What does Empire have to do with the coup in Bolivia?

[PufPuf93]

Is the recent expulsion of Evo Morales by the military a coup in fact?

Who benefits?

What is the history?

What foreign factors are in play?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/th ... story.html

After Morales resignation, a question for Bolivia: Was this the democratic will or a coup?

November 11, 2019 at 9:15 a.m. PST WAPO

Bolivians awoke Monday, leaderless and dazed, to the smoldering embers of the torched homes of socialists after the resignation of longtime president Evo Morales, the leftist icon driven from office amid accusations his party stole last month’s election. As South America’s poorest nation processed the fast-moving events of the day before, its citizens confronted a key question: Had democracy failed, or prevailed?

Morales, who transformed Bolivia during his nearly 14 years in office, called the pressure that forced him out on Sunday a “coup.” Early in the day, the Organization of American States (OAS) said it had found “clear manipulation” of the Oct. 20 election. Violence that had simmered since the vote escalated. The heads of the armed forces and police withdrew their support, and the opposition unfurled a wave of attacks on Morales’s socialist allies.

By late Sunday, all four socialist officials in the constitutional chain of command — the president, the vice president and the heads of the senate and chamber of deputies — had resigned. What was left of Bolivia’s congress was set to meet Monday to pick an interim leader.

A couple holding a Bolivian flag embrace in La Paz on Monday after spending the night celebrating the resignation of President Evo Morales. (Natacha Pisarenko/AP)
Carlos Mesa, the former president who finished second to Morales in the Oct. 20 vote, rejected the word “coup.” He called it a “democratic popular action” to stop a government that was seeking to install itself as an authoritarian power.

Mesa said Monday that Bolivia’s legislature should select a new president to lead until the country can hold new elections, required within 90 days. Mesa said Sunday that no one from Morales’s Movement for Socialism (MAS) should be picked as interim leader, but he insisted Monday that MAS members should not fear persecution.

“The clear will of the democratic opposition is to build a new democratic government, respecting the constitution,” he said.

Bolivia’s Morales resigns amid scathing election report, rising protests

Jeanine Añez, the fiercely anti-Morales second vice president of the senate, said Monday she would accept a caretaker presidency if offered. Some opposition officials rallied around her, arguing that, constitutionally, the job should fall to her. My “only objective would be to call elections,” she told reporters.

The OAS, a U.N.-like body for countries of the Western Hemisphere, said it would reject “any unconstitutional resolution of the situation.”
AD

“The General Secretariat calls for peace and respect for the Rule of Law,” the OAS said in a statement. It urged the Bolivian legislature to install new election officials and “guarantee a new electoral process.” It also called for legal action against those responsible for election fraud.
Bolivia was confronting deep divisions and lingering violence — with the strong possibility of more. Overnight, with Morales’s whereabouts unknown, opposition protesters looted and burned the homes of socialist politicians — including Morales. At least 20 MAS officials sought asylum at the Mexican Embassy. La Paz Mayor Luis Revilla Herrero said 64 buses had been burned since Sunday. Schools and businesses were closed Monday, and transportation was shut down.

Some in the opposition were clearly out for vengeance against a government that had ruled Bolivia since 2006. Right-wing leader Luis Fernando Camacho called Sunday evening for two more days of protests and said he would present proposals for the prosecution of Morales, former vice president Alvaro Garcia Linares and MAS legislators.

“Let’s start judgments of the criminals of the government party, putting them in jail,” Camacho said in a video statement.
Two members of the electoral tribunal — its former president María Eugenia Choque and former vice president Antonio Costas — have already been detained. An election official in Santa Cruz, Sandra Kettels, was arrested Monday morning. The prosecutor’s office has announced warrants against all electoral officials.

Burned buses Monday in La Paz. (Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters)
“A night of terror,” the national newspaper La Razón declared. On Monday, angry Morales supporters set up barricades to block roads leading to El Alto-La Paz airport, the Associated Press reported.

Morales claimed late Sunday that an arrest warrant had been issued against him. Vladimir Calderón, the head of the national police, denied Sunday that an arrest order had been issued. But Calderón resigned on Monday, adding to the confusion on the ground.

Morales and the opposition blamed each other for the violence.

“The coup mongers who attacked my house and my sister’s, threatened ministers and their children with death, and attacked a mayor, now lie and try to blame us for the chaos and the violence they have provoked,” Morales tweeted Monday morning. “Bolivia and the world are witness to the coup.”
One key question revolved around whether the right-wing opposition, now clearly in control of the country, would allow the socialists to field any candidate in new elections after the OAS found evidence of election fraud. Morales had claimed a 10 percent margin of victory in the Oct. 20 vote — just enough to avoid a second round, in which his chances of losing would have been high.

Morales, who won past elections in landslides, had worn out his welcome. He ran for a fourth term despite losing a national referendum on term limits. But the socialists still command significant support in Bolivia, and a decision to bar them would risk more conflict.

Socialism doesn’t work? An emerging middle class of Bolivians would beg to differ.
The dizzying succession of events Sunday reverberated across Latin America. In Venezuela, analysts said, the left-wing, authoritarian government could take the attacks on Bolivian socialists as proof that voluntarily ceding power would be dangerous.
“In Venezuela, you have the statements by the opposition saying they want to work with [the left], that there won’t be any revenge,” said Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington. “I think there’s going to be a lot more skepticism of that after seeing what’s happening in Bolivia.”

Debate over whether democracy had been restored or broken raged in Bolivia and across the region. Morales’s socialists were accused of stealing an election. But critics said the military’s decision to pull its support and the mob rule that forced him out were anything but constitutional.

Views fell largely along ideological lines, exposing the political divisions among and within Latin American nations.

Some nations criticized the OAS for largely standing by while Morales was forced from office Sunday.

“We are going to urgently request a meeting of the Organization of American States, because yesterday, silence prevailed,” Marcelo Ebrard, the Mexican foreign minister, said Monday. “How can silence be maintained in the face of an event of this gravity?”

He reiterated that Mexico believes what happened Sunday constituted a coup and repeated Mexico’s offer of asylum for Morales. Ebrard said the former president had not yet requested it.
“What we can’t tolerate is when a military tells a president that he has to leave office,” he said. “What happened yesterday is a setback for the entire continent.”
AD

Argentina, run by outgoing center-right president Mauricio Macri, took a different view.
“For our government, there was no coup,” Normando Alvarez García, the Argentine ambassador to Bolivia, told a local radio station. “There’s an interruption of the constitutional order based on social unrest.”

[JackRiddler]

What do you think the moutpiece of the CIA is going to say about this?

[RocketMan]

The Condor flies again.

[alloneword]

Is the recent expulsion of Evo Morales by the military a coup in fact?

Who benefits?

What is the history?

What foreign factors are in play?

I must admit, number 4 here was news to me:

5 Fast Facts About the Military Coup in Bolivia...

Despite what the mainstream media headlines would have you believe, a coup is underway in Bolivia.
...

1. Evo Morales won re-election on October 20th
...
2. Reports of election fraud are unfounded
...
3. Carlos Mesa has a cozy relationship with the U.S.
...
4. 50-70% of the world’s lithium supply is found in Bolivia
...
5. Evo Morales opposes U.S. imperialism in Latin America

https://www.mintpressnews.com/5-fast-fa ... an/262741/

[Elvis]

Five words come to mind: "Completely fucking obvious as hell."

[Harvey]

Time for CIA Coup Master Thread?

[Elvis]

Time for CIA Coup Master Thread?

That strikes me as not a bad idea. The history makes clear that, until proven otherwise, CIA-backed regime change is the default explanation for this or any ME, African or Central/South American ouster of leftist governments. It could be a genuinely useful thread in terms of connecting dots and revealing patterns. For max efficacy, can we all agree to keep it focused and consolidated in one thread?
Best title wins.

[Grizzly]

What do you think the moutpiece[sic] of the CIA is going to say about this?

Well, of course he'll say "Hello! From SOA: Columbus, Georgia, to Fort Benning protest human rights abuses committed by some graduates of the academy or under their leadership, including murders, rapes and torture and contraventions of the Geneva Conventions.[1] Military officials state that even if graduates commit war crimes after they return to their home country, the school itself should not be held accountable for their actions. ...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_the_Americas_Watch

'I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. It’s – it was like – we had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment' - Pompeo Secretary Pompeo participates in a Q&A discussion at Texas A&M University as part of the Wiley Lecture Series, in College Station, Texas on April 15, 2019.

[cptmarginal]

Wow, I am flabbergasted by this news. Did not expect that, was not paying close enough attention. I wonder what current State Department cables from La Paz look like these days, post-Wikileaks. I bet they spend a lot of time talking about Áñez.

[cptmarginal]

Just wanted to add some friendly reminders, not implying that any of this is news to us

(this was a chapter in Rigorous Intuition, the book)

The Cocaine Coup and the Coca Revolution

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 20, 2005



The word mercy's gonna have a new meaning
When we are judged by the children of our slaves - Bruce Cockburn

I get many emails telling me I'm too negative. It's hard for me to disagree. Though what I want to be is just negative enough: neither stricken by paralysis nor buoyed up by cheap hope. That's a tough one.

So when good things happen - when real blows land against the empire and the last become first, at least for a while - they need acknowledgement. If only for the good of clearing my own head. Even sometimes at hope's "limited hangout" of electoral victory. Especially in Bolivia, when an indiginous man who talks like this is elected president:

When we speak of the "defense of humanity," as we do at this event, I think that this only happens by eliminating neoliberalism and imperialism. But I think that in this we are not so alone, because we see, every day that anti-imperialist thinking is spreading, especially after Bush's bloody "intervention" policy in Iraq. Our way of organizing and uniting against the system, against the empire's aggression towards our people, is spreading, as are the strategies for creating and strengthening the power of the people.

As Evo Morales begins to exercise his unambiguous mandate, it will be interesting, and quite likely disheartening, to watch how Bolivia suddenly becomes a topic of great concern in certain quarters; even possibly a crisis of national security demanding intervention.

Here's an early example from Jim Kouri, a Vice President of the National Association of Chiefs of Police, who's written an opinion piece entitled "Bolivian Thug Becomes President." He predictably bloviates that the win "will increase the destabilization of the South American continent," and that Morales is an "ally of the drug cartels and traffickers."

The continent enjoys far greater stability today - and in the mental health sense of the word, too - than in the days of death's head satraps employing the methods of the School of the Americas and answerable to none but Washington. And in an interview with Luis Gómez of Narco News, former Bolivian guerrilla leader and presidential candidate Felipe Quispe makes distinctions between coca and cocaine that undoubtedly would be lost on Kouri:

Coca has been, ancestrally, a sacred leaf. We, the indigenous, have had a profound respect toward it... a respect that includes that we don't "pisar" it (the verb "pisar" means to treat the leaves with a chemical substance, one of the first steps in the production of cocaine). In general, we only use it to acullicar: We chew it during times of war, during ritual ceremonies to salute Mother Earth (the Pachamama) or Father Sun or other Aymara divinities, like the hills. Thus, as an indigenous nation, we have never prostituted Mama Coca or done anything artificial to it because it is a mother. It is the occidentals who have prostituted it. It is they who made it into a drug. This doesn't mean that we don't understand the issue. We know that this plague threatens all of humanity and, from that perspective, we believe that those who have prostituted the coca have to be punished.

Kouri walks his readers right up to "regime change": "should [Morales's] coca policy show an increase of cocaine on US city streets, his regime will be seen as a national security threat and rightly so."

Funny, that. Or rather, like so many things these days, it would be funny if it didn't mean people's lives. Because on July 17, 1980, "los Novios de la Muerte" - narcotics traffickers and mercenaries recruited by fugitive Nazi and CIA asset Klaus Barbie - overthrew the democratic government of Bolivia in the "Cocaine Coup." Cocaine production increased dramatically and America was flooded with the cheap drug. In his essay on the drug war's shills in Kristina Borjesson's Into the Buzzsaw, 25-year DEA veteran Michael Levine writes that "there are few events in history that have caused more and longer-lasting damage to our nation." Bolivians could say the same.

Levine made headlines two months prior to the coup when his DEA sting netted Bolivian cartel leaders Roberto Gasser and Alfredo Gutierrez outside a Miami bank. He had paid them $8 million for the then-largest ever seizure of cocaine. Just a few weeks later Gasser and Gutierrez were released, thanks to pressure from the CIA and the State Department, and weeks after that both men and their cartels became principal financiers of the coup, and were rewarded by the new regime with squads of neo-Nazis to bully their competition.

And then there's Sun Myung Moon. Robert Parry remembers that one of the first international well-wishers who travelled to La Paz to congratulate the putschists was Moon's right hand Bo Hi Pak, former publisher of The Washington Times and "Koreagate" principal, who declared "I have erected a throne for Father Moon in the world's highest city." Later disclosures from the Bolivian government strongly suggested that Moon's organization had heavily invested in the coup, and Parry writes that in 1981 "war criminal Barbie and Moon leader Thomas Ward were often seen together in apparent prayer." Lt. Alfred Mario Mingolla, an Argentine intelligence officer recruited by Barbie, described Ward as his "CIA paymaster." His monthly salary was drawn from the offices of Moon's anti-communist umbrella organization, CAUSA. (As we've seen, Moon still has a huge stake in South America, having purchased the land above the world's largest fresh water aquifer, in Paraguay. These people play a long game.)

"Meanwhile," Parry adds, "Barbie started a secret lodge, called Thule. During meetings, he lectured to his followers underneath swastikas by candlelight." Old habits, hardly dying, and a polyglot web of fascist patrons unashamed to profit by the labours of their Nazi lieutenants.

And here's another would-be funny thing: there were no American headlines about all of that. None at all.

But maybe that's enough talk for now about a coup, while there's a revolution going on.

See Robert Parry, "Hitler's Shadow Reaches Toward Today"

Or, from the National Archives site:



And lastly, here's a fun way to spend some time - try this search on Google to find references to Morales in the "Cablegate" leaks:

Code: Select all

morales inurl:wikileaks.org/plusd/

[cptmarginal]

From The Wikileaks Files:

Cables show that, among South American leaders, Evo Morales—after Chávez—has probably been the most strongly opposed by the US government since his election in 2005. Morales’s electoral victory represented a seismic shift in Bolivia’s history—he is the country’s first indigenous president—and cables show that some foreign governments perceived him as “Bolivia’s Mandela.” His triumph at the ballot box by an unprecedented margin came after a string of unpopular predecessors (one, Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, notoriously spoke Spanish with an American accent).

As embassy cables reveal, the US government was antagonistic toward Morales from the beginning, referring to him derisively in a State Department background note in 2005, for example, as an “illegal-coca agitator.” This attitude continued even after Morales took office.

On January 3, 2006, just two days after Morales’s inauguration as president, the US ambassador made clear that multilateral assistance to Bolivia would hinge on what the embassy would subsequently refer to as the “good behavior” of the Morales government:

[The ambassador] also showed the crucial importance of US contributions to key international financial [sic] on which Bolivia depended for assistance, such as the International Development Bank (IDB), the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. “When you think of the IDB, you should think of the US,” the Ambassador said. “This is not blackmail, it is simple reality.”
…
“I hope you as the next president of Bolivia understand the importance of this,” he said, “because a parting of the ways would not be good for the region, for Bolivia or for the United States.” [06LAPAZ6] [Emphasis added.]

Unfortunately for the US Department of State, the Morales government would quickly show that it was not interested in a new IMF agreement—an unprecedented stance from a country that had been under IMF agreements for virtually all of the preceding twenty years, and a clear signal to Washington that this was a government determined to be more independent than its predecessors.

A few weeks later, Ambassador David Greenlee explicitly laid out a “carrots and sticks” approach to the Morales administration. Many of these related to Bolivia’s relationship with the IDB or to the existing preferential trade arrangement with the US, the ATPDEA:

4. (C) Dealing with the MAS-led government will require a careful application of carrots and sticks to encourage good, and to discourage bad, behavior and policy.
…
It may be important to send clear signals early on, shots over the bow, that it will not be business as usual. A menu of options that could be used depending on circumstances and that would resonate clearly include:

•Use USG’s veto authority within the IDB’s Fund for Special Operations (from which Bolivia currently receives all its IDB funding) to withhold IDB funding for Bolivia, estimated by the IDB Resrep in Bolivia to total $200 million in 2006.

•Postpone decision on the forgiveness of IDB debt (approximately $800 million under the Fund for Special Operations and $800 million under the IDB’s regular program) pending clarification of the new GOB’s economic policies.

•Pursue a postponement of the World Bank’s vote on debt relief for Bolivia. Request a 6-month delay, pending a review of the GOB’s economic policies.

•Disinvite GOB participation as observers at future Andean FTA events, pending clarification of the new GOB’s interest in participating in the FTA.

•Discourage GOB interest in pursuing dialogue on a possible MCC compact.

•Deny GOB requests for logistical support by NAS aircraft and equipment, except in cases of humanitarian disasters.

•Stop material support (tear gas, anti-riot gear, and other assistance) for Bolivia’s security services.

•Announce USG intention to not extend the ATPDEA trade benefits beyond the December 31, 2006 expiry date.

[06LAPAZ93]

“Many USAID-administered economic programs run counter to the direction the GOB wishes to move the country,” the cable also noted.

Supporting a violent opposition

Cables and much other evidence reveal that the US government supported a violent opposition movement in Bolivia. The US sought to redefine power relations in Bolivia—to the advantage of regional governments and the detriment of the central government—and used USAID to further this goal: “US assistance via USAID continues at previous levels, but the focus of assistance has shifted from the central government to Bolivia’s prefects and other decentralized players” [06LAPAZ1952] [Emphasis added.]

Significant support was allocated to the opposition-based departments of the “Media Luna,” an eastern “crescent” comprised of Beni, Pando, Santa Cruz, and Tarija, where the majority of Bolivia’s important natural gas deposits lie. A cable from April 2007 describes “USAID’s larger effort to strengthen regional governments as a counter-balance to the central government” [07LAPAZ1167]. A USAID report from 2007 stated that “OTI has approved 101 grants for $4,066,131 to help departmental governments operate more strategically.” A year later, the Media Luna departments would feel sufficiently emboldened to hold referenda on autonomy—despite these having been ruled illegal by the national judiciary.

As this later cable shows, the US embassy in La Paz shared a common political strategy with opposition groups—some of which were pursuing an actual separatist goal—versus the Morales government:

In a March 27–28 outreach trip to Santa Cruz, A/DCM met briefly with the Prefect (Governor), new Civic Committee President, business leaders, leaders in the forestry sector, a media owner, and the Cardenal. While they understand there are limits to what the US can do to reverse antidemocratic trends in Bolivia, they are grateful for continued US engagement. [09LAPAZ501] [Emphasis added.]

Support for departmental governments became, whether intended or not, wrapped up with support for a violent, destructive campaign against the Morales government in the later months of 2008.

When a full-blown political crisis emerged in August and September 2008, there was no public indication that the US government attempted to temper the opposition, and at no point did the US denounce the opposition violence as did, for example, the Union of South American Nations.

Following weeks of violence (in the worst incident, over a dozen indigenous Morales supporters were killed in Porvenir, in Pando province, apparently by a far-right militant group), property destruction (including the ransacking of government offices and the sabotage of a gas pipeline), and road blockades, there was hope that dialogue between the Morales government and the opposition would resolve the crisis. But this cable from September 18, 2008, shows that the opposition preferred a hard line that they did not expect the Morales government to accept, and opposition prefects and the central democratic opposition coalition (CONALDE) “were in agreement” that the “next stage” would be “to blow up gas lines.” The cable does not describe US officials attempting to dissuade the opposition figures from this strategy:

7. (C) Opposition Strategist Javier Flores told Emboff the morning of September 17 that the dialogue will break down, “it’s only a question of when.” Flores and opposition civic leader Branko Marinkovic predict more violence after the dialogue fails. Some radicals in the Santa Cruz prefecture and Santa Cruz civic committee reportedly wanted to stop the process yesterday and begin blowing up gas lines, but Flores and Marinkovic advocated playing out the dialogue option first. Once dialogue breaks down, however, the opposition group CONALDE is generally in agreement that the next stage is to blow up gas lines. [08LAPAZ2004]

Similarly, a cable from September 9 shows that “both [Pando prefect Leopoldo Fernández] and also Tarija’s opposition Prefect, Mario Cossio see violence as a probability to force the government to admit to the divisions in the country and take seriously any dialog” [08LAPAZ1931]. Fernández was arrested a week later in connection with the Porvenir massacre two days after this cable, on September 11.

Despite a lack of public commentary from US officials to this effect at the time, cables reveal that internally the State Department took seriously the possibility of Morales’s ouster or assassination in 2008. “Sources report that both sides are armed with personal weapons and ready to fight, with the opposition-aligned Santa Cruz Youth Union and university students reportedly preparing a trap for the government forces which could lead to a bloodbath,” noted a secret cable of September 24, 2008, describing how the Emergency Action Committee would “develop, with [US Southern Command Situational Assessment Team], a plan for immediate response in the event of a sudden emergency, i.e. a coup attempt or President Morales’ death” [08LAPAZ2083].

Fed up with US support for people and groups working to violently overthrow it, the Morales government declared US ambassador Philip Goldberg persona non grata on September 10, 2008, and expelled him. USAID’s lack of transparency regarding whom it was funding in Bolivia had contributed to the breakdown in relations; Bolivian officials had repeatedly requested the information, to no avail. Cables from 2007 describe the anger of the minister of the presidency, Juan Ramón Quintana, at the secretive nature of USAID’s programs [07LAPAZ2387]. US researchers also sought the release of USAID and related documents; by the time of the September 2008 events, three-and-a-half-year-old Freedom of Information Act requests remained unanswered. The US continued to send hundreds of millions of dollars to unnamed recipients in Bolivia via USAID after 2009. Ultimately, in 2013, Bolivia expelled USAID as well.

[stickdog99]

Time for CIA Coup Master Thread?

That strikes me as not a bad idea. The history makes clear that, until proven otherwise, CIA-backed regime change is the default explanation for this or any ME, African or Central/South American ouster of leftist governments. It could be a genuinely useful thread in terms of connecting dots and revealing patterns. For max efficacy, can we all agree to keep it focused and consolidated in one thread?
Best title wins.

Cucoup Clock

[DrEvil]

You're fired! The art of the coup.

[alloneword]

Some reporting of note, but nothing surprising:

Macleod

Blumenthal and Norton

+moonofalabama

Plus CEPR:

No Evidence That Bolivian Election Results Were Affected by Irregularities or Fraud, Statistical Analysis Shows

Examination Finds Tally Sheets Consistent with Evo Morales’s First-Round Victory

For Immediate Release: November 8, 2019

~

C*nts Interfere Again?

[Elvis]

I didn't mean to start a title contest here, but that works, if okay by PufPuf.

I got as far as, "A History of CIA _______." ...coups? interference? fuckery?