old former student leader and member of parliament, trounced José Antonio Kast, a far-right politician and open admirer of former dictator Augusto Pinochet, in December’s presidential election run-off.

    Let’s not forget how friendly Margaret Thatcher was with Pinochet whose brutal dictatorship oversaw the murder and disappearance of more than 3,000 people while hundreds of thousands were imprisoned, tortured, and exiled.

    Boric takes office in March and alongside an important process to replace Pinochet’s constitution with a new progressive one, his election has given hope that a new Chile lies on the horizon. It was mass street protests that began in late 2019 that provided the spark that has energised those fighting the right in the country. “Neoliberalism was born in Chile and it will die in Chile!” has been a rallying cry of protestors.

    Mass street protests against repressive right-wing governments in Brazil and Colombia could also mean that the left in these countries win crucial presidential elections set for later this year. These victories would be a massive blow to the US, which continues to support coups against the left and prop up blood-soaked right-wing governments in the region. The UK plays a similar if less influential role, so if we want to help progressive governments in Latin America, we should do all we can to hold our government to account for their support of right-wing forces and anti-democratic practises in the region. 

    While Latin American countries have very different histories and circumstances to the UK, the biggest thing we can learn from the victory of people’s movements there is not to give up and to keep fighting. Popular protests and uprisings have proven to be key in weakening the right and contributing to their defeat at the ballot box.

    Of course, Washington won’t give up trying to make sure that a politics for the many doesn’t take hold in Latin America, but if people there can resist and fight in the face of brutal repression and then win, this should give us the courage and inspiration to do the same here.

    As Chile’s left-wing poet Pablo Neruda, who died in mysterious circumstances shortly after the September 11th 1973 coup, once wrote: “You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming.”

    By Pablo Navarrete

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Community marks Bolivia’s Plurinational State Foundation Day

    Members and supporters of the Association for Human Rights in Bolivia celebrated Bolivia’s Plurinational State Foundation Day. Federico Fuentes reports.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • 21st Century US Coups and Attempted Coups in Latin America

    During the 21st century, the US, working with corporate elites, traditional oligarchies, military, and corporate media, has continually attempted coups against Latin American governments which place the needs of their people over US corporate interests. US organized coups in Latin American countries is hardly a 20th century phenomenon.

    However, this century the US rulers have turned to a new coup strategy, relying on soft coups, a significant change from the notoriously brutal military hard coups in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, and other countries in the 1970s. One central US concern in these new coups has been to maintain a legal and democratic facade as much as possible.

    The US superpower recognizes successful soft coups depend on mobilizing popular forces in anti-government marches and protests. Gene Sharp style color revolutions are heavily funded by US and European NGOs, such as USAID, NED, National Democratic Institute, International Republican Institute, Open Society Foundations, Ford Foundation, and others. They make use of organizations professing “human rights” (such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International), local dissident organizations, and increasingly, liberal-left media (even Democracy Now) to prepare the groundwork.

    US regime change operations have found three mechanisms this century that have been tremendously successful. First, economic warfare on a country, through sanctions and outright blockades, creates rising discontent against the targeted government. Second, increasing use of corporate media and social media to spread disinformation (often around “human rights,” “democracy,” “freedom,” or “corruption”) to foment mass movements against leaders that prioritize their nation’s development over US financial interests. This heavily relies on CIA social media operations to blanket a country with disinformation. Third, lawfare, using the appearance of democratic legality to bring down those defending their country’s national sovereignty. Related to lawfare are the electoral coups in countries such as Haiti, Honduras, and Brazil, where the US engineers or helps to engineer a coup by stealing the election.

    Many of the attempted coups failed because the people mobilized to defend their governments, and because of crucial and timely solidarity declarations in defense of these governments by the Latin American bodies of the OAS, UNASUR, and the Rio Group. Today, the Rio Group no longer exists, UNASUR is much weakened, and the OAS is now fully under US control.

    US Backed Coups and Attempted Coups

    2001 Haiti. Haitian paramilitaries based in the Dominican Republic launched an attack on the National Palace, seat of the government of President Aristide. The attack failed, but until 2004, similar to the 1980s Nicaraguan contras, these paramilitaries launched numerous raids into Haiti, and played a key role leading to the 2004 coup perpetrated directly by US troops.

    2002 Venezuela. The US government partially funded and backed the short-lived April 11-14 coup against Hugo Chavez.

    2002-3 Venezuela. Management of the state oil company PDVSA organized an “oil strike,” actually a lockout of the oil workers, to drive Hugo Chavez out of power. This again failed in early 2003.

    2003 Cuba. In the lead up to the March 2003 US invasion of Iraq, John Bolton claimed Cuba was a state sponsor of terrorism, producing biological weapons for terrorist purposes, just as Saddam’s Iraq was falsely claimed to have weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). During this period, the US increased its anti-Cuba propaganda directed at the country and increased funding to “pro-democracy” groups in Cuba, while anti-Cuban right-wing groups escalated their activities. The US paid “dissident” groups to organize protests and disruptions, including hijacking seven boats and airplanes to reach the US where they were never prosecuted. The goal was to create the appearance of disorder in Cuba, which, combined with its alleged biological WMDs, demanded an international intervention to restore order. Cuba squashed this movement in spring 2003.

    2004 Haiti. In an early 20th century style US coup, US troops invaded Haiti, kidnapped President Jean Bertrande Aristide and exiled him to the Central African Republic.

    2008 Bolivia. The Media Luna attempted coup involved right-wing leaders and some indigenous groups from Bolivia’s lowlands financed by the US. They sought to separate the richer Media Luna region from the rest of the country. In the process, they killed 20 supporters of President Evo Morales. Juan Ramon Quintana of the Bolivian government reported that between 2007-2015, the NED gave $10 million in funding to some 40 institutions including economic and social centers, foundations and NGOs. US embassy cables showed it sought to turn social and indigenous movements against the Evo Morales government.

    2009 Honduras. Honduran military forces, under orders from the US, seized President Manuel Zelaya, brought him to the US military base at Palmerola, then exiled him to Costa Rica. This began an era of brutal neoliberal narco-trafficking regimes that ended in 2021 with the landslide election of Xiomara Castro, Zelaya’s wife.

    2010 Ecuador. In September a failed coup against President Rafael Correa by military and police units backed by the indigenous organizations CONAIE and Pachakutik. The US had infiltrated the police and armed forces, while the NED and USAID funded these indigenous organizations.

    2011 Haiti. Following the Haiti earthquake in 2010 that killed 200,000, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton imposed Michel Martelly as president after threatening to cut off US aid to Haiti. Clinton flew to Haiti to demand that Martelly be named one of the two runoff candidates, although Martelly was not recognized by the Electoral Council as one of the qualifiers. Despite a voter boycott, with fewer than 20% of the electorate voting, Martelly was announced the winner of the “runoff.” One reason why most Haitians boycotted was that the most popular political party in the country, Fanmi Lavalas, the party of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was excluded from the ballot. The Haiti elections were funded by USAID, Canada, the OAS, the European Union and other foreign bodies.

    2012 Paraguay. President Fernando Lugo was scapegoated for a land occupation confrontation between campesinos and the police, which led to 17 deaths. President Lugo was removed from office without a chance to defend himself in a lawfare coup.

    2013 Venezuela. After the April election that Nicolas Maduro narrowly won, Henrique Capriles, the US-supported loser, claimed the election was stolen and called his supporters out into the streets in violent protests. Due to the strength of the UNASUR countries at the time, the US could not convince other countries to also reject Maduro’s victory.

    2014 Venezuela. “La Salida”(The Exit), led by Leopoldo Lopez and Maria Corina Machado, resulted in 43 deaths, and aimed to drive President Maduro from power. Again, the US could not get other Latin American governments to denounce Maduro, either in UNASUR or in the OAS.

    2015 Ecuador. Between 2012-2015, $30 million from NED went to political parties, trade unions, dissident movements, and media. In 2013 alone, USAID and NED spent $24 million in Ecuador. This paid off in 2015 when CONAIE, which thanked USAID for its funding, called for an indigenous-led uprising. They began with marches in early August and concluded in Quito for an uprising and general strike on August 10.  The attempted coup failed.

    2015 Haiti.  A new electoral coup for the presidency was funded by the US to the tune of $30 million. Both the US and the OAS refused Haitians’ demands to invalidate the election. The police attacked Supporters of opposition parties were shot with live and rubber bullets, killing many. President Michel Martelly’s chosen successor Jovenel Moise became president.

    2015 Guatemala. The US engineered a coup against right-wing President Otto Perez Molina because he was not sufficiently subservient.

    2015 Argentina. Argentine prosecutor Alber Nisman was evidently murdered days after he made bogus criminal charges against President Cristina Fernandez, claiming she was involved in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center. This was used to create a scandal, unseat her, and bring neoliberals back to power. Neoliberal forces and media used the case to disrupt the Kirchner coalition from winning another presidential election.

    2015-2019 El Salvador. El Salvador’s right-wing opposition backed by the US sought to destabilize the government of President Salvador Sánchez Cerén of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN).  The conservative mass media launched a smear campaign against the administration, in concert with a surge in gang-driven homicides that the police chief said was part of a campaign to drive up body counts and remove the FMLN government. Sanchez Cerén and other former officials who were members of the FMLN later became targets of lawfare, “a strategy used in recent years by conservative groups in power to try to demobilize the organization and resistance of the peoples against neoliberalism and other forms of domination.”

    2016 Brazil. US-backed right-wing movements launched a campaign against President Dilma Rousseff of the Workers Party for “corruption.” Aided by the corporate media, they organized a series of protests in Brazil’s largest cities throughout 2015. In March 2016, a massive political demonstration brought together more than 500,000 people in support of impeaching President Rousseff. She was finally impeached by Congress and removed from office in a successful lawfare coup.

    2017 Venezuela. Violent protests (guarimbas), led by Leopoldo Lopez, sought to oust President Maduro, with 126 fatalities. The guarimbas ended after the elections for the National Constituent Assembly.

    2017 Honduras. The US supported an electoral coup by President Juan Orlando Hernández involving widespread electoral fraud and government killing of dozens in protests. The US quickly recognized him as president and pressured other countries to do so also, even though the OAS itself had called for a new election.

    2018 Nicaragua. US-backed violent protests, supported by anti-FSLN media and social media disinformation campaigns, sought to remove President Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas from power. After two months, public sentiment turned strongly against the violent protests and they disintegrated.

    2018 Brazil. Former President Lula de Silva was the leading candidate to win the presidential election, but was imprisoned due to a lawfare operation of the US and Brazil’s right-wing, using bogus corruption charges. Bolsonario won the election, aided by a large-scale fake news operation which sent out hundreds of millions of WhatsApp messages to Brazilian voters.

    2019 Venezuela. In January, Juan Guaido declared himself president of Venezuela after US Vice President Pence assured him of US recognition. On April 30, the Guaido-Leopoldo Lopez’ planned uprising outside an air force base flopped. Later, a mercenary attack from Colombia failed to seize President Maduro in the presidential palace.

    2019 Bolivia. The US engineered a coup against Evo Morales, in part by using a social media campaign to make the false claim he stole the election. The OAS played a key role in legitimizing the coup. The disastrous coup government of Jeanine Anez lasted for just over one year.

    2021 Cuba. The US orchestrated and funded protests against the Cuban government in July and November. The US sought to build a new generation of counter-revolutionary leadership by creating new “independent” press and social media platforms. These failed more miserably than the 2003 protests.

    2021 Bolivia. In October, the right-wing tried to organize a coup and general strike, demanding the release of former President  Anez who was now imprisoned. The attempt was only successful in Santa Cruz, the center of the Media Luna. Later, mass organizations led a rally, encompassing 1.5 million, to the capital to defend the MAS government.

    2021 Peru. The right-wing oligarchy used lawfare unsuccessfully to unseat new President Castillo, a leader who emerged from the popular indigenous movement, seeking to remove him for being “permanently morally incapable.” However, a new lawfare case has been brought against President Castillo concerning “corruption.”

    2021 Nicaragua. The US planned to repeat the 2018 Nicaragua protests, combined with a concocted campaign that the Daniel Ortega government had imprisoned US-financed opposition “pre-candidates” before the presidential election. This coup attempt failed but the US and OAS refused to recognize the election results.

    In 2022 we can expect the US to continue “regime change” operations against Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru, and now Chile with the election of progressive President Boric.

    This list of 27 US-backed coups and attempted coups in the first 21 years of this century may be incomplete. For instance, not included are the lawfare frame-ups directed by Ecuador’s former President Lenin Moreno, a US puppet, against former Vice President Jorge Glas, who is now imprisoned, nor against former President Rafael Correa, now in exile.

    This listing of US coups and attempted coups is also misleading. As throughout the 20th century, the US daily, not periodically, interferes in what it considers its colonies to both impose neocolonial regimes and maintain those regimes which open their markets to the US without conditions and align themselves with US foreign policy.

    Under the facade of “democracy promotion” Washington works to advance the exact opposite goal: foment coups against democratic and popular governments. Governments and leaders that stand up for their people and their national rights are the very targets of “democracy promotion” coups.

    Present day US reliance on soft coup operations involves funding not only NGOs and right-wing groups in the targeted countries for training in Gene Sharp style “democracy promotion” programs. Many liberal and liberal-left alternative media and NGOs in the US now receive corporate funding, which pushes their political outlook in a more pro-imperialist direction. This is well-illustrated in the soft coup attempts against Evo’s Bolivia and Rafael Correa’s Ecuador. These NGOs and alternative media give a false humanitarian face to imperialist intervention.

    Moreover, these regime change operations are now openly being used at home against the US people. This is seen in the confusion and political divisions in the US population, manufactured by the 2016 Hillary Clinton Russiagate disinformation campaign against Trump and the Trump 2020 stolen election disinformation campaign against the Democrats. For those of us opposed to US interventionism, we are called upon to expose these new sophisticated methods of soft coup interference, to demand the national sovereignty of other nations be respected, and to bring together the US people against this manipulation by the corporate rulers.

    The post 21st Century US Coups and Attempted Coups in Latin America first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • 2021 Latin America and the Caribbean in Review: The Pink Tide Rises Again

    US policy towards Latin America and the Caribbean continued in a seamless transition from Trump to Biden, but the terrain over which it operated shifted left. The balance between the US drive to dominate its “backyard” and its counterpart, the Bolivarian cause of regional independence and integration, continued to tip portside in 2021 with major popular electoral victories in Chile, Honduras, and Peru. These follow the previous year’s reversal of the coup in Bolivia.

    Central has been the struggle of the ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our America) countries – particularly Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua – against the asphyxiating US blockade and other regime-change measures. Presidential candidate Biden pledged to review Trump’s policy of US sanctions against a third of humanity. The presumptive intention of the review was to ameliorate the human suffering caused by these unilateral coercive measures, considered illegal under international law. Following the review, Biden has instead tightened the screws, more effectively weaponizing the COVID crisis.

    Andean Nations

    The unrelenting US regime-change campaign against Venezuela has had a corrosive effect on Venezuela’s attempt to build socialism. With the economy de facto dollarized, among those hardest hit are government workers, the informal sector, and those without access to dollar remittances from abroad.

    Nonetheless, Venezuela’s resistance to the continued US “maximum pressure” hybrid warfare is a triumph in itself. Recent economic indicators have shown an upturn with significant growth in national food and oil production and an end to hyperinflation. Further, the government has built 3.7 million housing units, distributed food to 7 million through the CLAP program, and adroitly handled the COVID pandemic.

    When Trump recognized Juan Guaidó as president of Venezuela in 2019, the then 35-year-old US security asset had never run for a nationwide office and was unknown to over 80% of the Venezuelans. Back then some 50 of the US’s closest allies recognized Guaidó; now barely a dozen does so. Contrary to campaign trail inuendoes that Biden would enter into dialogue with the democratically elected president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, Biden has continued the embarrassing Guaidó charade.

    The November 21 municipal and regional elections were a double triumph for Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution: the ruling Socialist Party (PSUV) won significantly while the extreme right opposition (including Guaidó’s party) was compelled to participate, implicitly recognizing the Maduro government.

    Venezuelan special envoy Alex Saab was extradited – really kidnapped – to the US on October 16 on the vague and difficult to disprove charge of “conspiracy” to money launder. Swiss authorities, after an exhaustive 3-year investigation, had found no evidence of money laundering. Saab’s real “crime” was trying to bring humanitarian aid to Venezuela via legal international trade but circumventing the illegal US blockade. This egregious example of US extra-territorial judicial overreach is being contested by Saab’s legal defense because, as a diplomat, he has absolute immunity from arrest under the Vienna Convention. His case has become a major cause in Venezuela and internationally.

    Meanwhile, Colombia, chief regional US client state, the biggest recipient of US military aid in the hemisphere,  and the largest world source of cocaine, is a staging point for paramilitary attacks on Venezuela. President Iván Duque continues to disregard the 2016 peace agreement with the guerrilla FARC as Colombia endures a pandemic of rightwing violence especially against human rights defenders and former guerillas.

    On April 28, Duque’s proposed neoliberal tax bill precipitated a national strike mobilizing a broad coalition of unions, members of indigenous and Afro-descendent communities, social activists, and campesinos. They carried out sustained actions across the country for nearly two months, followed by a renewed national strike wave, starting on August 26. The approaching 2022 presidential election could portend a sea change for the popular movement where leftist Senator Gustavo Petro is leading in the polls.

    In Ecuador, Andrés Arauz won the first-round presidential election on February 7 with a 13-point lead over Guillermo Lasso, but short of the 40% or more needed to avoid the April 13 runoff, which he lost. A victim of a massive disinformation campaign, Arauz was a successor of former President Rafael Correa’s leftist Citizen Revolution, which still holds the largest bloc in the National Assembly. The “NGO left,” funded by the US and its European allies, contributed to the electoral reversal. Elements of the indigenous Pachakutik party have allied with the new president, a wealthy banker, to implement a neo-liberal agenda.

    In Peru, Pedro Castillo, a rural school teacher and a Marxist, won the presidency in a June 6 runoff against hard-right Keiko Fujimori, daughter of now imprisoned and former president Alberto Fujimori. Castillo won by the slimmest of margins and now faces rightwing lawfare and the possibility of a coup. Just a few weeks into his presidency, he was forced to replace his leftist foreign Minister, Hector Béjar, with someone more favorable to the rightwing opposition and the military.

    In Bolivia, a US-backed coup deposed leftist President Evo Morales in 2019 and temporarily installed a rightist. Evo’s Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) party successor, Luis Arce, took back the presidency last year in a landslide election. With the rightwing still threatening, a massive weeklong March for the Homeland of Bolivian workers, campesinos, and indigenous rallied in support of the government in late November.

    Southern Cone

    Brazil has the world’s eighth largest economy world and the largest in Latin America. Rightwing President Jair Bolsonaro has been dismantling social welfare measures, rewarding multinational corporations, and presiding over wholesale illegal mining and deforestation, while the popular sectors protest. Former left leaning President Lula da Silva is strongly favored to win in the October 2, 2022 elections. He was also favored to win in the 2018 presidential election against Bolsonaro but was imprisoned on trumped up charges, preventing him from running.

    In Chile, Gabriel Boric won the second round of the Chilean presidential election by a landslide on December 19 against far-right José Antonio Kast, the son of a German Nazi Party member. The 35-year-old Boric was a leader in the huge protests in 2019 and 2020 against corrupt President Sebastian Piñera, who is the richest person in the country. The slogan of the protests was: “If Chile was the birthplace of neoliberalism, then it will also be its graveyard!”

    Although the victory is a repudiation of the Pinochet legacy, Boric has also been somewhat critical of Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba. Boric’s libertarian socialist Frente Amplio party rode to victory with major support from the Chilean Communist Party along with center-left forces. Earlier in the year, in a plebiscite to forge a united popular campaign, Communist Daniel Jadue lost to Boric. A Constituent Assembly, where the left won the majority of the delegates in a May election, is currently rewriting the Pinochet-era constitution.

    In Argentina, the center-right Together for Change coalition decisively swept the November 13 midterm elections, rebuking the Peronists who have been unable to effectively address high unemployment and inflation.  In 2019, the center-left Peronist Alberto Fernández succeeded rightwing President Mauricio Macri, whose record breaking $50.1 billion IMF loan saddled the people with austerity measures. Prospects are now dim for restructuring of the debt or suspending payments with an opposition majority more intent on discrediting Fernández than addressing the issues.

    Caribbean

    Candidate Biden had signaled a return to the Obama-Biden easing of restrictions on Cuba. But once in office, Biden intensified the US hybrid war against Cuba. Discontent with critically deteriorating economic conditions erupted in popular demonstrations on July 11, fanned by the US-funded opposition. A repeat effort at a regime-change demonstrations, largely orchestrated by Washington, fizzled on November 15. Biden continues the same illegal policy of regime change against Cuba  as that of the previous twelve US presidents: covert and overt destabilization, blockade, and occupation of Guantánamo.

    Despite an economy severely impacted by the pandemic and the tightening of US blockade, Cuba has produced three COVID vaccines with two more in development. More than 90% percent of Cubans are vaccinated, surpassing the US.

    In Haiti, a 7.2 magnitude earthquake hit on August 14. Another upheaval has been the nearly continuous popular revolt against US-installed presidents. President Jovenal Moïse, who had ruled by decree after cancelling elections, was assassinated on July 7 in an apparent intra-ruling class squabble. Claude Joseph was installed as interim president for a few days and then replaced by Ariel Henry, with elections still postponed.

    Biden deported thousands of emigres back to Haiti. This represented “a disappointing step backward from the Biden administration’s earlier commitments to fully break from the harmful deportation policies of both the Trump and Obama presidencies,” according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

    Central America and Mexico

    In El Salvador, President Nayib Bukele, formerly associated with the left FMLN party, continued his regression to the right. In response, the Popular Resistance Bloc and other civil society groups staged large protests on September 15 and October 17.

    In Honduras, Xiomara Castro, wife of the former President Zelaya, was swept into the presidency by a landslide popular vote on November 28. The slogan of the now triumphant resistance front was: “They fear us because we have no fear.”

    In the twelve years since the US-backed coup overthrew the democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya, the country had devolved into a state where the former president, Juan Orlando Hernández, was an unindicted drug smuggler, the intellectual authors who ordered the assassination of indigenous environmental leader Berta Cáceres ran free, Afro-descendent people and women were murdered with impunity, gang violence was widespread, and state protection from the pandemic was grossly deficient.

    In neighboring Nicaragua, the US called the November 7 presidential election an undemocratic fraud nearly a year in advance as part of a larger regime-change campaign against left-leaning governments. The US claimed that “pre-candidates” were barred from running. However, these individuals had been arrested for illegal activities and were not credible candidates.

    In fact, the US has never supported democracy in Nicaragua. US Marines occupied Nicaragua from 1912 to 1934, only leaving after installing the autocratic Somoza dynasty to do their bidding. When the Sandinistas ousted the dictatorship in 1979, the US launched the Contra War. After fomenting an unsuccessful coup in 2018, the US NICA Act then imposed sanctions. This was followed in 2020 by the RAIN plan, a multi-faceted coup strategy.

    Disregarding Washington’s call to boycott, a respectable 65% of the Nicaraguan electorate went to the polls and 76% of the voters re-elected Sandinista President Daniel Ortega. The Sandinista’s landslide victory was a testament to their success in serving Nicaragua’s poor and a repudiation of the 2018 coup attempt. Immediately after the election, the US RENACER Act imposed new illegal sanctions.

    In Mexico, the June 6 midterm elections pitted the ruling MORENA coalition against the traditional parties (PAN, PRI, PRD), chambers of commerce, and the US embassy. NGOs funded by USAID and NED supported the opposition, whose talking points were echoed by the Economist and the Nation. While MORENA retained is majority in Congress and two-thirds of the governors in the midterms, they suffered setbacks in Mexico City, their traditional stronghold.

    Mexico is a critically important state as the second largest economy in Latin America, the eleventh in the world, and the US’s top trade partner. After decades of rightwing rule, left-of-center Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) and his new MORENA party have been in office for three years. Early on, AMOL earned the enmity of the US, when he proclaimed: “The global economic crisis has revealed the failure of the neoliberal model…The State should assume responsibility to lead development without foreign interference” (meaning the US).

    AMLO has predictably experienced pushback from traditional elites in Mexico and from the US, particularly in his attempts to reverse the privatization of the energy sector. The Zapatistas and some leftists oppose AMLO and his national development projects, especially the Mayan train. They accuse the government of supporting violence against indigenous communities in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas.

    Prospects for the New Year

    Independence from the hegemon to the north, regional integration, and international cooperative relations are on the agenda for the new year.

    China is now the second largest investor in Latin America and the Caribbean, which “reduce[s] US dominance” according to the US Congressional Research Service. Economic cooperation with China and to a lesser extent with Russia and Iran have been a lifeline for countries like Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua under regime-change siege by the US. In late December, Nicaragua broke relations with Taiwan and normalized them with the People’s Republic of China. The new government in Honduras has indicated they may soon follow suit. China intends to invest over $250 billion in the region, providing an alternative to dependence on Yankee capital for national development “south of the border.” If the inter-ocean canal project with Chinese backing in Nicaragua were resuscitated, it would be a geopolitical game-changer.

    The anti-Venezuela “Lima Group,” a US-Canada initiative, is now moribund with defections of key countries. Likewise, the Washington-based Organization of American States (OAS) is an increasingly discredited tool of US imperialism as evidenced by its complicity in the Bolivian coup. Cuba and Venezuela are not members of the OAS, and Nicaragua recently announced its withdrawal.

    The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) includes all the hemisphere except the US and Canada. CELAC is being revived as an independent regional alternative by Mexican President López Obrador and others.

    2022 promises continued left advances with favorable prospects for the Colombian and Brazilian presidential elections in May and October respectively. Overall, the pink tide is again rising with some 14 countries on the left side of the ledger and the revolt against neoliberalism intensifying from Haiti to Paraguay.

    The post 2021 Latin America and the Caribbean in Review: The Pink Tide Rises Again first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Seven Day March In Defense Of Democracy Concludes In Bolivia

    March for the Homeland reached the Bolivian city of La Paz on November 29 after covering a distance of more than 180km over seven days.  March for the Homeland reached the Bolivian city of La Paz on November 29 after covering a distance of more than 180km over seven days. Over a million people […]

    The post Seven Day March In Defense Of Democracy Concludes In Bolivia appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Bolivia: Massive Six Day March To Defend Democracy

    Bolivia – On Monday, November 29, the massive “March for the Country” led by social movements and indigenous peoples will culminate in the capital, La Paz, for a large rally in defense of democracy. Just over a year ago, the Bolivian people overthrew a violent US-backed coup regime at the ballot box with the election of President Luis Arce. The Bolivian people have continued to fight off attempts by the US government to undermine their restored government.

    To raise awareness of the attack on democracy and to show the great support for the current government within the country, tens of thousands of people have been marching for the past five days. The total length of the march is 180 kilometers. Here is a series of tweets that tell the story of the march from Kawsachun News and others who are there:

    The post Bolivia: Massive Six Day March To Defend Democracy appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

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  • Bolivia’s President Luis Arce on Climate Change

    As COP26 draws to a close, Bolivia’s president Luis Arce speaks to The Canary about the need for rich countries to pay their fair share to mitigate the consequences of historical pollution and to look beyond market mechanisms to avert the climate crisis.

    Video transcript

    Pablo Navarrete: Your visit to the UK involved going to Glasgow for the COP26 climate change conference. What is your government’s position with regards to climate change and what do you and your government feel needs to happen to stop the climate catastrophe that lies ahead?

    Luis Arce: Firstly, we have demanded that developed countries fulfill their obligations made under the Paris agreements. They promised to provide 100 billion dollars. Nothing.

    And the climate problem gets worse.

    ​​We have proposed that the 1.5°C global warming increase up to 2030 be fulfilled, which implies that developed countries have to make much bigger effort to reduce carbon emissions.

    Secondly, we have proposed that it is not only market mechanisms that are used to distribute the resources that are still pending.

    And we have proposed that countries receive direct support. Countries need the resources directly and quickly, not to wait for market mechanisms. We know that there are market asymmetries and these generate uncertainty.

    Moreover, the market does not work efficiently as theory says it should. Therefore that is not going to work and climate change will get worse.

    We want countries to receive direct aid so that we developing countries have the resources to do something to address the climate crisis.

    Thirdly, we have raised the issue of financing. Not only in relation to mitigation. It is good that financing is given for mitigation, but we also want technology transfer.

    Today the development of our countries requires us to be in harmony with mother earth and the environment. Before, factories that were built in developed countries 100 years ago polluted freely and nobody said anything. Now that we want to industrialise, setting up an industrial plant means having all the necessary environmental safeguards. That means more resources and expenditure. So today development is more expensive for us, but we also have the right to develop ourselves. Therefore technology transfer is crucial for our countries, as is the direct help we can receive, not only for mitigation but also to effectively combat… I don’t call it climate change; it is a climate crisis.

    By Pablo Navarrete

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Bolivian Organizations Reject Call For Strike & Destabilization

    Social organizations and various Bolivian unions rejected this Friday the call for a national strike for next November 8, made by sectors of the opposition that participated in the 2019 coup d’état, as well as any attempt that seeks to destabilize the country. Union leaders branded this call as illegitimate, stating that it aims to affect the economic reactivation of the South American country, in the aftermath of the de facto government and in the midst of the current COVID-19 pandemic.

    The post Bolivian Organizations Reject Call For Strike & Destabilization appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

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  • Bolivia Remains Relentless Against Coup Plotters

    October 20 Bolivia will mark two years since what became the preamble to a violent and bloody coup d’état against former president Evo Morales (2006-2019). On that day, as the people went to the polls to re-elect the indigenous leader, the most extremist fringes of the country’s right-wing began maneuvering from behind the scenes to overthrow the government.

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  • Our Future vs. Neoliberalism

    (Photo:  Tom Pennington)

    In country after country around the world, people are rising up to challenge entrenched, failing neoliberal political and economic systems, with mixed but sometimes promising results.

    Progressive leaders in the U.S. Congress are refusing to back down on the Democrats’ promises to American voters to reduce poverty, expand rights to healthcare, education and clean energy, and repair a shredded social safety net. After decades of tax cuts for the rich, they are also committed to raising taxes on wealthy Americans and corporations to pay for this popular agenda.

    Germany has elected a ruling coalition of Social Democrats, Greens and Free Democrats that excludes the conservative Christian Democrats for the first time since 2000. The new government promises a $14 minimum wage, solar panels on all suitable roof space, 2% of land for wind farms and the closure of Germany’s last coal-fired power plants by 2030.

    Iraqis voted in an election that was called in response to a popular protest movement launched in October 2019 to challenge the endemic corruption of the post-2003 political class and its subservience to U.S. and Iranian interests. The protest movement was split between taking part in the election and boycotting it, but its candidates still won about 35 seats and will have a voice in parliament. The party of long-time Iraqi nationalist leader Muqtada al-Sadr won 73 seats, the largest of any single party, while Iranian-backed parties whose armed militias killed hundreds of protesters in 2019 lost popular support and many of their seats.

    Chile’s billionaire president, Sebastian Piñera, is being impeached after the Pandora Papers revealed details of bribery and tax evasion in his sale of a mining company, and he could face up to 5 years in prison. Mass street protests in 2019 forced Piñera to agree to a new constitution to replace the one written under the Pinochet military dictatorship, and a convention that includes representatives of indigenous and other marginalized communities has been elected to draft the constitution. Progressive parties and candidates are expected to do well in the general election in November.

    Maybe the greatest success of people power has come in Bolivia. In 2020, only a year after a U.S.-backed right-wing military coup, a mass mobilization of mostly indigenous working people forced a new election, and the socialist MAS Party of Evo Morales was returned to power. Since then it has already introduced a new wealth tax and welfare payments to four million people to help eliminate hunger in Bolivia.

    The Ideological Context

    Since the 1970s, Western political and corporate leaders have peddled a quasi-religious belief in the power of “free” markets and unbridled capitalism to solve all the world’s problems. This new “neoliberal” orthodoxy is a thinly disguised reversion to the systematic injustice of 19th century laissez-faire capitalism, which led to gross inequality and poverty even in wealthy countries, famines that killed tens of millions of people in India and China, and horrific exploitation of the poor and vulnerable worldwide.

    For most of the 20th century, Western countries gradually responded to the excesses and injustices of capitalism by using the power of government to redistribute wealth through progressive taxation and a growing public sector, and ensure broad access to public goods like education and healthcare. This led to a gradual expansion of broadly shared prosperity in the United States and Western Europe through a strong public sector that balanced the power of private corporations and their owners.

    The steadily growing shared prosperity of the post-WWII years in the West was derailed by a  combination of factors, including the 1973 OPEC oil embargo, Nixon’s freeze on prices and wages, runaway inflation caused by dropping the gold standard, and then a second oil crisis after the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

    Right-wing politicians led by Ronald Reagan in the United States and Margaret Thatcher in the U.K. blamed the power of organized labor and the public sector for the economic crisis. They launched a “neoliberal” counter-revolution to bust unions, shrink and privatize the public sector, cut taxes, deregulate industries and supposedly unleash “the magic of the market.” Then they took credit for a return to economic growth that really owed more to the end of the oil crises.

    The United States and United Kingdom used their economic, military and media power to spread their neoliberal gospel across the world. Chile’s experiment in neoliberalism under Pinochet’s military dictatorship became a model for U.S. efforts to roll back the “pink tide” in Latin America. When the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe opened to the West at the end of the Cold War, it was the extreme, neoliberal brand of capitalism that Western economists imposed as “shock therapy” to privatize state-owned enterprises and open countries to Western corporations.

    In the United States, the mass media shy away from the word “neoliberalism” to describe the changes in society since the 1980s. They describe its effects in less systemic terms, as globalization, privatization, deregulation, consumerism and so on, without calling attention to their common ideological roots. This allows them to treat its impacts as separate, unconnected problems: poverty and inequality, mass incarceration, environmental degradation, ballooning debt, money in politics, disinvestment in public services, declines in public health, permanent war, and record military spending.

    After a generation of systematic neoliberal control, it is now obvious to people all over the world that neoliberalism has utterly failed to solve the world’s problems. As many predicted all along, it has just enabled the rich to get much, much richer, while structural and even existential problems remain unsolved.

    Even once people have grasped the self-serving, predatory nature of this system that has overtaken their political and economic life, many still fall victim to the demoralization and powerlessness that are among its most insidious products, as they are brainwashed to see themselves only as individuals and consumers, instead of as active and collectively powerful citizens.

    In effect, confronting neoliberalism—whether as individuals, groups, communities or countries—requires a two-step process. First, we must understand the nature of the beast that has us and the world in its grip, whatever we choose to call it. Second, we must overcome our own demoralization and powerlessness, and rekindle our collective power as political and economic actors to build the better world we know is possible.

    We will see that collective power in the streets and the suites at COP26 in Glasgow, when the world’s leaders will gather to confront the reality that neoliberalism has allowed corporate profits to trump a rational response to the devastating impact of fossil fuels on the Earth’s climate. Extinction Rebellion and other groups will be in the streets in Glasgow, demanding the long-delayed action that is required to solve the problem, including an end to net carbon emissions by 2025.

    While scientists warned us for decades what the result would be, political and business leaders have peddled their neoliberal snake oil to keep filling their coffers at the expense of the future of life on Earth. If we fail to stop them now, living conditions will keep deteriorating for people everywhere, as the natural world our lives depend on is washed out from under our feet, goes up in smoke and, species by species, dies and disappears forever.

    The Covid pandemic is another real world case study on the impact of neoliberalism. As the official death toll reaches 5 million and many more deaths go unreported, rich countries are still hoarding vaccines, drug companies are reaping a bonanza of profits from vaccines and new drugs, and the lethal, devastating injustice of the entire neoliberal “market” system is laid bare for the whole world to see. Calls for a “people’s vaccine” and “vaccine justice” have been challenging what has now been termed “vaccine apartheid.”

    Conclusion

    In the 1980s, U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher often told the world, “There is no alternative” to the neoliberal order she and President Reagan were unleashing. After only one or two generations, the self-serving insanity they prescribed and the crises it has caused have made it a question of survival for humanity to find alternatives.

    Around the world, ordinary people are rising up to demand real change. The people of Iraq, Chile and Bolivia have overcome the incredible traumas inflicted on them to take to the streets in the thousands and demand better government. Americans should likewise demand that our government stop wasting trillions of dollars to militarize the world and destroy countries like Afghanistan and Iraq, and start solving our real problems, here and abroad.

    People around the world understand the nature of the problems we face better than we did a generation or even a decade ago. Now we must overcome demoralization and powerlessness in order to act. It helps to understand that the demoralization and powerlessness we may feel are themselves products of this neoliberal system, and that simply overcoming them is a victory in itself.

    As we reject the inevitability of neoliberalism and Thatcher’s lie that there is no alternative, we must also reject the lie that we are just passive, powerless consumers. As human beings, we have the same collective power that human beings have always had to build a better world for ourselves and our children – and now is the time to harness that power.

    The post Our Future vs. Neoliberalism first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Coup Regime Sought To Assassinate Luis Arce

    Bolivia’s Interior Ministry has revealed that Colombian mercenaries, who participated in the assassination of President Jovenel Moise in Haiti, entered Bolivia days before the 2020 election. Fernando Lopez, Defense Minister under Jeanine Añez, was in contact with mercenary groups, with whom he intended to carry out a second coup.

    The post Coup Regime Sought To Assassinate Luis Arce appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • On Rituals And Revolutions In The Mines Of Bolivia

    The small K’illi K’illi park sits at the top of one of the hillsides cradling the valley that is home to Bolivia’s administrative capital La Paz, providing a striking view of the city below. To the east lies Illimani, a towering, snow-covered mountain. Below and to the west is the tree-lined Plaza Murillo, home to the seat of government and the site of dozens of coups and countless protests. Across the valley, set on the sweeping plains of the altiplano, is El Alto, a booming home to millions of largely Aymara working-class people.

    The hills hold the rich past of this city in the clouds. Indigenous rebel Túpac Katari launched crucial assaults on Spanish-controlled colonial La Paz from K’illi K’illi during his army’s 1781 siege. After his brutal quartering by the Spanish, Katari’s head was put on display on this same hill to terrorize his followers.

    The post On Rituals And Revolutions In The Mines Of Bolivia appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • The nominees for the EU’s Sakharov Prize 2021

    Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought Award Ceremony 2020
    Last year’s Sakharov Prize ceremony  

    This year’s nominations for the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought were presented in a joint meeting of the foreign affairs and development committees and the human rights subcommittee in Brussels on 27 September 2021. They are:

    Alexei Navalny, nominated by the EPP and Renew Europe for his courage in fighting for freedom, democracy and human rights, is a Russian opposition politician, anti-corruption activist and major political opponent of the country’s president Vladimir Putin. Known through his LiveJournal blog, YouTube and Twitter, where he has millions of followers he came to international prominence by organising demonstrations, running for office and advocating reforms against corruption in Russia, Putin and his government. In August 2020, while on a trip to Siberia, he was poisoned. He spent months recovering in Berlin, but returned to Moscow in January 2021 where he was arrested. In February he was sentenced to 2½ years in prison. Now incarcerated in a high-security penal colony, he went on a 23-day hunger strike in April to protest the lack of medical care. In June 2021, a Russian court banned Navalny’s regional offices and his Anti-Corruption Foundation.

    Afghan women, nominated by S&D and the Greens/EFA for their brave fight for equality and human rights. Under the previous Taliban regime, women experienced forced marriage, high maternity mortality, low literacy, forced virginity tests and couldn’t travel without a male. Following the Taliban’s return to power, women are again excluded from government and education and their rights and freedoms are threatened. The women included in the nomination are:

    • Shaharzad Akbar – chair of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC)
    • Mary Akrami – head of the Afghan Women’s Network [see: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/laureates/C78046E0-F42F-8A60-205C-CC55E54281CD]
    • Zarifa Ghafari – mayor of Maidan Shar since 2018
    • Palwasha Hassan – activist and the director of the Afghan Women Educational Centre (AWEC)
    • Freshta Karim – founder of a mobile library and advocate for education and learning
    • Sahraa Karimi – first female president of the Afghan state film company
    • Metra Mehran – women empowerment and education advocate and co-founder of the Feminine Perspectives Movement
    • Horia Mosadiq – human and women’s rights activist
    • Sima Samar – human rights advocate, former Minister of Women’s Affairs and former chair of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission [see: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/laureates/4AEEBC97-C788-49F5-8DE1-33F7855D2192]
    • Habiba Sarabi – member of the negotiating team of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan
    • Anisa Shaheed – political reporter


    Jeanine Áñez,     nominated by the ECR, is a Bolivian politician and symbol of repression against dissidents and deprivation of due process and rule of law in Latin America. She became interim president in November 2019, after alleged electoral fraud by incumbent Evo Morales. In November 2020, after free and fair elections there was a peaceful transfer of power. However, on 13 March 2021 she was arrested on charges of “terrorism, sedition and conspiracy”. Accused of plotting a coup d’état against Morales, she has been imprisoned ever since.

    Sultana Khaya, nominated by The Left, is a Sahrawi activist and human rights defender based in the Western Sahara, promoting the right to self-determination for the Sahrawi people. She is the president of the organisation League for the Defence of Human Rights and against Plunder of Natural Resources in Boujdour/Western Sahara and member of the Saharawi Organ against the Moroccan Occupation (ISACOM). She has been under de facto house arrest without a warrant since 19 November 2020. Since 2005, she has suffered physical attacks, death threats, torture and sexual assaults. Over the last year, the Moroccan authorities have intensified repression against Saharawi activists and journalists, who are subjected to ill-treatment, arbitrary arrests and harassment in order to silence or punish them for non-violent action against the occupation of Western Sahara. On 1 July 2021, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders Mary Lawlor strongly condemned the reprisals against Sultana Khaya.

    Global Witness, nominated by Marie Toussaint and other 42 MEPs, is a UK-based NGO, which for more than 25 years has investigated and exposed environmental and human rights abuses in the oil, gas, mining and timber sectors, tracking money and influence through the global financial and political system. Nowadays, it also focuses on the issue of the climate emergency, attacks on public space and civic freedoms and the protection of environmental defenders throughout the world. Since 2011, Global Witness and its 22 local partners have addressed abuses of power to protect human rights, verifying and publishing each year the number of defenders killed worldwide. Sewe also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2021/09/13/global-witness-2020-the-worst-year-on-record-for-environmental-human-rights-defenders/

    For more on the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought see: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/awards/BDE3E41A-8706-42F1-A6C5-ECBBC4CDB449 

    https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/eu-affairs/20210916STO12702/sakharov-prize-2021-the-nominees

    https://www.aninews.in/news/world/asia/european-group-nominates-11-afghan-women-for-human-rights-award20210928181723/

    https://www.reuters.com/world/russias-navalny-nominated-eu-rights-prize-2021-09-27/

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • Evo Morales And Social Groups Create ‘People’s General Staff’

    “The social, union and indigenous organizations decided to form the General Staff of the People for the people as a space to defend the sovereignty and dignity of our democratic and multicultural revolution (…),” Morales announced on Monday after a meeting of leaders, held in Cochabamba in the center of the South American country.

    In this sense, the former president stressed that the “Estado Mayor” is made up of “national organizations affiliated and not affiliated to the Central Obrera Boliviana (COB),” including the peasant and indigenous confederations grouped in the Unity Pact, one of the pillars of the ruling Movement Towards Socialism (MAS).

    The founding declaration of the “Estado Mayor” has been disclosed by the media.

    The post Evo Morales And Social Groups Create ‘People’s General Staff’ appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • The New International Relations Of Latin America

    We spoke to Bolivia’s Foreign Minister, Rogelio Mayta, who is leading the charge for a more democratic process of regional integration. The country is raising its voice against Luis Almagro, head of the Organization of American States, both for his role in the 2019 coup, and his wider political actions, on behalf of the United States, in the domestic affairs of member states.

    The post The New International Relations Of Latin America appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Bolivia’s interim government tortured and executed opponents, report says

    OAS review of violence that followed 2019 election stops short of calling Jeanine Áñez’s ascent to power a coup but finds ‘irregularities’

    Bolivia’s recent interim government came to power by sidestepping constitutional rules for presidential succession and persecuted opponents with “systematic torture” and “summary executions” by security forces in the tumultuous aftermath of Evo Morales’s resignation in 2019, according to a new report by independent human rights experts.

    The scathing 471-page report is the most comprehensive yet to examine the events surrounding the disputed 2019 presidential vote, when Morales’s narrow election to an unprecedented fourth term triggered widespread protests spurred by strong international allegations of voting fraud – claims later questioned by foreign electoral experts.

    Related: Cycle of retribution takes Bolivia’s ex-president from palace to prison cell

    Related: ‘What happened was a massacre’: grief and rage in Bolivia after day of deadly violence

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Arce-Castillo Socialist Alliance For South America, Part II.

    Arce in Bolivia and Castillo in Peru face some similar challenges: paralyzed economies, the exhaustion of some sources of income such as natural gas and the emergence of others (e.g. lithium); the pandemically-related rise in poverty; deep social divisions between rich and poor and between well-endowed areas and areas less fortunate; a historical legacy of ruling class entitlement; health and education systems in great need of additional resources, especially in the poorer and more remote regions; environmental challenges such as the destruction of the Amazon rain forest; the insistent pressure for access and profit by multinational corporations, especially in the extractivist industries; the need to fortify and expand national institutions and the role of the State in the national economy; the always looming threat of the regional hegemon, the USA and its allies, both local and global, which, when angered sufficiently stifle economic and political development through the application of sanctions and financing of local “pro-democracy” movements.

    The post Arce-Castillo Socialist Alliance For South America, Part II. appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Arce-Castillo Socialist Alliance For South America, Part I.

    On July 28, 2021, Pedro Castillo, son of illiterate Andean peasants will be inaugurated as President of Peru, celebrating the victory of his socialist party Perú Libre in the elections of June. Peru has strong historical ties to other regional powers, most notably Ecuador and Bolivia.

    Castillo’s victory follows by two months the swearing in of Guillermo Alberto Santiago Lasso Mendoza as President of Ecuador in May. Although Lasso is center-right, he will be constrained by the continuing hold over Ecuador’s 137 seat assembly of allies of former President Rafael Correa (2007-2017) which maintains the largest bloc with 49 seats, and the leftist Pachakutik party which has unprecedented indigenous influence, holding about 45 seats in alliance with the center-left Democratic Left party.

    The post Arce-Castillo Socialist Alliance For South America, Part I. appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • ALBA: Towards A People’s Climate Conference

    Today, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA-TCP) held a meeting of Environment Ministers of its member states to plan for a people’s climate summit that will draw up proposals for the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in November. Meeting participants agreed to convene in Venezuela, which will be followed by a people’s conference in Cochabamba, Bolivia.

    The post ALBA: Towards A People’s Climate Conference appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • A 14-day global campaign demands justice for victims of Bolivia coup

    On 10 November 2019, the democratically elected government of Evo Morales in Bolivia was overthrown by a US-government supported military coup. The coup regime, also supported by the UK and the European Union, presided over mass human rights violations and was met with widespread resistance from social movements in Bolivia.

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    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • A 14-day global campaign demands justice for victims of Bolivia coup

    On 10 November 2019, the democratically elected government of Evo Morales in Bolivia was overthrown by a US-government supported military coup. The coup regime, also supported by the UK and the European Union, presided over mass human rights violations and was met with widespread resistance from social movements in Bolivia.

    This pressure ultimately led to new presidential elections in October 2020 which resulted in the defeat of the coup with Morales’ party Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) winning a landslide victory in the first round. The MAS’s Luis Arce assumed the presidency on 8 November 2020, almost exactly a year after the coup against Morales.

    In March 2021, the Arce government arrested former coup dictator Jeanine Añez, who presided over the widespread repression of pro-democracy forces in Bolivia when in power. The European Parliament have called for Añez’s “immediate release”.

    Campaign for justice

    14 Days of Resistance is a two-week long series of events that will discuss Bolivia’s coup, the role of foreign powers, and the continuing search for justice for its victims. Claudia Turbet-Delof, one of the event’s organisers, spoke to The Canary:

    This event is part of a global campaign to demand justice for the victims of the human rights violations committed by the coup regime in Bolivia. It began this morning in Shoreditch, London with a poster replica of a mural done in Bolivia’s capital La Paz in memory of the coup’s victims and to honour the resistance against the violent coup. It is organised by two UK-based Bolivian collectives Wiphalas por El Mundo and Suma Qamaña UK and we helped fundraise for the murals painted in Bolivia by artist Leonel Jurado a.k.a Wilka, who was himself persecuted by the coup regime. We feel very strongly about showing images on the impact of European interference in Bolivia.

    Mural about the coup in Bolivia by Leonel Jurado. La Paz, Bolivia. Photo credit: Daniel Alejandro Quiroga Miranda

    At the moment, a small section of Europe is trying to deny what happened in Bolivia, and it’s for this reason that we created 14 Days of Resistance, which is two weeks where we say no to European interference and we show the mural of the victims of the coup d’etat. What we hope to do is to show the UK and to show Europe, what is the impact of interference from Europe, in countries like Bolivia and in Latin America as a region.

    This event is also a response to a lack of honest coverage about the coup and its aftermath by the mainstream media in counties such as the UK. The mainstream media played a massive role in its silence about the coup and effectively became an ally of the coup, because they didn’t want to show and refused to show what was really happening in Bolivia. 37 people were killed, mostly indigenous people, over 1000 people were injured and 1,500 plus were imprisoned or politically persecuted. All this was largely ignored by the mainstream media. And this is why we wanted to make it as public as possible, by having this mural replica on a 30 meter wall here in the UK, to show what was the effect of foreign interference for a country like Bolivia – a horrendous, bloody coup that affected thousands of people.

    ‘14 Days of Resistance’ runs from Friday 18 June to Saturday 3 July and includes a range of online panels exploring coup, the role of foreign powers, and the continuing search for justice for its victims. For more information click here.

    Featured image by Claudia Turbet-Delof

    By Pablo Navarrete

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • A People’s Vaccine Against a Mutating Virus and Neoliberal Rule

    Photo credit: UNICEF Teachers and students were able to return to school in Lao Cai, Viet Nam, in May 2020

    A recent Yahoo News/YouGov poll found that worries about the COVID pandemic in the United States are at their lowest level since it began. Only half of Americans are either “very worried” (15%) or “somewhat worried” (35%) about the virus, while the other half are “not very worried” (30%) or “not worried at all” (20%).

    But the news from around the world makes it clear that this pandemic is far from over, and a story from Vietnam highlights the nature of the danger.

    Vietnam is a COVID success story, with one of the lowest rates of infection and death in the world. Vietnam’s excellent community-based public health system prevented the virus from spreading beyond isolated cases and localized outbreaks, without a nationwide lockdown. With a population of 98 million people, Vietnam has had only 8,883 cases and 53 deaths.

    However, more than half of Vietnam’s cases and deaths have come in the last two months, and three-quarters of the new cases have been infected with a new “hybrid” variant that combines the two mutations detected separately in the Alpha (U.K.) and Delta (India) variants.

    Vietnam is a canary in the pandemic coal-mine. The way this new variant has spread so quickly in a country that has defeated every previous form of the virus suggests that this one is much more infectious.

    This variant must surely also be spreading in other countries, where it will be harder to detect among thousands of daily cases, and will therefore be widespread by the time public health officials and governments respond to it. There may also be other highly infectious new variants spreading undetected among the millions of cases in Latin America and other parts of the world.

    A new study in The Lancet medical journal has found that the Alpha (U.K.), Beta (South Africa) and Delta (India) variants are all more resistant to existing vaccines than the original COVID virus, and the Delta variant is still spreading in countries with aggressive vaccination programs, including the U.K.

    The Delta variant accounts for a two-month high in new cases in the U.K. and a new wave of infections in Portugal, just as developed countries ease restrictions before the summer vacation season, almost certainly opening the door to the next wave. The U.K., which has a slightly higher vaccination rate than the United States, had planned a further relaxation of restrictions on June 21st, but that is now in question.

    China, Vietnam, New Zealand and other countries defeated the pandemic in its early stages by prioritizing public health over business interests. The United States and Western Europe instead tried to strike a balance between public health and their neoliberal economic systems, breeding a monster that has now killed millions of people. The World Health Organization believes that six to eight million people have died, about twice as many as have been counted in official figures.

    Now the WHO is recommending that wealthier countries who have good supplies of vaccines postpone vaccinating healthy young people, and instead prioritize sending vaccines to poorer countries where the virus is running wild.

    President Biden has announced that the United States is releasing 25 million doses from its stockpiles, most of which will be distributed through the WHO’s Covax program, with another 55 million to follow by the end of June. But this is a tiny fraction of what is needed.

    Biden has also agreed to waive patent rights on vaccines under the WTO’s TRIPS rules (the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights), but that has so far been held up at the WTO by Canada and right-wing governments in the U.K., Germany, Brazil, Australia, Japan and Colombia. People have taken to the streets in many countries to insist that a WTO TRIPS Council meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday, June 8-9, must agree to waive patent monopolies.

    Since all the countries blocking the TRIPS waiver are U.S. allies, this will be a critical test of the Biden administration’s promised international leadership and diplomacy, which has so far taken a back seat to dangerous saber-rattling against China and Russia, foot-dragging on the JCPOA with Iran and war-crime-fueling weapons-peddling to Israel and Saudi Arabia.

    Ending international vaccine apartheid is not just a matter of altruism, or even justice. It is a question of whether we will end this pandemic before vaccine-resistant, super-spreading and deadlier variants fuel even more toxic new waves. The only way humanity can win this struggle is to act collectively in our common interest. 

    Public Citizen has researched what it would take to vaccinate the world, and concluded that it would cost only $25 billion – 3% of the annual U.S. budget for weapons and war – to set up manufacturing plants and distribution hubs across the world and vaccinate all of humanity within a year. Forty-two Progressives in Congress have signed a letter to President Biden to urge him to fund such a plan.

    If the world can agree to make and distribute a People’s Vaccine, it could be the silver lining in this dark cloud, because this ability to act globally and collectively in the public interest is precisely what we need to solve so many of the most serious problems facing humanity.

    For example, the UN Environment Program (UNEP) is warning that we are in the midst of a triple crisis of climate change, mass extinction and pollution. Our neoliberal political and economic system has not just failed to solve these problems. It actively works to undermine efforts to do so, granting people, corporations and countries who profit from destroying the natural world the freedom to do so without constraint.

    That is the very meaning of laissez-faire, to let the wealthy and powerful do whatever they want, regardless of the consequences for the rest of us, or even for life on Earth. As the economist John Maynard Keynes reputedly said in the 1930s, “Laissez-faire capitalism is the absurd idea that the worst people, for the worst reasons, will do what is best for us all.”

    Neoliberalism is the reimposition of 19th century laissez-faire capitalism, with all its injustices, inequality and oppression, on the people of the 21st century, prioritizing markets, profits and wealth over the common welfare of humanity and the natural world our lives depend on.

    Berkeley and Princeton political theorist Sheldon Wolin called the U.S. political system, which facilitates this neoliberal economic order, “inverted totalitarianism.” Like classical totalitarianism, it concentrates ever more wealth and power in the hands of a small ruling class, but instead of abolishing parliaments, elections and the superficial trappings of representative government as classical totalitarianism did, it simply co-opts them as tools of plutocracy, which has proved to be a more marketable and sustainable strategy.

    But now that neoliberalism has wreaked its chaos for a generation, popular movements are rising up across the world to demand systemic change and to build new systems of politics and economics that can actually solve the huge problems that neoliberalism has produced.

    In response to the 2019 uprising in Chile, its rulers were forced to agree to an election for a constitutional assembly, to draft a constitution to replace the one written during the Pinochet dictatorship, one of the vanguards of neoliberalism. That election has now taken place, and the ruling party of President Pinera and other traditional parties won less than a third of the seats. So the constitution will instead be written by a super-majority of citizens committed to radical reform and social, economic and political justice.

    In Iraq, which was also swept by a popular uprising in 2019, a new government seated in 2020 has launched an investigation to recover $150 billion in Iraqi oil revenues stolen and smuggled out of the country by the corrupt officials of previous governments.

    U.S.-backed former exiles flew into Iraq on the heels of the U.S. invasion in 2003 “with empty pockets to fill,” as a Baghdad taxi driver told a Western reporter at the time. While U.S. forces and U.S.-trained Iraqi death squads destroyed their country, they hunkered down in the Green Zone in Baghdad and controlled and looted Iraq’s oil revenues for the next seventeen years. Now maybe Iraq can recover the stolen money its people so desperately need, and start using its oil wealth to rebuild that shattered country.

    In Bolivia, also in 2019, a U.S.-backed coup overthrew its popular indigenous president, Evo Morales. But the people of Bolivia rose up in a general strike to demand a new election, Morales’ MAS (Movimiento al Socialismo) Party was restored to power, and Luis Arce, Morales’ former Economy Minister, is now Bolivia’s President.

    Around the world, we are witnessing what can happen when people rise up and act collectively for the common good. That is how we will solve the serious problems we face, from the COVID pandemic to the climate crisis to the terminal danger of nuclear war. Humanity’s survival into the twenty-second century and all our hopes for a bright future depend on building new political and economic systems that will simply and genuinely “do what is best for all of us.”

    The post A People’s Vaccine Against a Mutating Virus and Neoliberal Rule first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Regressive Economic Policies Of Bolivia’s Coup Government

    The IHRC/UNHR report emphasizes the racist nature of the violence, including that all of the victims of these massacres were Indigenous. Bolivia has the largest percentage of Indigenous people in the Americas, and Evo Morales was the country’s first Indigenous president. His government had undertaken numerous reforms and economic policies that had benefited Bolivia’s Indigenous people, who are economically disadvantaged relative to the rest of the population.

    The post The Regressive Economic Policies Of Bolivia’s Coup Government appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Bolivia Proposes To The UN To Urgently Convene An Earth Assembly

    During the Reunion with Mother Earth: Global reflections for the defense of Pachamama, the Plurinational State of Bolivia assumed the commitment to lead, in coordination with all the peoples of the South, a global action in this matter and requested the Secretary General of the United Nations (UN), António Guterres, to urgently convene an Earth Assembly to “continue developing the cosmobiocentric paradigm, not anthropocentric, within the framework of multilateralism.”

    Representing the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, the People’s Power Minister for Foreign Relations, Jorge Arreaza, focused his speech on the failure of the savage capitalist system, which has turned nature into merchandise and under which there is no way to comply with the goals of humanity…

    The post Bolivia Proposes To The UN To Urgently Convene An Earth Assembly appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Despite US’ Dirty Tricks, Bolivia Is Finding A Way To Stay Independent

    Sentiments in Bolivia for and against the coup d’etat of November 2019 are predictably along class lines. Those from more affluent sections felt that the socialist policies of the government of President Evo Morales (which was in power from 2006 to 2019) were eating into their authority. But these sections could not oust Morales at the ballot box because his policies of redistribution were wildly popular among the mass of the population. Morales won three elections, each of them with a decisive mandate: winning 53.74% in 2005, 64.08% in 2009, and 61.36% in 2014.

    Pressure to prevent Morales from running in the election in 2019 mounted early, but it failed. The opposition—with the full backing of the US government—tried to undermine the October 2019 election by painting it as fraudulent.

    The post Despite US’ Dirty Tricks, Bolivia Is Finding A Way To Stay Independent appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Western Media: Prosecuting Coup Leaders Is Worse Than Leading A Coup

    One can imagine an editor of the London-based Guardian (3/17/21) shaking her head sadly as she typed the headline: “Cycle of Retribution Takes Bolivia’s Ex-President From Palace to Prison Cell.”  The subhead told readers, “Jeanine Áñez’s government once sought to jail the country’s former leader Evo Morales for terrorism and sedition—now she faces the same charges.”

    The Guardian article by Tom Phillips wants us to lament an alleged incapacity of Bolivian governments to stop persecuting opponents once they take office.

    The post Western Media: Prosecuting Coup Leaders Is Worse Than Leading A Coup appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • To Western Media, Prosecuting Bolivian Coup Leaders Is Worse Than Leading a Coup

     

    Guardian: Cycle of retribution takes Bolivia's ex-president from palace to prison cell

    The Guardian (3/17/21) pretends not to understand the difference between overthrowing a government and arresting someone for overthrowing a government.

    One can imagine an editor of the London-based Guardian (3/17/21) shaking her head sadly as she typed the headline: “Cycle of Retribution Takes Bolivia’s Ex-President From Palace to Prison Cell.”  The subhead told readers, “Jeanine Áñez’s government once sought to jail the country’s former leader Evo Morales for terrorism and sedition—now she faces the same charges.”

    The Guardian article by Tom Phillips wants us to lament an alleged incapacity of Bolivian governments to stop persecuting opponents once they take office. We are told that Áñez’s government did it, and that now the government of President Luis Arce (elected in a landslide win on October 18, 2020) is also doing it.

    The article’s premise is a lie, and the liberal Guardian has hardly been the only outlet spreading it, with help from Jose Miguel Vivanco, Americas director of Human Rights Watch (HRW), whom Philips quoted. A team effort between Western media and NGOs like HRW often reinforces the views of the US government (FAIR.org, 8/23/18, 8/31/18, 5/31/2o, 11/3/18).

    Áñez was a US-backed dictator installed after a military coup sent democratically elected President Evo Morales fleeing Bolivia for his life on November 10, 2019.  Once in power, Áñez immediately promised security forces legal immunity as they massacred dozens of protesters. She is now charged with terrorism (in addition to sedition and criminal conspiracy) over her attempt to keep power by terrorizing the public. Her arrest is good news to people who support democracy and human rights.

    But now, as when the coup took place in 2019, the most obvious conclusions are evaded when they are incompatible with US foreign policy (FAIR.org, 11/11/19). It should surprise nobody that US officials have made statements depicting her arrest as political persecution.

    Fighting to spring an ex-dictator

    In downgrading the coup that installed Áñez to a mere allegation made against Áñez, Reuters (3/13/21), the Financial Times (3/13/21), the Washington Post (3/13/21), CNN (3/15/21) and Canada’s National Post (3/13/21) have all run articles quoting HRW’s Vivanco criticizing her arrest. CNN quoted him:

    The arrest warrants against Añez and her ministers do not contain any evidence that they have committed the crime of “terrorism.” For this reason, they generate well-founded doubts that it is a process based on political motives.

    The Washington Post article, whose headline alleged a “crackdown on opposition,” used a shorter version of the same quote from Vivanco.

    While all the articles described the coup as an allegation, CNN stands out for getting the most ridiculous with its denialism:

    Then-head of the Bolivian Armed Forces, Cmdr. Williams Kaliman, asked Morales to step down to restore stability and peace; Morales acquiesced on November 10 “for the good of Bolivia.”

    But political allies maintain he was removed from power as part of a coup orchestrated by conservatives, including Áñez.

    Did Kaliman need to be filmed putting a gun directly to Morales’ head for CNN to admit it was a coup?

    Adding to the disinformation loop from his own platform on Twitter, Vivanco spread an Americas Quarterly op-ed  by Raul Peñaranda (3/16/21) that denounced the arrest of Áñez. Peñaranda once said that Bolivia’s democracy was “saved” the day Morales was overthrown, and his recent op-ed depicts the November 2019 coup as a legal transfer of power.

    In 2019, the military publicly “urged” Morales to resign, as both the military and police made clear they would not protect him from violent right-wing protesters, some of whom ransacked his house.  Áñez, a right-wing senator whose party received only 4% of the national vote in the 2019 legislative elections, had the presidential sash placed on her by military men, while lawmakers from Evo Morales’ party (Movimineto al Socialismo, or MAS), the majority in the legislature, were absent: some in hiding, others refusing to attend without guarantees of their safety and their families’.

    Ignoring all that, the Guardian article by Tom Philips refers to “claims the former senator [Áñez] was involved in plotting the right-wing coup that Bolivia’s current government claims brought her to power.” (My emphasis.) Editors are usually big fans of concision. The highlighted words should have been deleted. An added benefit would have been accuracy.

    Of course, it’s easier to deny that Áñez was involved in plotting the coup that put her in power (hardly a stretch) if you do not even accept that a coup took place. Reuters placed scare quotes around the word “coup” in headlines about Áñez’s arrest: “Bolivian Ex-President Áñez Begins Four-Month Detention Over ‘Coup’ Allegations” (3/16/21); “ Bolivian Ex-President Áñez Begins Jail Term as Rights Groups Slam ‘Coup’ Probe” (3/14/21).

    Reuters (3/14/21) and CNN (3/15/21) also uncritically reported the thoroughly debunked pretext for the coup. CNN reported, “Though an international audit would later find the results the 2019 election could not be validated because of ‘serious irregularities,’ [Morales] declared himself the winner, prompting massive protests around the country.” (The “international audit” is the OAS’s widely debunked report.) Reuters simply stated that the Organization of America States (OAS) “was an official monitor of the 2019 election and had found it fraudulent.”

    Cycle of dishonesty

    WaPo: The Bolivian government is on a lawless course. Its democracy must be preserved.

    The “lawless course” that the Washington Post (3/18/21) is referring to is prosecuting the people who overthrew the elected Bolivian government and killed people who protested the coup.

    The coup was incited by transparently dishonest claims repeatedly made by OAS monitors about the presidential election won by Morales on October 20, 2019. Three days after the election, they claimed there was a “drastic,” “inexplicable” and “hard to explain” increase in Morales’ lead in the vote count (FAIR.org, 12/17/19).

    The Washington, DC–based Center for Economic and Policy Research immediately pointed out that this was utter nonsense. But in the crucial months following Morales’ ouster, outlets like Reuters constantly shielded the OAS from devastating criticism. Eventually, expert criticism of the OAS continually mounted and disrupted the media silence. Details from the election results in 2020, in which Evo Morales’ party triumphed by an even greater margin than in 2019, further exposed OAS dishonesty.

    Like Reuters, the widely quoted Jose Miguel Vivanco of HRW spread fraud claims when it mattered most in 2019. The day after the election won by Morales, Vivanco  tweeted in Spanish that “everything indicates that [Evo Morales]  intends to steal the election.” As late as December 2019, HRW executive director Ken Roth was also promoting OAS claims without the slightest trace of scepticism. Months into the murderous illegitimate rule of Áñez, Vivanco explicitly referred to Bolivia as a “democracy.” He did so in a Spanish-language interview with BrujulaDigital  (5/15/20), an outlet edited by Raul Peñaranda, the coup supporter whose Americas Quarterly op-ed Vivanco recently promoted on Twitter. Meanwhile, on Twitter, Vivanco constantly refers to the governments of President Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, and President Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua–two democratically elected presidents the US government wants overthrown–as “dictaduras” (dictatorships).

    The New York Times editorial board openly supported the coup that ousted Morales in 2019:

    The forced ouster of an elected leader is by definition a setback to democracy, and so a moment of risk. But when a leader resorts to brazenly abusing the power and institutions put in his care by the electorate, as President Evo Morales did in Bolivia, it is he who sheds his legitimacy, and forcing him out often becomes the only remaining option. That is what the Bolivians have done, and what remains is to hope that Mr. Morales goes peacefully into exile in Mexico and to help Bolivia restore its wounded democracy.

    So predictably enough, a Times article (3/12/21) about the recent Áñez arrest referred vaguely to the utterly debunked OAS fraud claims (“a contested vote count”) and took the same kind of dishonest stance as HRW and other Western media by equating  a US-backed dictatorship to a democratically elected government whose ouster the US supported: “Both Mr. Morales and Ms. Añez used the judiciary to go after their critics.”

    The Washington Post editorial board (3/18/21) came out with a wild defense of  Añez, headlined: “The Bolivian Government Is on a Lawless Course. Its Democracy Must Be Preserved.” Most ominously, the editorial said, “The Biden administration should lead a regional effort to preserve democratic stability in this long-suffering country, lest crisis turn into catastrophe.” Informed people may laugh at this for a few seconds–until they remember that Bolivia’s people could eventually face lethal US sanctions for daring to hold murderers to account. Left unchallenged, that’s the catastrophe that propaganda like this could bring about.

    Brutal dictators supported by Washington have no reason to doubt that establishment journalists and big NGOs will try very hard to keep them out of jail. Removing the threat of US -backed coups from the world will involve a constant struggle against Western media and the sources they present to us as reliable.

     

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  • Former Interim President Jeanine Añez Arrested In Bolivia

    The Bolivian government announced on Saturday the arrest of Jeanine Áñez, who will be prosecuted for the overthrow of Evo Morales in November 2019, in an action described by the former president as “abuse and political persecution”.

    “I inform the Bolivian people that Mrs. Jeanine Añez has already been apprehended and at this moment she is in the hands of the Police,” Eduardo del Castillo, Minister of Internal Affairs, wrote on his Twitter account. The arrest, at a time and place not immediately disclosed, was announced hours after the release of an arrest warrant issued by two prosecutors who are processing a coup complaint against those responsible for the 2019 democratic disruption, from which the administration emerged.

    The post Former Interim President Jeanine Añez Arrested In Bolivia appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.