Evo Morales
Well, strictly speaking he resigned, but not only has the military come out against him, his followers’ houses were being firebombed and the guards at the presidential palace left.
“Resign or die” is the fairly-clear message. This is how you force a politician out.
Did he cheat on the election, as he’s been accused of? I don’t know, but I do know that, absent the military turning on him, he’d still be in office.
What we’ll see now is if the violence continues: If there is a right wing “militia” sweep which sees the murder of his supporters, along with rape and torture.
If so, then yeah, it was a right-wing coup.
Morales was virtually the last South American left-wing leader. They’ve almost all been swept from power over the last few years. This is because commodity prices crashed. Their prosperity was based on high commodity prices.
Nonetheless, Morales dropped poverty rates by half, and unemployment by a third. He was unquestionably good for most Bolivians.
However, because these leaders never secured the state’s coercive apparatus, they were relatively easy to get rid of (with the exception of Venezuela and to a lesser extent Peru). For example, the situation in Brazil, wherein Lula was forbidden to run (because they knew he’d win) due to corruption charges, after which the prosecutor who charged him joined the new government.
Left-wing governments need to control key parts of the state apparatus: the military, police, and courts. They also need a press which is at least neutral. If they don’t control these thing, when they lose power it often results in horrible consequences: firebombings, imprisonment, death squads, rape, and torture.
This isn’t a game. The people on the other side are rich, ruthless, and scared, and they will do anything to keep power. They don’t play by the “rules.”
The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.
Carter
Colombia??? I think Bolivia is what you may have ment.
Ian Welsh
Yeah, woops. Wires got crossed. Thanks.
Hugh
Let’s see Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador, all experiencing various levels of political upheaval and/or repression. When I assess the future of geographic regions in the face of climate change and overpopulation, I see the survival chances of South America at less than 40% and descending.
Ché Pasa
“Disputed election” eh? Telegraphing what’s to come if by some miracle a genuine leftist manages to win in the US, Britain, or Australia? Or even if one of the pseudo-left candidates who isn’t compliant enough wins?
Meanwhile, the US government has told the Iraqi government to stop killing the protesters in the streets now (after about 300 killed and many thousands injured) and hold new elections.
And in Hong Kong the protesters continue to rampage while the police still show a bit of restraint and Xi apparently looks on with bemused indifference.
Has the world turned upside down?
Ten Bears
This isn’t a game. The people on the other side are rich and ruthless and scared, and they will do anything to keep power. They don’t play by the “rules.”
Bad time to mention the deep state? The international bankers and insurers? Agencies of state sanctioned terrorism? “9/11”, Tonkin Gulf, Pearl Harbor, Reichstag, theMaine, tea baggers … ?
“But why would they do that to their own people?” We’re not ‘their people’.
Stirling S Newberry
One of the problems with the left is that they are tilting at windmills. Morales had only 1 way to produce jobs – corruption. This is less than optimal, not because zero-corruption is possible, is not, but as your main jobs creator. While there is a formula for how much corruption you can have, but the same formula tells you that it cannot be in the number 1 place. It does not work.
The same thing is true a Venezuela.
There are better chances in Brazil (The right in Brazil is truly twist – trying to burn up the world to make steak.), but the South American Left needs to realize expanding the economy is job 1. This does not mean that the right is any better, and soon they will realize that “borrowed money for guns” leads to the same nasty place.
Herman
I wonder how possible it is for leftist governments to prosper in the current climate, especially in the developing world. It was much easier to pursue left-wing policies when you had a left-wing superpower in the USSR that was willing to help with military and economic aid. Also, in the past even countries in the American orbit were allowed some degree of progressive policy although it often depended on the circumstances.
Europe and Japan were allowed to develop and rebuild their economies and give concessions to their working classes because of how important they were to American Cold War strategy and because they often had strong domestic left-wing political movements that had to be outflanked. On the other hand, many Latin American countries were not so lucky and got brutal right-wing dictatorships instead.
There were many bad things about actually existing socialism but it is hard not to see the collapse of the socialist movement as a disaster for ordinary working people. The neoliberal turn preceded the collapse of the Soviet Union but really went into overdrive after the end of the Cold War and there has been no ideological replacement for Marxism. Instead we have neoliberalism pitted against various forms of nationalism or populism which don’t seem up to the task of providing a real ideological alternative to neoliberalism.
MojaveWolf
Whether you think Morales should have run again or not (and I remain unclear as to why he did, instead of handing things over to a successor), this was definitely a coup.
Whether you think there was cheating or not, he’d won 3 times before, becoming the first president in over 40 years to get an outright majority of votes and winning with record margins w/participation rates ranging from 84-90+ % of the population. This last time, he won over three other candidates w/47% of the total, the first time he failed to clear 50% but still WAY clear of second place; no one else was within single digits of him. (47.1-36.5; to avoid a run-off with less than 50% he needed over 40% and 10 point lead over second place; the second place finisher had announced before the elections he would not accept the results if he lost)
And while the cheating seems both possible and HIGHLY disputable (everything he is said to have done could have been done by his opposition to set him up; the allegations appear to have no evidence; having a bigger margin in late-voting areas is not surprising if you have a typically bigger margin in those areas, which was the case here) he had offered to hold new elections immediately and invited the UN, the Vatican and other outside groups I can’t remember off the top of my head to come in and monitor the elections. It was shortly after he did this that the full-on coup, started, implying that pretty much everyone involved in this knew he really won and would likely win again.
Re: the OAS that is saying they think he cheated: from Ben Norton “USAID boasted in its 2018 Congressional Budget Justification that the OAS “promotes U.S. political and economic interests in the Western Hemisphere by countering the influence of anti-U.S. countries such as Venezuela”. There’s a screenshot of the report on twitter. The OAS has been making statements without backing them up (I”m in a hurry so can’t look them up). Other election monitoring agencies have gone off on OAS statements, methodologies, etc. I believe a number of US and OAS officials started making comments before the votes were done counting or possibly before the start of the voting; OAS & the US gov’t appear to have been working in coordination w/the coup leaders to undercut Morales and legitimize the election before it even happened. (the US funds 60% of the OAS budget)
Morales was not perfect, and did a number of things worth complaining about, but as Ian said, it’s indisputable that he improved the standard of living and quality of life for most Bolivians, in particular the poorest and the working class. The most well off didn’t like him, though they were still the most well off.
Where he seems to have given them the excuse to go after him is that after introducing and getting approved a much-improved constitution that not only improved things for everyone, but limited Presidents to two terms, he had his two full terms under the new constitution, had a referendum to allow a third time, it lost, a court invalidated the referendum due to “US imperialism”(????) and so he ran again anyway.
This was a clear mistake and I don’t understand why he didn’t endorse and campaign for a successor, even if the successor would have just been a figurehead. But whether you think he shoulda been there or not, this was a coup.
Flawed or not, he seems to have been a mostly good man who accomplished mostly good to great things for his country (with some glaring exceptions). I hope he survives this.
MojaveWolf
Follow ups to above:
I am not a Bolivian expert and have never been there, so I’m trying to parse this from multiple different sources on both sides for which I have varying degrees of trust.
There are MANY things about Morales that rub me the wrong way, and he made some decisions that strike me as very wrongheaded. The rah rah nature above is a combination of time constraints and him being mostly good, and that his opposition clearly a million times worse in pretty much every single way, and severely lacking in any mitigating good points.
MojaveWolf
One more before I’m out the door: That Morales tried to seek sanctuary in Argentina, where there is an incoming left-wing government, further indicates the coup-nature of this. Sadly, the outgoing gov’t is still in charge there, so he’s kind of stuck.
OTOH, for those despairing, at least Argentina there is still a strong left wing movement capable of winning elections in South America (and see also what has been going on–and not getting covered by US MSM–in Chile), and Morales clearly still had more popular support than anyone else, despite his mistakes.
Dan Lynch
“They say they don’t like my methods. Well, I don’t like them either. I really don’t like to have to do things the way I do. I’d much rather get up before the legislature and say, ‘Now this is a good law and it’s for the benefit of the people, and I’d like you to vote for it in the interest of the public welfare.’ Only I know that laws ain’t made that way. You’ve got to fight fire with fire.” ~ Huey Long
“I used to get things done by saying please. Now I dynamite ’em out of my path.” ~ Huey Long
“A man is not a dictator when he is given a commission from the people and carries it out.” ~ Huey Long
russell1200
I would have been far more impressed with Morales if he had groomed successors sot that the socialist system could have become a more normative part of the country’s system.
450.org
The imperialist organization, corrupt goes without saying, the OAS, is at the center of this coup just as it was at the center of the coup in Honduras when Hillary Clinton was Obama’s Secretary of State.
Someone on another thread provided apologia for Trump supporters by asking me if Trump supporters were supposed to vote for Hillary Clinton instead of Donald Trump. As it turns out, at least as it relates to Bolivia, there is no difference between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. They both, armed and aided by the OAS, have helped promulgate and enable the coups in both countries. They’re on the same page and that page is the rich persecuting the poor.
How Secretary of State Clinton Enabled the Coup in Honduras
What does Bernie say about this? What would Bernie do if he was in Trump’s stinky shoes? Warren?
450.org
Truth and fiction. Where does one leave off and the other begin? That delineation is far from clear. This article is proof of that. As <a href="Love and Stockholm Syndrome: The Mystery of Loving an Abuser“>Mark Weisbrot opines, the OAS and the American media misrepresented the election results and signaled cheating when there was no such signal. The OAS was used to stoke this coup. The OAS is a useful tool — to both Hillary Clinton and to Donald Trump and his handlers.
The Organization Of American States Is Pushing Pro-Abortion Socialism. Here’s How Trump Can Stop It
Tom
http://inthesetimes.com/features/BDS-movement-Israel-Palestine-activists-boycott-occupation.html
Meanwhile, a full out assault on Freedom of Speech by Israel.
Ironically the “Left” is failing largely because it can’t tell who their true allies are and keep cozying up to other dictators because they are a foe to their foes, not realizing that it damns them to those who are true allies.
Well, it is what it is.
Mike Barry
Ain’t no such thing as a Palestinian. Or an occupation. Just in case you didn’t already know.
Ten Bears
Funny thing about “Israel” – the Egyptians have pyramids and statuary that we just don’t know how old they are, it is quite possible they pre-date the last ice-age; the Persians (Iran) have a written language lain down in stone recording the daily lives, the laws and civic functions of six, maybe eight thousand years ago; the Mesopotamian (Iraq) have a six thousand year old irrigation system that still delivers water… Palestine harbors the dubious distinction of being recorded all the way back through Rome to Greece, and Persia. Israel? Meh, not so much: a few scraps of genealogical tables, a badly plagiarized Persian creation story and a wall that is in all likelihood merely a rock. There is no physical, there is no historical, evidence for ‘Israel”. It is a fairy tale, and the root of all evil.
Mike Barry
“It is a fairy tale, and the root of all evil.” — tb
Fuck off and die, Nazi filth.
Ten Bears
You looking in the mirror, boy? White is a pretty important qualification for NAZI, that and the claim to “Dog’s Chosen People”. When I look in the mirror, that’s not what I see.
450.org
Not sure how and why Israel has anything to do with this latest round of regime change in South America, but, there’s this which is pertinent and no one seems to want to discuss it further.
How the Organization of American States Became an Agent of Regime Change
If the OAS was ever not co-opted, it is now for sure.
450.org
The strategy to co-opt the OAS and use it as a tool for regime change mimics precisely the strategy of regulatory capture in America where regulatory agencies are hollowed out and ultimately run into the ground by revolving door industry insiders. The wealthy elite, as Donald Trump has shown, are effectively mobsters. Tony Sopranos with Bentley’s versus Cadillac Escalades.
The Organization of American States Shouldn’t Be Run by Regime Change Enthusiasts
What drives me nuts about Carter is that he won’t acknowledge this mechanism is in play. He just naively calls for the strengthening of the OAS Charter as though the OAS has not been co-opted.
Who’s next after Bolivia & Venezuela? It’s like bowling and the South American nation-states are bowling pins.
Think of the effect this has on migration to the United States. These states will devolve into full-fledged narco states if they aren’t already and the poor and desperate will migrate in order to survive. In five years, it will be 10 million from South America lined up at America’s southern border begging for amnesty as a result of America’s meddling in the governance of their respective countries.
Jeff Wegerson
Cuba.
The Soviet Union lost the cold war at Stalingrad. Losing 20 million people makes post war life a lot more difficult.
@Ten Bears: What a disservice you have done to dogs.
450.org
Speaking of Cuba, send the f*cking Florida Cubans back to Havana where they belong. They are not Americans and never will be. They are fascists through and through. I loathe them. Always have. Always will. They’re dirtbag torturers and rapists and certainly should not be allowed to hold office in America.
Evo Morales Alleges Coup Attempt As Bolivia Opposition Claims ‘Giant Fraud’
Trujillo? Seriously? It has to be a sadistic joke, right? The US ambassador to the OAS shares the same name as the former infamous torturing, raping and murdering dictator of the Dominican Republic, Rafael Trujillo? Good God! Have they no decency whatsoever and no sense of irony?
Trujillo is a Rubio acolyte and he’s lying his ass off here. He’s full of shit as Mark Weisbrot has informed us. He’s a Spring Hill graduate. Figures. Spring Hill has a significant Cuban, and CIA, connection. Oswald gave a speech there in 1963 several months before he was executed by Jack Ruby. Spring Hill, to say the least, is spooky and many a CIA-connected Cuban family from Miami have sent their children to Spring Hill since they fled Castro’s Cuba many moons ago. They behave like privileged scum just as they did when they held power under the Batista regime.
ponderer
@Stirling S Newberry
That’s a lesson the Left here should learn as well. Until they raise all boats (not just poor and super rich), they will never get the rest of their agenda taken seriously.
450.org
Do you think this and Bolivia’s water had anything to do with the recent coup? I do.
Bolivia’s President Declares ‘Total Independence’ From World Bank And IMF
450.org
Lock Them Up!!! Trujillo is affiliated with these cowardly criminal terrorists thus he and Rubio, and Trump too, are complicit in terrorism. They’re just another form of Daesh.
The Coddled “Terrorists” Of South Florida | Anti-Castro Cuban exiles who have been linked to bombings and assassinations are living free in Miami. Does the U.S. government have a double standard when it comes to terror?
The answer to that question is obviously yes, there is a double standard in play and there always has been.
different clue
“Israel” is the root of all evil? Really? “Israel” could even BE that important and influential?
Now . . . there IS evidence of a place called “Judea” where some of the “Jews” lived. We don’t just have to take the “Jews’s” word for it. We have evidence in stone and metal from the Romans.
Behold! Images of Judea Capta coins. Any numismatist and Roman Historian will tell you these things really exist.
https://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images;_ylt=A2KIbNDa78pdUbgAw01XNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTByMDgyYjJiBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMyBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzYw–?p=judea+capta+coin&fr=sfp
Behold! The Arch of Titus.
https://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images;_ylt=AwrE1xs88MpdWMwABCpXNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTByMjB0aG5zBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzYw–?p=arch+titus&fr=sfp
Behold! A particular and relevant image from that bunch of Arch of Titus images . . .
https://blogs.yu.edu/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/19/2014/07/arch-of-titus1.jpeg
450.org
The World’s Left-Wingers Are Feeling The Bern | Sanders is viewed abroad as a potential figurehead for a worldwide movement against right-wing populism.
Wow, Jennifer, there’s a “danger?” Seriously?
The media likes to paint Morales as representing the Indigenous, which he does, but more importantly, Evo represents, or I should say represented, the poor lifting a significant number of them out of poverty. It’s obvious why the media chooses not to frame it this way — the right way. The media is owned and thus controlled by the global wealthy elite who are engaged in a global genocide on the poor of this planet and a genocide on the living planet in general.
Mexico’s offering of asylum for Evo is an in-your-face to Trump. Good on Mexico. Trump deserves it. And more. Much, much more.
different clue
I posted a follow-on comment about the Jerusalem Temple Wall and megaliths. If it is in moderation, it will show up at some point. If it “took the wrong turn at Albuquerque” and got lost in the ether, it won’t ever show up.
So to briefestly synopsize that other comment . . . the Temple Wall is there, it is real, and its base is made of huge megalithic stone blocks laid down who-knows-when. Just like other megalithic sites all over the world. These things are provably proven to exist. They are too big to hide and too hard to fake. But they are too unsettling for Mainstream Archeology and Mainstream History to think about . . . so word of them lives on the fringes of knowledge . . . including in lots of You Tube videos.
These things are huge. And some of them in various places show signs of sudden catastrophic damage.
Were the Megalithians building their ginormous stone-block complexes beFORE the start of the Younger Dryas? Whatever kicked off the sudden re-cooling we know as the Younger Dryas, anyway? Did the sudden catastrophe which started the Younger Dryas also exterminate the Megalithian Civilization all over the earth as its first opening act?
S Brennan
An unarmed populace can not stop a coup but, a reasonable well armed populace can easily crush a coup.
The deep state is well aware that our founders knew this succinct fact…sadly, people who call themselves “liberals” do not, such snowflakes are under the impression that impassioned prose will protect them from well placed shots…history doth say otherwise.
Evo Morales failed his supporters by not arming them, today’s “liberals” go this learned helplessness one step further by demanding that citizens turn in their arms/civel-rights to the deep state.
450.org
<blockquote<….Evo Morales failed his supporters by not arming them
Yes, indeed, this is truly the reason Evo was forced out. He was way behind in his quota of mass shootings especially mass school shootings under his watch. Evo should be ashamed. What good is it elevating 50% of those in poverty out of poverty if it isn’t balanced with random and ever-increasing mass shooting terrorist spectacles?
Organization and solidarity trumps guns. The numbers are there, they’re just waiting to be GENUINELY organized under an egalitarian umbrella of solidarity.
S Brenann
\”Organization and solidarity trumps guns… they’re just waiting to be GENUINELY organized under an egalitarian umbrella of solidarity.\” – 450.org
kumbaya
kumbaya
Oh my Lord, kumbaya
Learn a little history my friend, the Cathars had the numbers, had the egalitarian society, had the organization…and were crushed like grapes in million, the first European\”genocide\”…Learn a little history my friend.
450.org
I’m not your friend. Yesterday it was reported the Bolivian military was flying jets low over the indigenous areas sending a message to any and all that the bombs will drop if they have any aspirations of a revolt. Guns cannot defend against bombs and other more powerful ordinance. Who do you think supplies the jets and bombs and all manner of other powerful weaponry to the Bolivian military? That’s right, America. Solidarity with Bolivia’s indigenous poor via direct action would require a non-violent blockading of all American arms manufacturing until the Bolivian military was forced to stand down. Ghandi proved what can be done when you have the numbers and you unite those numbers. You can quite literally take the guns from those who have them. Some will die, for sure, but many more will be saved in the process of disarming the bad guys. It’s not guns that are needed so much, it’s nerve and gumption.
nihil obstet
Do we have any examples of successful constraint of U.S. government action by armed citizens? Guns in the hands of POCs are an invitation to police use of lethal force. Even guns in the hands of whites depend for success on stroking the government leaders the right way. So not only was lynching not stopped in the Jim Crow days, but state police actually killed more blacks than were lynched. The 1898 coup in Wilmington, N.C., was carried out by thousands of “insurgents” to stop a fusion government, so if you’re a white supremacist, I guess that would be an example. But there’s a thread here that indicates why it’s white men that see guns as their freedom, because it’s what allows them to deny freedom to others.
S Brennan
“Do we have any examples of successful constraint of U.S. government action by armed citizens?”
What are you asking for? How extreme of a set of proofs do you need? And what are these proofs? Or, is this more rhetorical flourish to cover the limp handwringing of today’s “left”?
Well armed “citizens” created this country, they “constrained” the previous “US” government by force of arms, not by some “egalitarian umbrella of solidarity”.
Honestly, the “left” of today doesn’t know of, nor understand, or even respect those freedoms that have been fought for & won in the 1890-1930’s…by force, not by some “egalitarian umbrella of solidarity”. Those freedoms cost many their lives, their fortunes and their livelihood, it’s pathetic today’s “liberals” so easily frittered away those freedoms in the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s, 00’s and een’s.
Pathetic.
nihil obstet
I asked for a few examples. I’m generally not persuaded by vague hand-waving that all history proves your point.
S Brennan
Let me quote myself:
“Well armed “citizens” created this country, they “constrained” the previous “US” government by force of arms, not by some “egalitarian umbrella of solidarity”.
I am not sure your reading comprehension problems are mine to solve.
450.org
Great example. Thank you. Yes, this country, in part and that part is substantial no doubt, was created by “well-armed citizens.” But, and this is a BIG but, America was also founded upon, and established on the back of, slavery as much as anything else and those slaves, in part, were held captive by those very same guns that helped create America.
The Civil War did not free the slaves, not effectively at least. Blacks were not truly freed until the civil rights legislation of the 1960’s sponsored by, of all people, the creepy corrupt-beyond-the-pale Lyndon Baines Johnson. The ultimate freedom of blacks in America wasn’t brought about by guns and massive violence, it was brought about by organizing under an egalitarian umbrella of solidarity and of all things, gasp, politics. That being said, LBJ doesn’t get the credit. The road to that civil rights legislation was being paved for at least two decades by highly intelligent and mobilized blacks, whose names most Americans do not know and will never know, who fought for it through the legal system and by progressives within the Democratic party who had to continually push for it first with JFK who was reluctant and then with LBJ who ultimately saw it was his meal ticket to popularity and proper cover for his escalation of the war in Vietnam.
nihil obstet
You can make an argument that armed citizens began the rebellion. Then they were formed into an army and provisioned by the Continental Congress, the government of the rebellion. When discipline was an issue, General George Washington executed some of those “Well armed “citizens”. Without the governmental structure, the American Revolution would probably have gone the way of the Whiskey Rebellion or Shays Rebellion. And it’s one of the reasons that the second amendment includes the provision of “a well regulated militia”.
Meanwhile, American police kill citizens at a rate more than 10 times that of other developed nations. A usual reason is that they thought the victim was reaching for a gun. “Civil forfeiture” accounts for more confiscation of property than burglary. Add to that the amount of bail, fees, and other financial penalties. For the government simply to seize your money without trial is pretty overbearing, yet I haven’t seen support for armed citizens to attack the police in order to constrain the activity. In Ferguson, I saw tanks (and police in jungle camo, for crying out loud) rolling down the streets, but I didn’t see armed citizens constraining it and I didn’t hear second rights advocates calling to arms.
Despite all the right-wing macho sneering about “kumbaya”, guns are almost always turned against the weak, not the government. It’s about culture, where swaggering around with a powerful weapon makes up psychically for the indignities of much modern life. Think solidarity instead.