Bolivia

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Re: Bolivia

Post by blindpig » Sat Nov 14, 2020 2:13 pm

Bolivia's Government Will Tax Large Fortunes in 2021

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Bolivian Minister of Economy and Finances Marcelo Montenegro announced in an interview with Bolivian media that the MAS government will place a tax on all large fortunes above 4.3 million dollars. | Photo: @QuienNoticias

Published 13 November 2020 (13 hours 31 minutes ago)

Bolivia's government will apply in 2021 a tax on those whose wealth exceeds 30 million Bolivians (about 4.3 million dollars), the Minister of Economy and Finance, Marcelo Montenegro, informed Friday.

In an interview for the Bolivian TV channel UNITEL, the minister said that the newly elected government is working on the scope of this tax, which was announced by the new Bolivian President, Luis Arce, during his political campaign.

Montenegro explained that "it is a tax on large fortunes" and would impact at least 150 people, achieving a potential collection of 100 million Bolivians (14.4 million dollars).

According to the Minister of Economy and Finance, Bolivia is one of the countries in Latin America with a considerably low tax base, meaning tax revenues are minimal.

The tax had been announced by Arce since the beginning of his campaign and was ratified after his victory in the general elections on October 18. However, he clarified that it would be applied to personal assets and not to companies to avoid the private sector's complications and prevent decapitalization.

Arce has commented that the tax's purpose is to generate new sources of income from those who have more and give to those who have less.

Those who have accounts in "tax havens" privatized strategic companies in #Bolivia and support an American to preside over the IDB; now, they oppose the tax on large fortunes. They do not take care of the country, they take care of their pockets. https://t.co/jBry08khHY

— Michael Quintín Quindelán Abreu (@quintin_abreu) August 31, 2020
Financial analyst Luis Ballivián said this Friday to Xinhua that applying a tax on those who have more money would be a wise measure and that it would have, above all, a component of solidarity with the less favored.

A former official with the Central Bank of Bolivia (BCB) considered that such tax would significantly contribute to the country, which faces a deep economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ballivián commented that if the new government's idea is to capture more income and create a new tax, it would also be prudent to analyze the situation of other sectors that handle large sums of capital.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Bol ... -0022.html

Dontcha just love it when policy and pay-backs dovetail?

4.3 M would work for me in this country too, all this 1% talk lets too many off the hook.(which I think is the real purpose of that meme.)

The investor class should look to the Miami real estate market, gonna be tight what with the Bolivian booj moving there, until the flood comes....
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Bolivia

Post by blindpig » Tue Nov 24, 2020 11:45 pm

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Social Movements in Bolivia Prevented Jeanine Añez’s Escape
November 24, 2020

Social movements in Bolivia reported Sunday that former de facto president Jeanine Áñez tried to escape to Brazil, but was prevented.

A representative of social organizations in the department of Beni, in northern Bolivia, announced that they prevented Áñez from boarding a plane at the Jorge Henrich Arauz airport in the city of Trinidad, when she was trying to go to a border city and then go to Brazil, an act that they considered was the flight of the ex-ruler.

“We cornered her when she was escaping to Brazil. We arrested her and she is locked up in an apartment, and now she must respond to the massacres in Senkata and Sacaba,” said the spokesman, who is not identified in the video circulating on social networks.

Last week, former Minister of Government Arturo Murillo fled the country and arrived in Panama, while former Defense Minister Fernando López is in Brazil. In this regard, three officials of the Bolivian Migration Directorate were arrested for allowing fugitives to escape.

In October the Plurinational Legislative Assembly of Bolivia recommended that the Public Ministry (Prosecutor’s Office) initiate a trial against Añez for the massacres in Sacaba, Cochabamba, and Senkata, El Alto, which occurred in November 2019. In the document, she was accused of the alleged commission of the crimes of genocide, torture, forced disappearances, and others.

The Armed Forces and the Police played key roles in the coup of November 10, 2019 that forced former President Evo Morales to leave office. On several occasions after the coup, the indigenous leader has denounced the Bolivian military high command for decorating “coup leaders” who massacred the population.

In this new stage that Bolivia is experiencing following the inauguration of President Luis Arce of the MAS party the authorities, himself included, have promised to investigate the various crimes committed during the year that Áñez was in charge of the government.

https://orinocotribune.com/social-movem ... zs-escape/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Bolivia

Post by blindpig » Tue Jan 12, 2021 2:41 pm

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Towards a geopolitics of popular power
Posted Jan 12, 2021 by Eds.

Originally published: Internationalist 360 by Rafael Bautista S. (December 28, 2020)

The empire forced us to think only and exclusively locally. It is time to think universally.

Lecture given at the event: “The Collapse of the Unlawful State and the Recovery of Democracy”, held in La Paz, on December 14, 2020, in the auditorium of the Vice Presidency of the Plurinational State of Bolivia.
Let me begin by telling a story: In 1971, a corporate lawyer named Lewis Powell sent a memo to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce warning the business world that forces of the left were threatening its leadership role in American society; he literally warned that “institutions responsible for the indoctrination of youth,” such as universities, churches, colleges, and the media, no longer fulfilled that function.

The “Powell memorandum” served as the basis for the “Trilateral Commission” to commission its think tanks to promote a new concept of democracy, because they concluded that there is too much democracy and that democracy itself is a threat to the “American way of life”. This is the origin of neo-liberal democracy, as a “democratic system”; a new idea of democracy according to the new interests/values (as the former presidential candidate John MacCain said: “our interests are our values and our values are our interests”) that supports the financial sphere, the kind of world that, through globalization, will promote the dollar.

It is this new idea of democracy that entered the academic world and was functionalized in our countries in the so-called period of “democratic recovery” following national security dictatorships. It is a democracy without demos, without people, which is why it is a formalist concept, whose task is merely to preserve the institutions already formatted by the dictatorships (and constitutionally consecrated by neoliberalism). It is that democracy defended by the large media and the entire academy and intelligentsia trained in “institutionalism” (as the only guarantee and continuation). It is the democracy created in the image and likeness of the dollar, and promoted by the world bodies, created in Bretton Woods, in 1944, to impose on the whole world, the cosmogony of the dollar, the true triumphant power of the Second World War.

Why did the academic intelligentsia, even on the left, believe the mythological-ideological narrative (of not only that idea of democracy but also of the gringo idea of “freedom of expression”, of “human rights”, of “respect for minorities”, of “plurality” and “diversity” made in the USA) that the dollar imposes, as something naturalized in political and social life?

Allow me to refer to a letter that reveals how the gringos dedicated themselves to thinking about the best way to dominate us, beginning with our elites, decisively implementing the Monroe doctrine (which dates from 1823 and whose authors are James Monroe and John Quincy Adams), although it has only been explicit State policy since 1870. This letter is addressed to former President Woodrow Wilson by his Secretary of State, whose mission in Mexico was to study the possibilities of real domination over that nation. The letter says:

We must abandon the idea of putting an American citizen in the Mexican presidency, as that would lead again to war. The solution needs more time: we must open the doors of our universities to ambitious young Mexicans and make the effort to educate them in the American way of life, in our values and in respect for the leadership of the United States. Mexico will need competent administrators, and in time, those young people will come to hold important positions and eventually take over the presidency itself. And without the need for the United States to spend a penny or fire a shot, they will do what we want, and they will do it better and more radically than we could have done ourselves. – Richard Lansing, former Secretary of Estate under Woodrow Wilson, 1924.

They started with Mexico, but spread this plan to all the elites in our countries. Once the national elites are formatted according to the worldview of the dollar, then we can begin to talk about how domination can achieve legitimacy even among the dominated themselves. The national ” intelligentsia” itself is constituted as a peripheral-satellite consciousness; that is why it constitutes itself as a faithful administrator of a new and most inhuman process of transference, from the periphery to the center of the world.

If the elites themselves renounce their national identity, then, educated in a literal “voluntary servitude” (as Ettiene de la Boétie suggested), they can transfer net power, as a renunciation of sovereignty, to the center of the world; in this way, the center is anointed with power, both formal and material, which is given to it by the periphery as a result of that voluntary cession of sovereignty which, in the last instance, is our will to live that feeds the life of the center. The periphery not only transfers raw materials (to overcome the economicist vision of the left) but also the will of life, then a dialectic of plus-valuation of the life of the center occurs inversely proportional to a devaluation of the life of the periphery itself. From this the center is nourished as an Empire and therefore can maintain a stable, effective and lasting center-periphery design which, from being geopolitical, ends up being even ontological. This is what we call coloniality (beyond Quijano) in its most radical sense.

Colonial subjectivity then produces its own confinement, because its own consciousness is peripheral-satellite, because it never takes itself as the center of its own decisions. Thus it never even produces, in the terms propagated by the geopolitical center, its own development. That is why it produces despicable elites (even for the owners of the world), who possess no dignity whatsoever, because their own program of life, which translates into politics, is reduced to the most unworthy servility.

In this way, the oligarchy, if it could have constituted itself into an aristocracy, would only become a kakistos-cracy (the power of the infamous and the worst). Then they foist on their own people the very miseries that portray them in their entirety. For this they have “little doctors” who cover up and adorn their hardships, with stories that, only by pedagogical reiteration and cultural emphasis, insistently installs in the social imaginary servile oligarchic lordship as the only political option.

The “learned city” against its own people is the imaginary castle invented by its intellectuals (who are no longer organic for the people but transgenic). These are now the ones who dress up as scientists and do not even realize that they are a media invention: these are the political “analysts”. They do not even know why they fail to grasp anything, since they do not realize that mediocracy itself has devalued political science as a literary genre. They believe that the image invented by the media is reality and, thus, from that confusion, the only thing they can produce is the fiction needed by the media to invent public opinion.

Let me digress. To better understand this ideological rapture of the supposedly “thinking” spheres in our societies, I would like to expose how the think tanks of the Empire operate: Ron Suskind was an editorialist for the Wall Street Journal until 2000 and author of research on White House communication. In a 2014 article, published in the New York Times, he revealed the conversation he had, in 2002, with a junior Bush advisor:

He told me that people like me were part of that group of guys who believe that their analyses are based on reality (the reality-based community): you believe that solutions emerge from your judicious analysis of observable reality. I nodded and muttered something about the principles of the Enlightenment and empiricism. But he interrupted me: The world doesn’t work that way anymore. We are now an empire and when we act, we create our own reality”. This is what security advisor Karl Rove said, and it portrays very well what we might call “peripheral intellectuality”. Because he expressly said: “We are now an Empire and when we act we create our own reality. And while you study that reality, judiciously, as you wish, we act again and create other realities, new ones, which you can study as well, and so things happen. We are the actors of history. And you, all of you, can only study what we do.

That’s why the “little doctors” of the “learned city” (the academics of the university system) didn’t take notice of the coup, which was a dictatorial assault on democracy itself that meant for them a so-called “people’s revolution. They did not see the coup, because they only saw and continue to see what the imperial narrative imposes on them as reality.

Then, submission is no longer only political but also intellectual, and reveals that satellite consciousness of the periphery that does not know how to position itself as a reference but always to the narrative imposed by the center. From this mythological narrative, they interpret themselves as being made in the image and likeness of the master of the north. Therefore, even the traditional left and the “defenders of human rights”, shamefully justified the genocide, because they no longer had eyes to distinguish the people from the fascist hordes, because the veil of the imperial narrative had blinded them to any critical perspective to reveal what was really happening. Under the cover of ideological stories of “democracy”, “freedom of expression” and “human rights”, the Empire imposes the appropriate scenery for its interests in order to provoke planned demolitions of democratic processes, as a prelude to the famous constructive chaos, in the terminology of the hybrid wars that promote the “fourth and fifth generation wars”.

We can say that these supposed critics remained in the 20th century, with the type of reality that the Empire had created for the ideological enjoyment of an already anachronistic left, which had also positioned itself for its own misfortune. They denounced the right wing of MAS so much that they did not realize their own right wing.

And this should be a reason for serious and continuous reflection, since the indigenous peoples here in this room warned in 2006 that “the Latin American left never had an identity”. Ultimately, what sustains the vital and political stakes that I propose to myself depends on the narrative that I adopt; that is, all my options depend on, ultimately, what I believe or who I believe. And if I believe the media, which are the political operators of the imperial narrative, then I am lost.

The coup they promoted and the dictatorship they imposed was not a classic coup. And it has much to do with the subsequent global quarantine that cloaked an undeclared state of siege worldwide; whose purposes were never sanitary but political, as military exercises of strategic deterrence to corner all of humanity. They are resetting the world economic system and for that they need a globalized experience of shock to promote a new post-imperial world order, much more perverse and sinister than we have ever known. That is why the importance of what we are experiencing, and how we overcome it as a people; to teach the world that post-imperial power, the transnational deep state of the national deep state, can calculate everything, but less and never, the hard question of all political equations, the people factor.

That is why we owe it to our people not to have succumbed and restored their own spirit and thus overcome the worst misgovernment we have ever suffered. The importance of Bolivia is decisive in weighing what a detachment of South America from the geo-economy of the dollar would mean. In the current collapse of the imperial center-periphery design, the Atlantic has ceased to be the distributor of trade and the world market and this is turning definitively to the Pacific. Bolivia, as a geostrategic corridor connecting South America to the economy of the 21st century, is considering, for the first time in its history, no longer being just a geographical heart but a regional strategic geopolitical center of the new and inevitable multipolar geopolitical physiognomy of the 21st century. That is why there is interest from our neighbors (with local right-wing complicity), sponsors of the geopolitical coup we suffered, to shut us up and cancel us out again, objectively and subjectively.

That is why we need to rethink everything again, from a necessary democratization of democracy itself to the consolidation of a project of life of our own that generates in us and in the world the overcoming of the modern-liberal-capitalist idea of the State and the civilizing proposal of what would be the new idea of the plurinational communitarian State, in accordance with life. If living well, the “sum qamaña”, is to be a political horizon with universal validity, it can no longer be only discourse but must become State policy. And this also means deepening what we have called the geopolitics of popular power.

But before we get into that, let us consider something we cannot ignore. That is, why did the coup triumph, and why were the people immobilized, disorganized and cornered into orphanhood, after having been the creator of the democratic-cultural revolution?

In January 2018 we had warned that a “color revolution” was in the making in our country. A certain official infallibilism believed itself the owner of political power, without realizing what was happening. We have to know why the right wing triumphed circumstantially so as not to repeat a new fascist uprising. Let us remember. The concept “color revolution” is somewhat novel in politics. It is not precisely a concept that originated in political theory, but rather from the military sphere. It is a strategic component of the “fourth generation wars” and is designed to implode democratic processes that are inconvenient for gringo hegemony. It implodes them from within. For this reason, it relies on much more complex factors that require not only a detailed knowledge of the political reality and of the bloc in power, but also the possibility of interfering in the government’s own management in order to undermine, from within, the legitimacy that sustains it. That is why it is conceptualized as a “revolution”, because it appears and develops through a transfer of legitimacy, which grows inversely proportional to the loss of legitimacy of the government and which is, in the last instance, what ends up anointing the opposition with a “democratic” and even “revolutionary” aura.

It is from within that the conditions are generated to implode political stability, as a condition for the “constructive chaos” that is imposed as the new physiognomy that a country acquires with no other choice than intervention. Now then, how is an implosion provoked from within?

It is not specifically the right wing (as the political arm of the oligarchy and of the gringo hegemony), the manager of an ideal situation for the appearance of a “color revolution”, but rather the very contradictions of the government that corner us into a situation, not only of popular withdrawal but of transference of legitimacy. In other words, if from the beginning of the “process of change”, legitimacy had been constituted as a popular patrimony, when it is appropriated by the right wing it is then that the oligarchic insurrection recovers vitality; because the condition of legitimacy that has been transferred to it is what can now reorganize all the oppositions into a unified body. It can be said that, in this sense, the oligarchic insurrection no longer needs the oligarchy as a visible actor, but that the middle class and even popular sectors become the contingent of social onslaught that causes the destabilization necessary to generate the expected chaos.

This began with the 2010 gasoline strike, was exacerbated by the conflict in the TIPNIS, and ended with the referendum on February 21. The banners of “defense of Mother Earth,” “living well,” “decolonization,” and “indigenous issues” were gradually being ceded by a government that, the further it moved away from the plurinational horizon, the more legitimacy it transferred to the actors who were increasingly empowered. In this way, the government and MAS were gradually losing the spirit that had given them a new legitimacy in the political field.

The novelty and uniqueness of the Bolivian process, which was what gave transcendental meaning to the new plurinational State that was to be constituted, was what was renounced and left to the government administration to redeem another state cycle, within the margins of action that the liberal substance of the colonial State could allow. This meant that the government leadership itself renounced the very meaning of change and, in this way, replaced a stately spirit that would inevitably “normalize” state management, once the plurinational was condemned to become mere declaratory rhetoric.

But, with this, not only did the government alienate itself from the new legitimacy, but it also left the people orphaned by the mystique that had made possible its reconstitution as a historical subject and that inaugurated the possibility of producing a new concept of politics and democracy. For this reason, the opposition began to appropriate the language of the nation in an instrumental way in order to definitively empty the people of a discourse necessary for its reconstitution as a political subject. That is, it is not the cunning of the right wing but the renunciation by the government itself of the plurinational character that should be its new political substance, that promoted the articulation of the right wing in “democratic” opposition (the democratic being now the patrimony of the opposition bloc).

This ideological emptying of the new historical challenge is what served as a breeding ground for the replacement of the lordship, unconsciously promoted by a government directive that, renouncing the plurinational horizon (and reaffirming only the modern-capitalist myths, which translated into the developmentalist challenge), emptied the people themselves of the horizon that was proposed as a historical subject. In this way, the return to “normality” is described in the terms that the right wing itself uses: the promised change never came, but rather, corruption even took over the government of change. Then, the transfer of legitimacy initiates the insurrection because, moreover, once the people are emptied of their own mystique, then they face a conservative side waving their same flags, leaving the people powerless to see themselves now under the stigma of being “anti-democratic” and “dictatorial”.

If the people, in the midst of the constitutional process, until 2010, were the heralds of democratic mysticism (which should have led to a new concept of democracy), they found themselves expropriated from their own creation and confined to a secondary role of mere obedience to a government policy that, to make matters worse, no longer showed any interest in claiming the indigenous horizon that guaranteed their arrival in power.

What remained and gave away an enthusiastic assimilation into traditional political culture -what needed to be transformed- was the pure political calculation of the accumulation of power. This gave the right wing the best arguments to denounce all official initiatives -even the best ones- as “authoritarian”. So, it was not that the opposition would decompose the popular character of the new state, but rather, from within, that that decomposition began to happen. What the opposition has done was to foment destabilization as a reflection of that decomposition. And this was the scenario from which a “color revolution” became possible.

It is called this because it is promoted with all the democratic physiognomy that was usurped from the people; in this way, the sectors opposed to the new Constitution and to the principles of a democratic-cultural revolution, view themselves in the best position to recover the state patrimony. Then a lordly insurrection can be provoked that can mobilize great contingents of the social masses to destroy a democratic process with democratic flags and, in that way, make a popular recomposition impossible.

This means that a “color revolution” must generate its legitimacy from the very loss of legitimacy of the government; the mode of that transfer is what would guarantee the success of the “revolution”. That is why the Pentagon’s think tanks use this concept, taking advantage of and instrumentalizing the popular-democratic character of a revolution in order, through it, to restore its hegemony by recovering a democratic system useful to its interests.

Since the government is no longer capable of containing the moral values that the opposition now wields as its unique patrimony, then we find ourselves in a situation in which there are “good guys” and “bad guys”, and the media are in charge of canonizing this bellicose dichotomy. For this reason, in order to present itself as a “revolution,” it must first imbibe that transferred legitimacy that the government can no longer recover.

That is where the “color revolution” began, transforming the right wing, on the media platform, into the new depository of the legitimacy usurped from the subject of change. What comes out then to the streets, to the violent confrontation, under the rubric of the people, is not a people as a people, because this would mean a historical subject that believes in a new horizon of life; rather, what now constitutes itself as an empowered actor, is a contingent that defends the hegemonic lordly, colonial, racist and liberal order and, for that very reason, can even demand imperial intervention.

It is the very contradictions, within the official bloc, which inclined social expectations to a conservative approach because, in addition, those ravings are accompanied by a gradual abandonment of what generated, in the people, a new horizon of beliefs. The block in power becomes conservative and an elite appears that constitutes itself as a substitute subject for the plurinational subject.

This substitutive subject imposes its way of “understanding the process of change” and establishes a cult of personality as a guarantee of a fidelity that substitutes the project for the leader. But with that cult, it only empties the leader of legitimacy and turns his leadership into a personal adventure.

Therefore, what we call “llunquerío” (or sycophancy), is the tributary obedience that not not only unconstitutes the leader but the people themselves. There is no longer a critical relationship with the leader and, without this, the leader no longer relates to the people as a subject. The leadership assumes an analogous verticality, because the sacredness of politics has been abandoned and, consequently, everything is corrupted. Everything comes down to defending the power achieved. Once the mystique and the spirit -the sacred of politica-, of which the people was the historical subject, is diluted, the only thing left is power and political calculation. The popular revolution becomes bourgeois, then the opposition side can say: “they are like us, equal or worse”.

Once the horizon of “living well,” the mysticism and the plurinational spirit has been abandoned, the only thing that remains is the cult of the leader. Fidelity is no longer to a project but to the permanence of the enthroned figure and this ends up not only reducing the people but the leader himself, since this leads to plunging him into an irremediable solipsism. That is to say, they end up sacrificing him for the sake of sublimation. This generates (what we have called) the syndrome of the encircled king:

The entourage (also called “q’ara circle” or “white circle”) elevates the king to a divine condition because his presence is the only thing that guarantees the existence of the entourage (since without the king they are nothing). The king becomes omnipotent, but he needs the entourage, and the entourage needs a dependent king. That is why he isolates and envelops it; so that everything is done for him and, in that way, the king no longer sees with his eyes but with the eyes of the entourage, he no longer hears but with his ears; his contact with reality is mediated by that presence that envelopes him the more endive he is. But the king is not a god and, when this becomes evident, the king does not serve the retinue any more; then they sacrifice him and even raise him to martyrdom. So they appear unharmed and make of the king a scapegoat that will bear all faults and sins; while the retinue, clean and immaculate, saved by the blood of the immolated one, will be devoted again to look for a new king.

The people found themselves orphans, because being the subject, actor and creator of the “process of change”, they were gradually displaced and excluded by this substitute subject that we have called “the thermidor of the process of change”. Let us learn. The only guarantee of a revolution is the people themselves, and if this is ignored and the people are marginalized from power and their ability to make decisions is expropriated, the only thing that occurs is the empowerment of a right wing that is hungry to recapture political power.

What they proposed was to cut off the ajayu of the people. That is why they were so fierce against Evo, because in politics no one is only one, but what one represents, and Evo represented the Indian converted into a multitude, into a project, into a horizon of life. That’s why fascism wanted to repeat the dismemberment of Tupak Katari, to teach our people a lesson so that they would never dare to be equal to their “masters”.

But our people won. They came together as a people’s power, from all corners and all extremes, to show us what defines “a people as a people”. In the face of any pact or negotiation, it taught us that life cannot be negotiated, especially when it is seriously threatened by the presence of the most spurious of the oligarchic right, which has become an illegitimate government.

In that sense, the only guarantee of democratic recovery has always been the unified popular leadership that began to happen historically and effectively. That is why the right wing (and its media) are so interested in provoking divisions, disagreements and disagreements. Let us learn. The struggle has never been homogeneous but analogical; not everyone is walking at the same rhythm, even in their demands, but everyone, from the very bases, configured the decantation of the self-awareness that we are placing the historic destiny of the nation at risk.

If the dictatorship had triumphed, this would have meant, at least, another half century of postponement in the development of popular power. But the people recovered the lucidity that made them the subject of the constituent process, and their own ancestors (of all our history, absent in the myopia of the historians) have given them back, once again, the “democratic and revolutionary unction”. Thanks to them, the fascist-oligarchic daring to balkanize Bolivia was circumstantially halted; and that is what is contributing to the definitive advance of popular power as an institutional and constituent power.

Elections both open and close possibilities. They are a democratic exercise, but not democracy itself. When they are tailored to a democracy according to the market, that is, to neoliberalism, the vote can be the most deceptive (as is any manipulated poll). For this reason, the true “kratos” of democracy is not an election (which is always contingent) but the constant, continuous and even imaginative exercise of popular power.

An election is not defined as “democratic” by its mere realization but by everything that makes it possible. In this sense, only a true “democratic recovery” could have ensured credible elections and where it was possible to recover, once again, the “democratic unction” of a people who were the object of a fascist usurpation which, not only sought to take away their democratic spirit, and even cut off their own historical capacity.

Now our people is rising historically, in this decisive hour, with an accumulation of centuries and can therefore awaken the oligarchic nightmare of the “Indian made into a crowd”, the “blockade made into a political school”, the “march made into a historical school”. Our history is coming back and announces a new “historical encirclement” to show us where the true ignorance, the anti-nation, the anti-patriotism of a caste that always duped its subordinates with its own colonial miseries, lies.

To “encircle” this caste and its “living space” (the abduction they made of the city) means, in the popular struggle, the abbreviation of its nefarious social transmission. That is why the expansive nature of popular power is its historical irradiation of a transcendental character. All times are present in the Pachakuti, because all times demand historical reparation, from the past denied to the future not fulfilled or the future not reached. All demand redemption when the present proposes to constitute the redemption of all our history. That is why the people rise up in their unification from all their past as historical accumulation. That is why they awaken a wisdom of profound density that allows them to interpret the present in the light of all times.

A geopolitics of people’s power opens us to the challenge of thinking about the conditions of possible irradiation of strategic power. Because power that is not strategic is not power at all. The empire submitted us to think in a solely and exclusively local way. It is time to think in a universal way. The empire always thinks this way. That is why now the peoples must also think universally, in order to dismantle and definitively destroy the power of world domination which, for five centuries, has developed the logic of death, leading us to this civilizational crisis which we are suffering as the possible end of life itself.

It is said in geopolitics, that the true policy is not the national policy but the foreign policy; for that reason, it is the way of strategic insertion, in the global board, what defines the viability of a certain project. It is the world horizon, the maximum horizon of intelligibility of any political project. It is time for the peoples to radiate all their potentialities in the macro context, where the effectiveness of a new global desideratum is defined. In the midst of a civilizational crisis and in a transition without a defined physiognomy, humanity is hungry for alternatives, thirsty for a new hope for life. Our existence, that of our ancestors and that of all humanity depends on it.

I would like to thank the members of the decolonization workshop, my community of argumentation, with whom we also resisted the coup, from our own trenches and, above all, by becoming a community again. Patiently summoning the most sacred antiquity and the most sacred of ancient times, to nourish the faith and hope they wanted to destroy in us. In their name, a gratitude also to all the anonymous heroes that, in the networks, streets, walls, bombardments, we denounced the politics of final solution that wanted to be imposed by fascism and disseminated from Bolivia to the region.

Jawilla! Jawilla”. Nina Achachila, Awicha Inal Mana, PachaMama, PachaTata, thank you, because as a people we have received the anointing of the qamasa and the ch’ama from our Grandfathers and Grandmothers. This struggle was not only ours but also yours. Because we are the only reason for your existence. If the enemy had won, not even our dead would have been saved, because if the people perish, memory and history also perish, our dead and our seeds. But thanks to you we have restored the ajayu of the people Jallalla Boliviamanta!

La Paz, Chuquiago Marka, 14-12-2020


Translation by Internationalist 360°

https://mronline.org/2021/01/12/towards ... lar-power/
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Re: Bolivia

Post by blindpig » Thu Feb 18, 2021 1:04 pm

BOLIVIA RETURNS CREDIT TO THE IMF AGREED DURING THE AÑEZ COUP
18 Feb 2021 , 6:24 am .

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The Government of Luis Arce canceled the IMF 346.7 million dollars of a debt contracted by the coup administration of Añez (Photo: File)

The Central Bank of Bolivia (BCB) reported in a statement that it will initiate the repayment of the credit of 351 million dollars of a debt contracted by the de facto Government of Jeanine Añez with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The Bolivian issuing body declared that the loan incurs irregularities and causes great expenses due to the agreed financial conditions.
@KawsachunNews

BREAKING: Bolivia has cancelled and returned the full sum of the US $346.7 Million IMF loan taken out by the coup regime, in rejection of IMF impositions on internal economic policy.

As of February 2021, the loan had already racked up $24.3 Million in interest and commissions.
Image

"The BCB as the government's financial agent, in defense of the economic sovereignty of the country and after carrying out the necessary administrative procedures with the creditor, made the total payment of US $ 351.5 million," said the entity.

"The analysis carried out by the Central Bank of Bolivia also determined the so-called Rapid Financing Instrument of the IMF conditioned on a series of fiscal, financial, exchange and monetary impositions. (...) it violated the sovereignty and economic interests of the country."

The decision would have been made after parliamentarians from the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) refused to approve the loan in the Legislative Assembly, which had been agreed in April 2020 but required authorization from that state body. They considered that the IMF was "conditioning the exchange policy in the country," said the president of the BCB, Edwin Rojas, quoted by the digital medium Opinion.

Rojas specified that all necessary administrative, civil and criminal actions will be carried out against officials and former officials who "are responsible for renegotiating, signing and carrying out the loan operation, due to the cost it represents for Bolivia."

The total amount that the BCB canceled corresponds to the 327.2 million dollars agreed in April 2020 by the coup leader Jeanine Áñez, and 24.3 million dollars more for the exchange rate variation and interest and commissions. In just nine months, the country's debt to the international body increased by an additional tens of millions of dollars.

IMF spokesman Gerry Rice had stated in June last year that credit to support Bolivia's balance of payments was "transparent."

https://misionverdad.com/bolivia-devuel ... pe-de-anez
We think that debt has to be seen from the perspective of its origins. Debt’s origins come from colonialism’s origins. Those who lend us money are those who colonized us. They are the same ones who used to manage our states and economies. These are the colonizers who indebted Africa through their brothers and cousins, who were the lenders. We had no connections with this debt. Therefore we cannot pay for it.

Debt is neo-colonialism, in which colonizers have transformed themselves into “technical assistants.” We should rather say “technical assassins.” They present us with financing, with financial backers. As if someone’s backing could create development. We have been advised to go to these lenders. We have been offered nice financial arrangements. We have been indebted for 50, 60 years and even longer. That means we have been forced to compromise our people for over 50 years.

Under its current form, controlled and dominated by imperialism, debt is a skillfully managed reconquest of Africa, intended to subjugate its growth and development through foreign rules. Thus, each one of us becomes the financial slave, which is to say a true slave, of those who had been treacherous enough to put money in our countries with obligations for us to repay. We are told to repay, but it is not a moral issue. It is not about this so-called honor of repaying or not.

Thomas Sankara,' A United Front Against Debt'
https://www.marxists.org/archive/sankar ... uly/29.htm
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Re: Bolivia

Post by blindpig » Sun Mar 14, 2021 2:51 pm

Bolivian Coup Leader Jeanine Áñez Arrested
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MARCH 13, 2021
Peoples Dispatch

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Former coup leader Jeanine Áñez was arrested early on March 13 due to her participation in the coup against Evo Morales on November 10, 2019. Photo: Telam

Áñez was the leader of the coup regime that was responsible for countless human rights violations including massacres and political persecution, and a crackdown on civil liberties

On Saturday March 13, Jeanine Áñez, who was the leader of the coup-installed regime in Bolivia, was arrested by authorities in the early hours of the day. The arrest came a day after a prosecutor in the Bolivian capital La Paz ordered the detention of Áñez, several people who worked alongside her in the coup regime and leaders of the security forces. They have been charged with terrorism, sedition and conspiracy.



The charges are related to the plotting and execution of the coup d’état carried out by the right-wing supported by the armed forces, on November 10, 2019 which overthrew the democratically-elected president Evo Morales and forced him to flee the country, amid threats and acts of violence against him and his family members. The prosecutor pressed charges following an official complaint filed by Lidia Patty, a former MAS legislator, who declared that Áñez, several ex-ministers, former members of the military and the police, as well as far-right political leader Luis Fernando Camacho, planned and promoted the overthrow of Evo Morales in November 2019.

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Following Morales’ forced resignation, Jeanine Áñez illegally seized power and ruled Bolivia for a year until Morales’ Movement Against Socialism (MAS) won a landslide victory in the elections held on October 18, 2020. During her time in power, in addition to the overall subversion of the democratic order and the rule of law, the regime oversaw and authorized systematic human rights violations in order to silence opposition to the coup and consolidate power. This includes the two massacres of Senkata and Sacaba, violent repression of protests, persecution of political opposition activities, the granting of impunity for members of the armed forces involved in rights violations, and more.


The coup regime also sabotaged Bolivia’s economy with its neoliberal policies that favored transnational corporations and international financial institutions. Áñez’s regime was also implicated in several corruption schemes which involved the embezzlement of money during the purchasing of essential goods to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.

Following her arrest, Evo Morales wrote on Twitter, “For justice and truth for the 36 fatal victims, the more than 800 injured, and the more than 1,500 illegally detained during the coup d’état. The authors and accomplices of the dictatorship that looted the economy and attacked life and democracy in Bolivia must be investigated and sanctioned.”


Morales, like dozens of members of the MAS and other social and political movements in Bolivia, was a victim of political persecution following the coup. On December 18, 2019, just over a month after the coup was carried out, Auturo Murillo, the Minister of the interior of the regime, announced on Twitter that an arrest warrant had been issued against Morales. The arrest warrant issued by the special anti-corruption prosecutor accused Morales of sedition, terrorism and financing of terrorism. It called on the police to apprehend Morales and bring him to the attorney general’s office. The warrant and the charges prevented Morales from returning to Bolivia and deprived him of his political rights. In the elections of October 2020, Evo was barred from running for senator.


The arrest of Áñez has been applauded by many across the world as an important step in the struggle for justice in Bolivia following the year of violence and abuse in the aftermath of the coup. However, far-right leaders in Bolivia, who were once calling for the arrest and persecution of MAS, have now condemned the arrest of Áñez and others as “political persecution” and a “witch hunt.”

Áñez herself wrote on social media that her arrest warrant was “an act of abuse and political persecution” and that the government was “accusing her of having participated in a coup d’état that never occurred.”

Meanwhile, many have pointed out that several key leaders of the coup government, who also face changes, have escaped. Before the MAS government took office in early November, Arturo Murillo and the Minister of Defense, Fernando López, who are both accused of ordering the violent repression of anti-coup protests, fled to Miami. Out of the nearly 12 mentioned in the arrest warrant, only Áñez, Álvaro Coimbra, the former Minister of Justice and Rodrigo Guzmán, the former Energy Minister, have been arrested.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2021/03/ ... -arrested/
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Re: Bolivia

Post by blindpig » Wed Mar 17, 2021 2:35 pm

Bolivian Judge Orders 4 Months of Preventive Detention for Coup Leader Jeanine Áñez
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MARCH 16, 2021

Peoples Dispatch https://peoplesdispatch.org/author/pd/

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A Bolivian judge ordered four months of preventive detention for the leader of the coup-installed regime, Jeanine Áñez, on March 14. Photo: Kawsachun News

Following the coup d’état against Evo Morales in November 2021, Añez’s regime unleashed unprecedented levels of repression against those took to the streets in rejection of the coup

Bolivian criminal investigating judge, Regina Santa Cruz, on March 14, ordered four months of preventive detention for the leader of the coup-installed regime, Jeanine Áñez. The order came a day after she was arrested by authorities for her involvement in the US-backed coup d’état carried out by the country’s right-wing forces and supported by the armed forces against the democratically-elected president Evo Morales on November 10, 2019.

Judge Santa Cruz also ordered four months of preventative detention for two of her former ministers: Álvaro Coimbra, the former Minister of Justice, and Rodrigo Guzmán, the former Energy Minister, who were also arrested on March 13.

On March 12, the Prosecutor’s Office ordered their detention and charged them with “terrorism, sedition and conspiracy.” On March 13, the Prosecutor’s Office requested 6 months of detention, stressing that there is a high risk of escape of those involved, and that they could influence important witnesses if they remain free.


On March 13, during a virtual hearing, Judge Santa Cruz backed the prosecutor’s office’s request and determined the measure after considering the fact that Áñez, at the time of her detention, tried to hide in a box to avoid arrest in an attempt to flee the country. However, the judge decided that six months were excessive for the investigation period.

Añez will be held in the Obrajes women’s prison, while Coimbra and Guzmán will be in the San Pedro prison in the capital La Paz.


Áñez, her supporters and right-wing leaders have denounced her arrest as “an act of political persecution.” This claim has received support from the Organization of American States (OAS) which was denounced widely for its participation in the 2019 coup d’état. In a statement released on March 15, the OAS expressed “concern about the abuse of judicial mechanisms that once again they have become repressive instruments of the ruling party.” Many have pointed out the hypocrisy in the statement given that while members of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) party were being hunted down by right-wing vigilantes during the coup and after and members of the party were being slapped with heavy charges for organizing protests against the coup, the OAS was silent.

On March 14, the current Minister of Justice, Iván Lima, told Kawsachun News that the government has invited the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) to monitor the due process in the trial against Áñez and officials of her adminsterion.


The coup

After the general elections of October 20, 2019, in which Morales of the progressive Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) obtained over 10% more votes than his closest rival, which was necessary for victory, the country’s opposition refused to accept the results alleging that an electoral fraud had been committed, and began violent mobilizations demanding Morales’ resignation. The Organization of American States (OAS) and its secretary general Luis Almagro, supported the Bolivian far-right’s claims and their call for the annulling of the elections.

Amid an escalation of violent protests, threats and intimidation against him and his family members, and pressure from the Armed Forces and the National Police, Morales was forced to resign and leave the country to save his life.

Following Morales’ resignation and departure, on November 12, in a session of Congress that met without quorum, right-wing legislator Áñez declared herself “interim president” of Bolivia.

Violent repression and human right violations

Immediately following the coup and illegal seizure of power, hundreds of thousands of Indigenous people, members of social movements and trade unions began mobilizing across the country to resist the coup. In response to the popular uprising, Añez’s regime unleashed an unprecedented level of repression against those who took to the streets in rejection of the coup.

Añez authorized the security forces to use extreme force to suppress social protests. She even passed a decree that exempted from criminal liability the military personnel who “participate in the operations for the restoration of order and public stability.”

The coup-supporting Police Force and Armed Forces brutally repressed the multitudinous mobilizations, using tear gas, arresting protesters, carrying out violent house raids, and firing live bullets against protesters. This included the two massacres of Sacaba and Senkata, in which 11 and 12 protesters, respectively, were killed, and hundreds were gravely injured.

The interim government also intensified selective prosecution of political and social leaders. The de-facto government institutionalized racism and prohibited public servants from wearing traditional Indigenous dresses during working days.

The regime also tried to impede the communication about the reality of what was happening in the country. The local press was censored and foreign correspondents were harassed and attacked.

The IACHR and other international human rights organizations verified that Añez’s government committed a number of human rights violations post-coup. According to the IACHR, 36 people lost their lives in different regions of the country during various violent repression operations by security forces and confrontations between for and against coup supporters following the assumption of office by Áñez.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2021/03/ ... nine-anez/

Let this be a warning to capitalist tools.
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Re: Bolivia

Post by blindpig » Sat Mar 20, 2021 1:59 pm

THREE SIGNS OF THE SOFT COUP BREWING IN BOLIVIA
19 Mar 2021 , 10:06 am .

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Jeanine Áñez was arrested in Beni and transferred to La Paz (Photo: Reuters)

At the end of 2019, after the resounding electoral victory of Evo Morales, the military and police coup d'état in Bolivia was consummated, with coup resources clearly focused on Santa Cruz (under citizen and armed operations). Different national and international factions participated in these illegal and violent actions, but the visible face that ended up presiding over the new de facto government was Jeanine Áñez.

This political passage is remembered when the news about Áñez's arrest was known on March 13, since it is investigated for the deaths of more than 20 Bolivians, which occurred in all phases of the coup in 2019.

However, the fact of Áñez's arrest is not detracted, but the actions that are being unleashed in the framework of plunging Bolivia back into destabilization scenarios attract attention or show that there is a coup operation in process.

In this installment we list three indications in this regard.

1. THE OAS AGAIN
The participation of the Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), Luis Almagro, was evident throughout the entire process of the coup in Bolivia, with a biased report on the elections being the trigger to consolidate the change of government to the (military) force. Even the BBC in London described it as follows:

Almagro is an unavoidable protagonist —and for many controversial— in the crisis that ended the presidency of Evo Morales in Bolivia.

In this new coup staging, Almagro was not far behind. Faced with Áñez's arrest, the OAS issued a statement alleging an alleged abuse of judicial mechanisms, applying the daily accusation without evidence and then exposing a series of interference considerations on the Judicial Power in Bolivia, among them, reforming the justice system.

Starting with the accusation, they mount the premise without an investigation into the lack of guarantees to carry out a "fair trial, impartiality and due process, due to problems of structure and, in particular, of their integration."

Likewise, beyond the accusations, the OAS adds the proposal to establish an international commission in charge of investigating the acts of corruption in Bolivia in the administration of Evo Morales.

It is once again an international organization meddling in reforms of solely state jurisdiction and also wants to act as a hybrid of an international court for the cases that suit it, completely forgetting what is established in International Law.


However, it is worth commenting that Almagro is not the creator of these instruments of interference: he is simply the messenger, since there is a conglomerate of political and economic actors in the United States who are pushing for this to be carried out within and from the OAS.

In response to this communiqué, the Bolivian Foreign Ministry announced that it repudiated Almagro's opinions and stressed that this communiqué aims to " rekindle the path of violence and confrontation between Bolivians . This statement was refuted by the OAS, maintaining its position and denying its participation in the recent coup d'état.

From the OAS, the US multilateral appendix of the Americas, they have already started the engines to stimulate the destabilization actions in Bolivia as in 2019.

2. UNITED STATES AND OTHER ACTORS
The Joe Biden administration could not be left behind in speculating on the legal actions against Áñez. On March 15, the State Department established its position and assured that it " follows with concern " the latest events in Bolivia, alluding to a possible partiality in the judicial process .

In total harmony with the United States, the European Union published a note stating that the arrest of Áñez and two ministers of that government is worrying and therefore they follow it closely, adding that they hope that the process is based on the transparency of the public powers. .

Thus, in retrospect, the United States and the European Union, using diplomatic detours, maintain this intriguing position because, in the middle of the coup d'état against Evo Morales, they doubted the transparency of the electoral process and requested new elections.

On the same day of the arrest, March 13, the Secretary General of the United Nations , António Guterres, declared in a diplomatic tone about respect for the guarantees and transparency of the Bolivian judicial process.

The opposite was the position of Mexico , which under the Estrada doctrine calls for respect for the constitutional rule and non-interference in Bolivian affairs. Specifically, the director general of American Regional Organizations and Mechanisms of the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Relations, Efraín Guadarrama , made the suggestion to the OAS about behaving in accordance with its powers and that it should adhere to a peaceful solution, including "avoiding those positions that seek to interfere in the internal affairs of Bolivia. "

Guadarrama adds to his demonstration that Luis Almagro must refrain from confronting the Bolivian government, democratically elected.

Venezuela did the same: after Almagro's foolish and colonial statements, Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza through his Twitter account expressed his support for Bolivia .

The first two indications indicate that the international pieces are moving on the board of the coup in Bolivia, with the usual suspects embraced by the United States displaying an attitude of defense of regime change in 2019 and a possible reissue in 2021. A foreign escalation that could correspond to the Bolivian local.

3. BELLIGERENT MOBILIZATIONS IN BOLIVIA
On March 7, the departmental, regional and municipal elections of Bolivia were held in order to elect the nine departmental governors and more than 300 mayors.

The results of the first round led to victory at the hands of the Movimiento Al Socialismo (MAS) in three governorates, Cochabamba, Oruro and Potosí. On the other hand, one of the coup plotters from the "civil" organizations, Luis Fernando Camacho, won the victory for the Santa Cruz government.

The president of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), Salvador Romero, reported that the second round for the elections of the governors of the departments of Pando, La Paz, Tarija and Chuquisaca will be on April 11 of this year.

This context is important because it mobilizes the sectors of the Bolivian political board that participated in the 2019 coup and that, when Luis Arce recently triumphed in the presidential elections, had no way of repositioning themselves in the "scene of fraud" during those elections. The option of destabilizing other fronts, as has already been tried in other moments, looms again: "civic" mobilization. The elections to the governorships is a breeding ground that Camacho encourages to return to street pressures.

Camacho in February threatened President Arce by reminding him of how Evo Morales left the government, taking as an excuse his rejection of the Health Emergency Law. But we know that everything crystallized under pressure from the Bolivian army and police.

Last Monday, March 15, Camacho and the Santa Cruz Civic Committee held a demonstration to "dismantle the government's version that there was a coup" in 2019, giving symbolic continuity to what happened during the days of the regime change and establishing , once again, to the department of Santa Cruz as the primary space for the protests in defense of Jeanine Áñez and against the MAS.

It seems that Áñez's arrest is related to the political time of the new protests led by Camacho, taking into account that the process of the most visible face of the coup began at the end of 2020 , when government management was not yet in the hands of the president. Maple. The dynamics of realpolitik lead us to think that sudden judicial decision-making in the middle of the electoral task is part of capitalizing on short-term electoral results or creating tension between the different political factions.

The conjunction between protests, political tensions and coup rhetoric crystallizes in a slow wick strategy, developed by the American academic Gene Sharp and followers of this dismissal line.


Multiple interests are on the table regarding Bolivia, especially due to its geopolitical and geoeconomic position, its political-cultural context (more linked to the Bolivian plurinational base than to Western ideals), as well as the large lithium reserves that are crucial in the "energy transition" plans and the primary objective of the major Anglo-Saxon powers .

Under these indications there is nothing left but to call an alert not only Bolivian, but also our American. The ghosts of the coup once again settle on one of the countries that looks straight ahead and into the eyes of global elites to resist any pronouncement that refers to death.

https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/tr ... en-bolivia

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Re: Bolivia

Post by blindpig » Wed Jun 23, 2021 1:18 pm

ÁÑEZ'S MILITARY WING PLANNED ANOTHER COUP IN BOLIVIA WITH US MERCENARIES
22 Jun 2021 , 12:07 pm .

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Former Bolivian defense minister and other members of the military high command were planning another coup (Photo: Bolivian Ministry of Defense)

Almost two years after the coup in Bolivia against Evo Morales, other elements are added that confirm the participation of foreign actors and interests in its execution.

Recently, in some recordings of calls broadcast by The Intercept between Luis Fernando López, who was appointed as Minister of Defense during the de facto government of Jeanine Áñez, and Joe Pereira, a former civil administrator of the US Army sent to Bolivia and designated as an organizer After a mission with mercenaries in the South American country, the interference of the United States in the regime change agenda in the region is once again evident.

In another recording, Pereira identifies a translator as "Cyber ​​Rambo," a nickname for Luis Suárez, a former Bolivian US Army sergeant known for creating an algorithm that fueled anti-Morales tweets during the 2019 political crisis.

Although Suárez denied contact with López and Pereira, he said that after being contacted by The Intercept he found a previously unread and unanswered message from Pereira, a message that according to him "Pereira may have been trying to deceive López into believing that he was involved. ".

According to journalists Laurence Blair and Ryan Grim, due to references to Luis Arce's victory in Bolivia, the calls could have been made before November 5, when López fled to Brazil three days before the new president took office. .

"The recording begins in the middle of the conversation, with the man identified as López saying: 'weapons and other military equipment are obviously very important to reinforce what we are doing,'" the journalistic work reviewed. Likewise, it states that it was also coordinating these actions with the police authorities.

The planning of these armed actions follows the rumor that the newly elected government wanted to replace the Bolivian armed forces and police with Cuban and Venezuelan militias.

"That is the key point. They [the police and the armed forces] are going to allow Bolivia to rise again and block an Arce government. That is the reality."

Due to these supposed political decisions that the new Bolivian government would make, an advanced position was being played and a "preventive" coup d'état against Arce was planned. López in the call indicates that it would be the commander of the armed forces who "began the military operation."

In the call, López emphasizes that Sergio Orellana, Áñez's highest-ranking general, was working on said coup plans. Journalists were unable to contact Orellana and he is believed to have fled Bolivia to Colombia in November.

"We have been working on this all week," López emphasizes in the call, while guaranteeing that by that time they had the armed forces for the cause of the coup. However, he also points out that it is not 100% because there are also soldiers who would not follow those plans. "It is probable that some members of the military support 'the winning horse' (Arce) because he won the elections," but he admits that there are "very few."

"I have been working for 11 months so that the Armed Forces have dignity, have morals, are tested and think about the homeland above all else. I guarantee that this will not fail," says Áñez's defense minister about the control of the armed force by a military and political class.

On the plans that were underway in the context of the inauguration, Evo Morales, who was still in exile, claimed that Orellana had been trying to persuade senior officers to establish a military junta, using the argument of that Arce planned to replace the armed forces with militias. Morales suggested that a general had overruled Orellana and quickly called off a mobilization of elite troops. These assertions by Morales were ignored at the time by the international media.

The retired general and chief of operations of the army until 2010, Tomás Peña y Lillo, told The Intercept that the plot was nothing more than a wish. "I heard rumors about it, but nothing concrete, nothing about [troop] movements," he said.

The retired military man affirmed that there are Bolivian military figures who are still really concerned about the fact that the MAS harbors plans to marginalize the army by arming its own supporters, which shows the danger that the new administration represents for the military imaginary of the South American country and the tension that could arise in the event that measures are taken, which do not necessarily have to do with the creation of militias, but rather the intervention of the Executive in the military structure. "Obviously they would like to do it, they could try. But the Constitution does not allow it. And the army will abide by the constitution," the military added.

We must not lose sight of the fact that the coup against the elected president Evo Morales in 2019 was consolidated with the intervention of the high command of the military, who joined the coup agenda orchestrated by the United States and its satellites.

ARMED MILITIAS?
Journalists report that the relationship between Evo Morales and the Bolivian armed forces deteriorated in the 14 years that his mandate lasted, even though the former president had been part of their ranks. The friction with the military high command, most of which was formed in the United States, reached the point of total fracture.

The approach to the left, the praise for Ernesto "Che" Guevara - assassinated in Bolivia with the support of the CIA - and the creation of an "anti-imperialist" military academy are approaches that evidently go in the opposite direction to the tradition of training under the American security policies.

"Complaints about wages were also shared by the police. Their refusal to quell protests in the wake of the controversial 2019 elections was instrumental in forcing Bolivia's oldest president into exile, first in Mexico and then in neighboring Argentina." , pick up The Intercept .

Understanding this logic of formation, it is evident that Morales and the MAS represented an anomaly that could not be returned to. For this reason, some senior military leaders not only participated in the coup in 2019, but would do everything possible to remove the MAS from the political scene.

That is why - the media reports - the high-ranking generals were deliberating on how to prevent the MAS from returning to power under Arce a year later, ignoring the result of the 2020 elections, contravening the Constitution and, above all, ignoring the will of the vast majority of Bolivians who brought the MAS back to power.

"My work at this time is focused on preventing the annihilation of my country and the arrival of Venezuelan, Cuban and Iranian troops," López remarked during his call with Pereira. Similarly, in a speech delivered in October 2020, on the occasion of the anniversary of Guevara's assassination, López also brought out his paranoia by promising that foreign invaders of any nationality - Cuban, Venezuelan or Argentine - would meet their death in the territory. Bolivian.

"The claim that Cuban, Venezuelan, and Iranian agents have successfully infiltrated governments, left-wing parties, and protest movements throughout Latin America has become a frequent topic of conversation on the right throughout the region. in recent years, but - outside of Venezuela itself - it has little concrete evidence to support it, "says the online magazine.

Certainly, in January 2020, while in exile in Buenos Aires, Morales said that he would try to organize "armed militias of the people", following the Venezuelan model, if he returned to his country, although he later claimed that he was referring to "a tradition of local self-defense patrols in Andean communities ".

The Bolivian political scientist and professor at Florida International University, Eduardo Gamarra, affirms that in the armed forces there was fear because they feared reprisals from the MAS if he came to power again, which is why he suggests that it was convenient for the military leadership that Arce was out of government.

PLANS TO PREVENT THE RETURN OF MAS
It was tried at all costs that the MAS returned to take possession of the Bolivian political scene, even persecuting its leader beyond the borders of that country. The Intercept notes that Pereira was also monitoring the whereabouts of Evo Morales. In another phone call, he speaks amicably with an older man, Manuel, who informs him that Morales has moved from a temporary residence near an American school in the La Lucila neighborhood of Buenos Aires.

"What pain. What a shame that our colleague Evo has left that place," says Pereira. His interlocutor responds: "We will have to find out where he is. He has to be somewhere."

The journalists affirm that during the 15-minute call, Pereira says that the request for weapons "is not a problem" and asks how many Hercules C-130 aircraft are available to the Minister of Defense. López's answer: There are only three C-130s in all of Bolivia, and he is only in control of one, while the national police have two. At that time, Pereira offers tranquility because it was also coordinating plans with the police authorities and the high command.

Image
Former Defense Minister Luis Fernando López, right, during the promotion ceremony for senior commanders of the Bolivian Armed Forces at the Miraflores Grand Barracks on July 20, 2020, in La Paz (Photo: Gaston Brito / Getty Images )

Pereira says the aircraft are needed to pick up Southern Command personnel at Homestead Air Force Base in Miami. It also affirms that upon arriving at said base the mercenaries would already be hired, equipped and armed.

The translator details: "The troops would be collected as private contractors" so that the United States has no responsibility. "We are going to put all those people under fictitious contracts for Bolivian companies that already operate in the country," Pereira continues, with López nodding at each point.

This shows that the military exchange between the two countries also served to hide the entry of mercenaries to the South American country.

"I can get up to 10 thousand men without problem (...) All the special forces. I can also bring about 350 that we call LEP, Law Enforcement Professionals, to guide the police. (...) With me [in Bolivia] I have a staff of personnel who can take care of several different jobs. If there is something else I need, I will make them fly undercover, as if they were photographers, they were shepherds, they were doctors, they were tourists, "promises Pereira.

One of the US-based recruiters commissioned by Pereira to organize these men later told The Intercept that the 10,000 figure was absurd. “You wouldn't be able to get 10,000 people even if Blackwater were to get back on track and go back to Iraq,” David Shearman said in June.

But not only was that absurd, it was also absurd that Pereira claimed that this cohort of mercenaries would be received with open arms by Bolivians, including the more than 3 million who voted for the MAS.

According to Joe Pereira, the organization of the plan within Bolivia would be in charge of Arturo Murillo, then Minister of the Interior and head of the police. Indeed, in the weeks leading up to the 2020 elections, Murillo repeatedly warned publicly and privately that the MAS was planning an armed insurrection if it lost the vote. In October, he traveled to Washington to meet with US diplomats, the OAS and the White House, where he said "national security" issues and "threats" to the elections were discussed.

"The United States can help with many things," said Murillo, and later confirmed that Bolivia was buying weapons to "defend democracy" at "any price." In May 2020, he boasted of having met with the CIA, stating that Mauricio Claver-Carone, the Trump administration's head for Latin American affairs, had "opened many doors" for them.

What is clear from these recorded conversations is that they want to strip the United States of any direct relationship with the execution of the coup plan.

"If they see us as mercenaries or see us as [a] contracted state or how they want to see us, it matters little to me as long as they cannot link us with the direct [participation] of the Special Forces, the Army or the Air Force," says Pereira.

Journalists argue that Pereira's promises of the armed operation in Bolivia are exaggerated and fanciful. However, this does not detract from the veracity of the plan to want to introduce mercenaries on the eve of the 2020 elections. "The evidence seen by The Intercept suggests that plans to deploy hundreds of mercenaries, including former US service members, to coincide with the elections they were well advanced in the weeks leading up to October 18. "

In emails shared before the election with The Intercept by a retired security contractor - whose name was not disclosed - Pereira is named as one of the three organizers of the mission. The other two, David Shearman and Joe Milligan, have extensive experience in counterinsurgency and covert operations abroad.

"According to the email, the rollout was delayed due to the postponement of the elections from July 23, from September 6 to October 18. 'We are still on track to get it early enough to do the train and gear issue. '"Milligan continues, picking up the magazine.

Recipients of the email were asked to call a number registered to Milligan, a licensed gun dealer in Dallas, Texas. Milligan is described on a LinkedIn page as a police and military trainer and head of security for a Dallas junk company. Between 2006 and 2012, he worked in counter-insurgency and bomb disposal operations in Afghanistan with the private military company MPRI, and trained Iraqi police with Blackwater, famous for perpetrating a massacre of civilians in Baghdad in 2007.

Milligan initially denied knowledge of the plan, but later acknowledged that the emails were authentic and that Pereira, who was organizing the campaign, had contacted him through a mutual network.

For his part, Shearman, the other contact on the list, describes himself as a former US Marine who has worked around the world in a variety of "covert operations," including protecting US officials in Iraq and South America.

According to the plans, the groups will move in a staggered manner according to the schedule.

"All of you will receive briefings as we travel, and will have a broader view of the operation, the mission and the concerns / sensitivities of the operation," says Shearman.

Pereira's handbook:

*He came to Bolivia about a decade ago as a member of a Baptist church in the eastern city of Santa Cruz, the cradle of the coup against Evo, and was said to be a former soldier and pastor working in the oil industry.
*For a time, he led the Bridge 2 Life Foundation, which he claims to bring pastors, doctors, and teachers to work throughout Latin America and the Middle East.
*A 2014 advertisement for a motivational talk from Pereira describes him as a "former officer of the special forces army" and a "former marine." Public documentation refers to him as a civil contractor.
*According to an internal bulletin, he had previously worked as a reserve affairs mobilization planner at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School at Fort Bragg, North Carolina - an Army training center for the US Special Operations Command. the United States, or SOCOM- in 1999. *Another publication describes him as a civil contractor in the same role in 2002.
*Citation for fraud in 2016.
*Deceptive business practices.
*Fictitious contracts to introduce foreign mercenaries into Bolivia "covertly" under the guise of shepherds, doctors and tourists.

Despite this fraud record, it is undeniable that Pereira has contact with numerous high-ranking military personnel, active and retired, as well as private security contractors (mercenaries). Its location is currently unknown.

The Intercept suggests that the coup fails due to disagreements between Defense Minister López and Murillo over control of the police.

"The recordings suggest that López was not only involved, but that the conspirators had offered him the possibility of becoming president instead of Arce."

We already know the outcome and Murillo and López had to flee together across the border with Brazil on November 5. They escaped on a Bolivian Air Force plane shortly before corruption charges were brought against them.

"They are suspected of receiving bribes after a Florida-based private security company, Bravo Tactical Solutions, obtained a contract to supply tear gas to Bolivian security forces at very high prices," report the journalists.

However, Murillo found no refuge outside the country and on May 26 of this year the FBI announced that it had arrested him on charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering related to the tear gas case. That same day, Arce's Interior Minister indicated that he would also request López's extradition from Brazil in connection with the case.

From all that is exposed in this note, two unavoidable realities remain. On the one hand, the interventionism of the United States through the outsourcing of the war through the contract of mercenaries, via officials of the de facto government of Áñez and, on the other, the fissures that may exist between the Executive and the military power once the coup plans were detected.

https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/al ... os-de-eeuu

Google Translator

It's like a box of rats. I laughed out loud at the '10,000 mercenaries, all special forces' sales pitch, most 'civilian contractors' are glorified rentacops and will void their bladders at the first whiff of grapeshot. The number of 'special forces' available on the market is probably in the hundreds. The CIA owns the rest.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Bolivia

Post by blindpig » Tue Jul 20, 2021 1:33 pm

Plan Condor II: South America’s Right-Wing and the US “United Behind Bolivian Coup”
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JULY 19, 2021
Nathalia Urban

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According to the spokesman of the Bolivian government Jorge Richter, Brazil and Chile may have been involved in clashes between protesters and security forces that took place in the country following the resignation of Evo Morales in 2019. Richter said that possible international collaboration will now be investigated, without giving further details.

Richter’s announcement came after the Bolivian government denounced the participation of the former president of Argentina, Mauricio Macri, in the 2019 coup d’état against Bolivia’s re-elected President Evo Morales. Foreign Minister Rogelio Mayta revealed documents proving the shipment of ammunition by Macri, as well as his Ecuadorian counterpart Lenín Moreno, which were used by police forces in Bolivia to repress popular protests against the de facto government of Jeanine Áñez.

The president of the Bolivian Chamber of Deputies, Freddy Mamani, announced a proposal to create a commission of inquiry to investigate not only the accusations against Macri but also the possibility that other governments may have collaborated with the coup plotters.

Mamani did not hide which governments will be investigated: Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Sebastián Piñera in Chile. Openly hostile to Evo Morales and his party the MAS (Movement toward Socialism), both countries have maintained an animosity toward the current progressive government of Luis Arce. In contrast, both supported the administration of Jeanine Áñez, the “interim” president who was installed by the Armed Forces after the 2019 coup.

The relationship between Bolsonaro and the Bolivian far right have been documented by Brasil Wire in the past, and the links between Brazilian fascists and their Bolivian counterparts are very clear. Brazil was one of the first countries to recognize Jeanine Áñez as president.

Luís Fernando Camacho, political leader of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, has also expressed a deep admiration for Bolsonaro’s government. In May of 2019, Camacho released a video on social media in which he said he had asked the former Brazilian Foreign Minister Ernesto Araújo for help in consulting the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on the possibility of preventing Morales’ attempt to win a fourth term. Contact between Camacho’s and Bolsonaro’s allies began much earlier. At the end of 2018, many Latin American leaders and businessmen travelled to the Brazilian city of Foz do Iguaçu to participate in a conservative summit organized by Deputy Eduardo Bolsonaro, the president of the Chamber’s Committee on Foreign Affairs and National Defence .

Regional conspiracy

The current Argentine president, Alberto Fernandez, who was himself sworn in a month after the coup, has apologized to the Bolivian people on behalf of his predecessor for sending the weapons. Argentine investigations show indications that then-President Mauricio Macri sent arms and ammunition to repress supporters of Evo Morales. The Public Ministry of Argentina opened a formal investigation to find out the extent of the crimes committed by the former president. Among the authorities to be investigated for the charge of international interference and arms shipments besides Macri himself and two former ministers: Patricia Bullrich, from Security, and Oscar Aguad, from Defence.

According the Argentinian newspaper El Orsai the CIA station in La Paz instructed the Chief of Argentine Intelligence Agency (AFI, by its abbreviation in Spanish) in Bolivia, José Sanchez, to support the gathering of information on Evo Morales and his administrations; and all Cuban, Venezuelan and Nicaraguan officials residing in Bolivia, including diplomats. In order to comply with the above José Sánchez not only used his agents in the country, but also requested the support of representatives in Brasil, Colombia and Perú.

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Documents from the Argentine embassy in La Paz show details of a meeting in July 2019 where Deputy Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere of the United States Kevin Michael O’Reilly warned that Evo would likely win the presidential election, and asked for OAS, the EU, Brazil, Argentina and Peru to question the transparency and legitimacy of the elections. One of the most interesting passages of the document says that the Bolivian political scene is dependent on what happens in Venezuela, adding to growing evidence of a wider plan to destabilise the regional left. Evo Morales’ trips abroad were also analyzed, and Mr O’Reilly pointed out that there was concern about the growing rapprochement between Morales and the Russian government.

Recently, Morales warned about the implementation of the new Operation Condor in Latin America. Urging social movements to fight for peace, democracy, and sovereignty, Morales rejected U.S.-backed coups that “cause pain to Latin American peoples”.

Morales’ fears solidified further after CIA director William J Burns visited Brazil and Colombia.

When asked about the visit, Bolsonaro said:

“I’m not going to say that this was dealt with him, but we analyzed how things are going in South America. We can’t stand to talk about Venezuela anymore, but look at Argentina. Where is Chile going? What happened in Bolivia? The Evo Morales gang returned. And even more: the president who was there in the interim term is in prison, accused of undemocratic acts. Are you feeling any resemblance to Brazil?”.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2021/07/ ... vian-coup/

Is Jair sweating a little? Undoubtedly wants to prod his northern masters into more overt action that will save his bacon and promote the fascism of which he is enamored.
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Re: Bolivia

Post by blindpig » Mon Aug 16, 2021 1:09 pm

The Anatomy of US Interventionism in Bolivia & Latin America
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on AUGUST 15, 2021
Kawsachun News

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Kawsachun News spoke exclusively to Juan Ramon Quintana, former Minister of the Presidency under Evo Morales, which is Bolivia’s equivalent to the role of a Prime Minister under a President. This is a role of strategic importance for the state, so to hold this role, Juan Ramon Quintana was and remains one of Evo’s closest confidants. We spoke about the nature of US intervention in Latin America and during the Bolivia coup.

Juan Ramon Quintana is a former military officer who in 1996 abruptly left the Armed Forces, and became a revolutionary. He entered Evo Morales’ first government as Minister of the Presidency and remained as one of the most senior figures during the entirety of Evo Morales’ 14-year government. His close personal knowledge and experience of the Armed Forces meant he could play a key role in defending the state from US intervention.

Following the 2019 coup, he was given political asylum in the Mexican Embassy in La Paz, as a persecuted supporter of Evo Morales. He is now focused on investigative and academic work and has just published a book, “The Imperial Counteroffensive”, that chronicles the coup in Bolivia and places it in a wider geopolitical context. The book is written under a pseudonym.

Why is your new book under the name ‘Ernesto Eterno’?

The name is to do with Che Guevara. It’s a pseudonym that I used to write articles chronicling the coup, it’s these articles that make up the book. All the articles are inspired by the rebellious, transgressive, anti-imperialist thinking of Ernesto Che Guevara. I added ‘eterno’ to stress the eternal nature of his ideas, of Fidel’s ideas, of the ideas that led to processes of national liberation. These ideas don’t fall away with time, these ideas serve as the inspiration for the great struggles of the present and future.

The intention was to think about Bolivia’s struggle as an intellectual and political guerilla war. The pseudonym was an instrument to fit the circumstances. I couldn’t write under the name of Juan Ramon Quintana because I had been given political asylum in the Mexican embassy and the Vienna convention prohibits such political activity. I didn’t want to risk the security of my comrades because I wasn’t the only one there, there were 6 others with me. I didn’t want my activity to be the excuse for an armed invasion by the regime against the embassy.

With the pseudonym, I was able to write freely and have these ideas circulate in international media outlets and tell the world about the anatomy of the regime and the international context of what was going on.

An invasion of the embassy would have been a shocking violation of international law, were they capable of such a thing? What about the Foreign Ministry during the coup? How can we understand their role last year?

What was called the Foreign Ministry was nothing more than an appendix of the US embassy in Bolivia. Karen Longaric’s (the Foreign Minister) only task was to serve US interests rather than the interests of the Bolivian state. We can understand this as a process in which a foreign power usurped one of the most functions of any sovereign state, Longaric only existed as a face for dealing with the media. The institutionality of the office was totally destroyed in an unprecedented manner.

In regards to external affairs, the Ministry handed over its power to the US embassy. In regards to internal affairs, that is to say, the power that a Foreign Minister traditionally has within the cabinet, was handed over to the Interior Minister Arturo Murillo. Longaric lost all influence within the internal decision-making of the government. On top of that, jobs and positions within the Ministry were distributed by Murillo, he even appointed his own sister as the consul in Miami. The jobs and positions for outward-facing roles, representing the Ministry internationally, were distributed by the US embassy, that’s why Jaime Aparicio was chosen as Bolivian ambassador at the OAS, he’s a long-time Washington insider.

On the Mexican embassy, Karen Longaric as Foreign Minister played no role in the debates and decisions about whether or not to invade. They didn’t invade, but that decision was taken by Arturo Murillo, as the head of the repressive apparatus that ran the day-to-day workings of the entire government. The other two components of that apparatus were Fernando Lopez, the Defense Minister, and Jeanine Añez, the self-declared President, but they were the two bottom points of a triangle of power in which Murillo sat at the top.

That triangle of power controlled the entire state, but they did not have executive decision-making power, that was held by the United States. The United States gave the directives and then that triangle of power was in charge of implementing the orders. The coup was, above all, a process in which the Bolivian people lost control of the state to the US and their allies/accomplices such as the EU and the OAS.

Were there any particular individuals within the coup regime that were the link, the agent, that acted as the conduit between the US government and that triangle of power that governed last year?

No, the control that the US had over the Bolivian state was an entirely structural one implanted in each part of the government. The Ministry of Defense was answering directly, without intermediaries, to the orders of the US Southern Command. The Foreign Ministry was answering directly to the orders of the US State Department and its embassy here. The Interior Ministry under Murillo was answering directly to the CIA. The Ministry of Hydrocarbons was answering directly to the US Department of Energy.

If an individual within the regime wants to claim the title of being the representative in charge of implementing US directives within Bolivia, then they’re lying. It was much more structural than that. On a fundamental level, the Plurinational State was converted into a Police State, and all centers of power within that Police State answered directly to the United States. However, there was one person in charge of relaying orders from the US to the functionaries of the Police State in Bolivia, that was the Charge D’Affaires of the US embassy here, they were the colonial governor. It was the Charge D’Affaires playing that role because there is no Ambassador, we expelled them in 2008.

US intervention is direct and intense during times of conflict, but what are the patterns of intervention during times of peace and ‘normality’, such as the period Bolivia is living through now?

Yes, there are periods in which there aren’t any significant conflicts within the country or with the US government. However, Bolivia is a country that’s not only not aligned to US interests but is also actively and permanently transgressive against their established order. So, during times where there isn’t a direct or specific conflict with the US government, our official state relations sit in a null state, that is to say, at a minimum level. During those times, our only coordination is at a commercial level where we ensure that Bolivia can continue exporting to, and importing from, the US, but little else. At a diplomatic level, we recognize each other’s governments, but the relationship is in a third or fourth category. Since 2008, neither of our countries have had Ambassadors in the other, so the relation just sits at a level of relative insignificance and irrelevance. This is an abnormal relationship, and one in which the highest level of relations is not between governments, but between businesses that are involved in exporting and importing goods.

However, there is an extra layer to this abnormal relationship. Since the US can’t pursue their interests in Bolivia through the official channels, they pursue them by carrying out informal, secret, and illegal activities, aimed at unraveling the government and installing a new authority that would be more pliable to their financial interests, and which will agree to return to a dependent relationship in regards to supplying the North with natural resources and raw materials.

When this happens, Bolivia becomes an official enemy and is considered an obstacle for US national security and economic interests. Once this level is reached, the US begins working in a clandestine way, their intelligence agencies begin working in an undercover manner. I’m talking about the CIA, the DEA, the IMF, and the embassy staff. Their job is now to identify and funnel money to domestic projects and entities that can destabilize the country. Some of it is public and done through USAID and through European NGOs, but other parts are kept secret. This is what’s known as a ‘regime change’ operation.

Bolivia under Evo Morales was not useful to the US, it never satisfied their financial appetites, nor did we ever cooperate in helping fulfill their strategic aims and needs in the region. Once they realized that, the ‘regime change’ operation began. Their objective is to eliminate Evo Morales and the social movements, both politically and physically, because the MAS is sustained and based on the social movements.

Who is involved in this operation? At a direct level, there is the CIA, DEA, IMF, USAID, NED, IRI, the US military, the Defense Intelligence Agency of the DoD, but on top of that, there is up to 100 organizations and NGOs here working with the US govt and carrying out their work, indirectly, of undermining political stability in our country. This isn’t unique to Bolivia, it’s what they do in every country of the region.

In reality, they have declared war on us, and in a war, you mobilize every available instrument and institution. We can’t underestimate them, the US has both the skills and experience, built up over many decades, of executing these operations successfully. Not only in Latin America, but across the whole world.

Will this antagonism always exist?

The problem here is that the US is not a democracy. If the US was a democracy then there could be a democratic and open dialogue between nations and people.

However, their discourse about their wonderful democracy is as meaningless as a common weed. First of all, they don’t have a system of one citizen, one vote. We have that system in Bolivia, but in the US they have a system of electoral colleges that exist to filter out any threats to the status quo. Second of all, if there are only two parties then that’s not a democracy. In Bolivia, there are always 5-10 parties on the ballot paper and they got there without any kind of obstacles. In the US, there are only two options at every election, there’s no Afro-descendant party for example, despite the fact that they represent around 20% of the population. The Afro-descendant population has to choose between two parties that don’t represent them.

Furthermore, the US is not a democracy because it’s the big transnational corporations that hold real power, and which finance every candidate on both sides at the legislative and presidential levels. The strategic industries of the US, which are energy, telecommunications, transport & logistics, and above all the arms industry, all choose, sponsor, and control candidates.

That is not a democratic system. The democracy that we practice in Bolivia includes one citizen, one vote, we have the direct participation of indigenous communities and workers unions. We have both formal democracy alongside organic forms of democracy. This is a democracy in which women make up over 50% of congress, in our democracy, indigenous peoples have direct and structural representation. Ask the United States if they have more than 50% of women in congress, or if they have mechanisms for the participation of indigenous peoples.

In the US, the corporations that pay the most then win the presidency. Usually, that’s the oil and gas companies, which is why the US is at war across the whole of the Middle East. The US system sometimes responds to the needs of certain sections of the general population, but those cases are an exception rather than the rule.

We have to understand that the US is not a democracy, it is an empire. Empires have permanent economic, political, social, and cultural interests, and they pursue them by dominating territories outside their borders and submitting them to the needs of the central imperial power. If the US was a democracy it would respect the international community rather than operate unilaterally. If they don’t like a UN ruling then they ignore it, they launch wars against whomever they like even if they’re the only ones doing it. They created the UN, but they’ve relegated it and turned it into a meaningless institution, which it shouldn’t be.

The US is an empire because their international relations are not focused on being a partner to other countries, but on being their master, on being the world’s only master. When you have that situation of unilateral power, the world then becomes divided in two, between the interests of the empire and the interests of nation-states, each country is forced to decide on whether to serve the empire or their own national interests.

What was your personal experience with the US, as someone with a senior and strategic job within the Bolivian state?

The work of my Ministry was an incredibly complicated and delicate one. On a personal level, I had to face the fury, aggression, and firepower of the US State Department, of the US Department of Defense, of the US Southern Command, who decided that I was their political adversary. Unlike my predecessors in the neoliberal period, I didn’t go for coffee at the US embassy, I didn’t open the doors of our state institutions for US corporations, I didn’t submit to their needs, I didn’t travel to the US, I didn’t take orders from them.

I fulfilled Evo Morales’ directives. I was, at a core level, an anti-imperialist, anti-colonial, and anti-capitalist Minister. That placed me at the unwavering and unconditional service of our country and our people. I was there to serve the interests of the poorest people in our country, on orders of my president, Evo Morales, who was an exemplary president, an extraordinary president which this country will never have again, at least not for the next 100 years.

Fulfilling that role required me to defend the interests of our country, and to not submit to a foreign power that tried to seduce me so as to control me. Rather than be seduced by the US, I confronted them, together with Evo, together with all of the cabinet, and with all of the social movements, against the most economically and militarily powerful empire in human history, an empire that lays siege to countries in our region such as Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua.

So, my job was not a simple nor straightforward one. That’s why Evo and I were victims of a brutal media campaign to damage our reputation, and we were then targets of deadly violence. If Evo hadn’t left on Mexico’s plane, he would have been killed, the CIA was directly leading the mission to kill him during those last days. There was also a hit out for me, those in charge of carrying it out were the police who had declared themselves in mutiny against our government. We had to save our lives because there was a reward for our heads. We were victims of the US thirst for vengeance because we never allowed the US to place one single figure on our country. On a personal level, I’m proud of that. I feel that I’ve fulfilled my duty as a patriot, I know that I fulfilled the line of my President, Evo Morales.

Thank you, my last question is about the security forces of the state. What are the problems, challenges, and obstacles to building military and police institutions that serve the country, rather than imperialism?

This is a very complicated issue. I would say that above all, in my experience, the challenge is a cultural one. For 70 years in Latin America, the Armed Forces, and later the Police, are institutions that have been seized ideologically and politically by imperialism, the US has successfully cultivated a deeply rooted institutional culture that is servile to their interests. Starting 70 years ago, the US began directly training and forging every rank of the Armed Forces of most Latin American countries, training them in the North American doctrines.

There are three North American doctrines that have been inculcated into the militaries of the region; The first was the anti-communist doctrine, which dominated from the 1940s till the 1990s. In the 1990s it was the ‘war on drugs’ doctrine, from 2001 it was the ‘war on terror’ doctrine. After 70 years of training Latin American militaries in those doctrines, they have successfully destroyed all nationalist sentiment with the military, and most important of all, they have broken the link between the military and the state in Latin America.

For 70 years, the militaries of Latin America have been mentally, physically, and culturally colonized by the United States. So their entire training is based around how to best serve imperialism. Confronting that culture requires a complex approach that seeks to dismantle and decolonize that conditioning.

The Police, as an institution, is even more servile to the interests of the US. Remember that a very large section of the Bolivian police was trained directly by the DEA during the neoliberal period. After years of that conditioning, they were also colonized.

Our task is to decolonize the security forces. Our task is to build a link between the military and the state, that is to say, we have to nationalize the military and police. We haven’t managed it yet, but it’s a crucial task if we want to avoid foreign intervention and coups. If there is another coup attempt, we need security forces that can defend the country and its sovereignty.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2021/08/ ... n-america/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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