[News] Bolivia coup led by Christian fascist paramilitary leader and multi-millionaire – with foreign support
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Tue Nov 12 12:07:35 EST 2019
https://thegrayzone.com/2019/11/11/bolivia-coup-fascist-foreign-support-fernando-camacho/
Bolivia coup led by Christian fascist paramilitary leader and
multi-millionaire – with foreign support
November 11, 2019
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Bolivian coup leader Luis Fernando Camacho is a far-right
multi-millionaire who arose from fascist movements in the Santa
Cruz region, where the US has encouraged separatism. He has
courted support from Colombia, Brazil, and the Venezuela coup regime.*
*By Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton*
When Luis Fernando Camacho stormed into Bolivia’s abandoned presidential
palace in the hours after President Evo Morales’s sudden November 10
resignation, he revealed to the world a side of the country that stood
at stark odds with the plurinational spirit its deposed socialist and
Indigenous leader had put forward.
With a Bible in one hand and a national flag in the other, Camacho bowed
his head in prayer above the presidential seal, fulfilling his vow to
purge his country’s Native heritage from government and “return God to
the burned palace.”
“Pachamama will never return to the palace,” he said, referring to the
Andean Mother Earth spirit. “Bolivia belongs to Christ.”
Bolivia’s extreme right-wing opposition had overthrown leftist President
Evo Morales that day, following demands by the country’s military
leadership that he step down.
Virtually unknown outside his country, where he had never won a
democratic election, Camacho stepped into the void. He is a rich and
powerful multi-millionaire named in the Panama Papers, and an
ultra-conservative Christian fundamentalist groomed by a fascist
paramilitary notorious for its racist violence, with a base in Bolivia’s
wealthy separatist region of Santa Cruz.
Camacho also hails from a family of corporate elites who have long
profited from Bolivia’s plentiful natural gas reserves. And his family
lost part of its wealth when Morales nationalized the nation’s
resources, in order to fund his vast social programs — which cut poverty
<http://cepr.net/press-center/press-releases/new-report-reviews-changes-in-bolivia-s-economy-under-evo-morales-s-presidency>
by 42 percent and extreme poverty by 60 percent.
In the lead-up to the coup, Camacho met with leaders from right-wing
governments in the region to discuss their plans to destabilize Morales.
Two months before the putsch, he tweeted
<http://web.archive.org/web/20191111213940/https:/twitter.com/LuisFerCamachoV/status/1166319600394539008>
gratitude: “Thank you Colombia! Thank you Venezuela!” he exclaimed,
tipping his hat to Juan Guaido’s coup operation
<https://thegrayzone.com/2019/01/29/the-making-of-juan-guaido-how-the-us-regime-change-laboratory-created-venezuelas-coup-leader/>.
He also recognized the far-right government of Jair Bolsonaro,
declaring, “Thank you Brazil!”
Camacho had spent years leading an overtly fascist separatist
organization. The Grayzone edited the following clips from a promotional
historical documentary that the group posted on its own social media
accounts <https://www.facebook.com/unionjuvenilsczOficial/>:
The rich oligarch leader of Bolivia’s right-wing coup, Luis Fernando
Camacho, was the leader of an explicitly fascist paramilitary group.
Here are some clips from a promotional historical documentary it
published:https://t.co/gFMyfjsi2p pic.twitter.com/XXNQfhD7ii
<https://t.co/XXNQfhD7ii>
— The Grayzone (@GrayzoneProject) November 12, 2019
<https://twitter.com/GrayzoneProject/status/1194133424975613952?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>
While Camacho and his far-right forces served as the muscle behind the
coup, their political allies waited to reap the benefits.
The presidential candidate Bolivia’s opposition had fielded in the
October election, Carlos Mesa, is a “pro-business” privatizer with
extensive ties to Washington. US government cables published by
WikiLeaks reveal that he regularly corresponded with American officials
in their efforts to destabilize Morales.
Mesa is currently listed as an expert at a DC-based think tank funded by
the US government’s soft-power arm USAID
<https://thegrayzone.com/tag/usaid/>, various oil giants, and a host of
multi-national corporations active in Latin America.
Evo Morales, a former farmer who rose to prominence in social movements
before becoming the leader of the powerful grassroots political party
Movement Toward Socialism (MAS), was Bolivia’s first Indigenous leader.
Wildly popular in the country’s substantial Native and peasant
communities, he won numerous elections and democratic referenda over a
13-year period, often in landslides.
On October 20, Morales won re-election by more than 600,000 votes,
giving him just above the 10 percent margin needed to defeat opposition
presidential candidate Mesa in the first round.
Experts who did a statistical analysis of Bolivia’s publicly available
voting data found no evidence of irregularities or fraud
<http://cepr.net/press-center/press-releases/no-evidence-that-bolivian-election-results-were-affected-by-irregularities-or-fraud-statistical-analysis-shows>.
But the opposition claimed otherwise, and took to the streets in weeks
of protests and riots.
The events that precipitated the resignation of Morales were
indisputably violent. Right-wing opposition gangs attacked numerous
elected politicians from the ruling leftist MAS party. They then
ransacked the home of President Morales, while burning down the houses
of several other top officials. The family members of some politicians
were kidnapped and held hostage until they resigned. A female socialist
mayor was publicly tortured
<https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1192616479784607744> by a mob.
The squalid US-backed fanatics of the Bolivian right ransack the
house of the country’s elected president, Evo Morales. And the havoc
is just beginning. Let no one call them “pro-democracy.”
pic.twitter.com/rwwvOSAEaA <https://t.co/rwwvOSAEaA>
— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) November 11, 2019
<https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1193696946961211393?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>
Following the forced departure of Morales, coup leaders arrested the
president and vice president of the government’s electoral body, and
forced the organization’s other officials to resign. Camacho’s followers
proceeded to burn Wiphala flags
<https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1193699485358145536> that
symbolized the country’s Indigenous population and the plurinational
vision of Morales.
The Organization of American States, a pro-US organization founded by
Washington during the Cold War
<https://thegrayzone.com/2018/06/01/oas-anti-venezuela-pro-us-bias-right-wing-hypocrisy/>
as an alliance of right-wing anti-communist countries in Latin America,
helped rubber stamp the Bolivian coup. It called for new elections,
claiming there were numerous irregularities in the October 20 vote,
without citing any evidence. Then the OAS remained silent as Morales was
overthrown by his military and his party’s officials were attacked and
violently forced to resign.
The day after, the Donald Trump White House
<https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/statement-president-donald-j-trump-regarding-resignation-bolivian-president-evo-morales/>
enthusiastically praised the coup, trumpeting it as a “significant
moment for democracy,” and a “strong signal to the illegitimate regimes
in Venezuela and Nicaragua.”
Emerging from the shadows to lead a violent far-right putsch
While Carlos Mesa timidly condemned the opposition’s violence, Camacho
egged it on, ignoring calls for an international audit of the election
and emphasizing his maximalist demand to purge all supporters of Morales
from government. He was the true face of the opposition, concealed for
months behind the moderate figure of Mesa.
A 40-year-old multi-millionaire businessman from the separatist
stronghold of Santa Cruz, Camacho has never run for office. Like
Venezuelan coup leader Juan Guaidó, whom more than 80 percent of
Venezuelans had never heard of until the US government anointed him as
supposed “president,” Camacho was an obscure figure until the coup
attempt in Bolivia hit its stride.
He first created his Twitter account on May 27
<https://twitter.com/LuisFerCamachoV/status/1133036951039352832>, 2019.
For months, his tweets
<https://twitter.com/LuisFerCamachoV/status/1176974932225470465>went
ignored, generating no more than three or four retweets and likes.
Before the election, Camacho did not have a Wikipedia article, and there
were few media profiles on him in Spanish- or English-language media.
Camacho issued a call for a strike on July 9, posting videos
<https://twitter.com/LuisFerCamachoV/status/1148235516204191744>on
Twitter that got just over 20 views
<https://twitter.com/LuisFerCamachoV/status/1148235926159659011>. The
goal of the strike was to try to force the resignation of Bolivian
government’s electoral organ the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE). In
other words, Camacho was pressuring the government’s electoral
authorities to step down more than three months before the presidential
election.
It was not until after the election that Camacho was thrust into the
limelight and transformed into a celebrity by corporate media
conglomerates like the local right-wing network Unitel, Telemundo
<https://twitter.com/LuisFerCamachoV/status/1187794744094744576>, andCNN
en Español. <https://twitter.com/CNNEE/status/1191911832698654720>
All of a sudden, Camacho’s tweets calling for Morales to resign were
lighting up with thousands of retweets
<https://twitter.com/LuisFerCamachoV/status/1190098835483353089>. The
coup machinery had been activated.
Mainstream outlets like the New York Times and Reuters followed by
anointing the unelected Camacho as the “leader
<https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2019/11/04/world/americas/04reuters-bolivia-election-protests.html>”
of Bolivia’s opposition. But even as he lapped up international
attention, key portions of the far-right activist’s background were
omitted.
Left unmentioned were Camacho’s deep and well-established connections to
Christian extremist paramilitaries notorious for racist violence and
local business cartels, as well as the right-wing governments across the
region.
It was in the fascist paramilitaries and separatist atmosphere of Santa
Cruz where Camacho’s politics were formed, and where the ideological
contours of the coup had been defined.
*Cadre of a Francoist-style fascist paramilitary*
Luis Fernando Camacho was groomed by the Unión Juvenil Cruceñista, or
Santa Cruz Youth Union (UJC), a fascist paramilitary organization that
has been linked to assassination plots against Morales. The group is
notorious for assaulting leftists, Indigenous peasants, and journalists,
all while espousing a deeply racist, homophobic ideology.
Since Morales entered office in 2006, the UJC has campaigned to separate
from a country its members believed had been overtaken by a Satanic
Indigenous mass.
The UJC is the Bolivian equivalent of Spain’s Falange, India’s Hindu
supremacist RSS
<https://moderaterebels.com/episode-10-show-notes-india-hindutva-shehla-rashid/>,
and Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Azov battalion
<https://thegrayzone.com/tag/azov-battalion/>. Its symbol is a green
cross that bears strong similarities to logos of fascist movements
across the West.
And its members are known to launch into Nazi-style sieg heil salutes
<https://twitter.com/AndeanInfoNet/status/1189963356209328128>.
Here is another video posted by Bolivia’s fascist opposition Santa
Cruz Youth Union.
Coup leader Luis Fernando Camacho @LuisFerCamachoV
<https://twitter.com/LuisFerCamachoV?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw> previously
helped lead this sieg-heiling group.
These are the people who overthrew elected President Evo Morales.
https://t.co/gFMyfjsi2p pic.twitter.com/GvvMfL21UZ
<https://t.co/GvvMfL21UZ>
— The Grayzone (@GrayzoneProject) November 12, 2019
<https://twitter.com/GrayzoneProject/status/1194137427474038784?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>
Even the US embassy in Bolivia has described
<http://wl.1-s.es/cable/2008/03/08LAPAZ693.html>UJC members as “racist”
and “militant,” noting that they “have frequently attacked
pro-MAS/government people and installations.”
After journalist Benjamin Dangl visited with UJC members
<http://upsidedownworld.org/archives/bolivia/the-dark-side-of-bolivias-half-moon/>in
2007, he described them as the “brass knuckles” of the Santa Cruz
separatist movement. “The Unión Juvenil has been known to beat and whip
campesinosmarching for gas nationalization, throw rocks at students
organizing against autonomy, toss molotov cocktails at the state
television station, and brutally assault members of the landless
movement struggling against land monopolies,” Dangl wrote.
“When we have to defend our culture by force, we will,” a UJC leader
told Dangl. “The defense of liberty is more important than life.”
Camacho was elected as vice president of the UJC in 2002, when he was
just 23 years old. He left the organization two years later to build his
family’s business empire and rise through the ranks of the Pro-Santa
Cruz Committee. It was in that organization that he was taken under the
wing of one of the separatist movement’s most powerful figures, a
Bolivian-Croatian oligarch named Branko Marinkovic.
In August, Camacho tweeted a photo with his “great friend,” Marinkovic.
This friendship was crucial to establishing the rightist activist’s
credentials and forging the basis of the coup that would take form three
months later.
Hoy cumple años un gran líder cruceño y expresidente del Comité pro
Santa Cruz pero todo un gran amigo, Branko Marinkovic, quien entregó
todo, su libertad y su vida, por su pueblo.
pic.twitter.com/uVzNrgH2pI <https://t.co/uVzNrgH2pI>
— Luis Fernando Camacho (@LuisFerCamachoV) August 21, 2019
<https://twitter.com/LuisFerCamachoV/status/1164253866470383616?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>
*Camacho’s Croatian godfather and separatist powerbroker*
Branko Marinkovic is a major landowner who ramped up his support for the
right-wing opposition after some of his land was nationalized by the Evo
Morales government. As chairman of the Pro-Santa Cruz Committee, he
oversaw the operations of the main engine of separatism in Bolivia.
In a 2008 letter to Marinkovic, the International Federation for Human
Rights denounced
<https://www.fidh.org/es/region/americas/bolivia/El-Comite-Civico-pro-Santa-Cruz>the
committee as an “actor and promoter of racism and violence in Bolivia.”
The human rights group added that it “condemn[ed] the attitude and
secessionist, unionist and racist discourses as well as the calls for
military disobedience of which the Pro-Santa Cruz Civic Committee for is
one of the main promoters.”
In 2013, journalist Matt Kennard reported
<https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/bolivian-democracy-vs-united-states/>that
the US government was working closely with the Pro-Santa Cruz Committee
to encourage the balkanization of Bolivia and to undermine Morales.
“What they [the US] put across was how they could strengthen channels of
communication,” the vice president of the committee told Kennard. “The
embassy said that they would help us in our communication work and they
have a series of publications where they were putting forward their ideas.”
In a 2008 profile on Marinkovic, the New York Times
<https://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/27/world/americas/27bolivia.html>acknowledged
the extremist undercurrents of the Santa Cruz separatist movement the
oligarch presided over. It described the area as “a bastion of openly
xenophobic groups like the Bolivian Socialist Falange, whose hand-in-air
salute draws inspiration from the fascist Falange of the former Spanish
dictator Franco.”
The Bolivian Socialist Falange was a fascist group that provided safe
haven to Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie during the Cold War. A former
Gestapo torture expert, Barbie was repurposed by the CIA through its
Operation Condor program to help exterminate communism across the
continent. (Despite its antiquated name, like the German National
Socialists, this far-right extremist group was violently anti-leftist,
committed to killing socialists.)
The Bolivian Falange came into power in 1971 when its leader, Gen. Hugo
Banzer Suarez, ousted
<https://www.nytimes.com/1971/08/23/archives/rebels-in-bolivia-crush-resistance-and-install-chief-colonel.html>the
leftist government of Gen. Juan Jose Torres Gonzales. The government of
Gonzales had infuriated business leaders by nationalizing industries and
antagonized Washington by ousting the Peace Corps, which it viewed as an
instrument of CIA penetration. The Nixon administration immediately
welcomed Banzer with open arms and courted himas a key bulwark against
the spread of socialism in the region. (An especially ironic 1973
dispatch <https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1973STATE220267_b.html>
appears on Wikileaks showing Secretary of State Henry Kissinger thanking
Banzer for congratulating him on his Nobel Peace Prize).
The movement’s putschist legacy persevered during the Morales era
through organizations like the UJC and figures such as Marinkovic and
Camacho.
The Times noted that Marinkovic also supported the activities of the
UJC, describing the fascist group as “a quasi-independent arm of the
committee led by Mr. Marinkovic.” A member of the UJC board told the US
newspaper of record in an interview, “We will protect Branko with our
own lives.”
Marinkovic has espoused the kind of Christian nationalist rhetoric
familiar to the far-right organizations of Santa Cruz, calling, for
instance, for a “crusade for the truth <http://archive.ph/ZCfDo>” and
insisting that God is on his side <http://archive.ph/8ggNi>.
The oligarch’s family hails from Croatia, where he has dual citizenship.
Marinkovic has long been dogged by rumors that his family members were
involved in the country’s powerful fascist Ustashe movement.
The Ustashe collaborated openly with Nazi German occupiers during World
War Two. Their successors returned to power after Croatia declared
independence from the former Yugoslavia – a former socialist country
that was intentionally balkanized in a NATO war
<https://monthlyreview.org/2007/10/01/the-dismantling-of-yugoslavia/>,
much in the same way that Marinkovic hoped Bolivia would be.
Marinkovic denies that his family was part of the Ustashe. He claimed in
an interview with the New York Times that his father fought against the
Nazis.
But even some of his sympathizers are skeptical. A Balkan analyst from
the private intelligence firm Stratfor, which works closely with the US
government and is popularly known as the “shadow CIA
<https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/12/15/stratfor-canadian-government_n_4449505.html>,”
produced a rough background profile
<https://wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/17/1791843_on-branko-marinkovic-.html>
on Marinkovic, speculating, “Still don’t know his full story, but I
would bet a lot of $$$ that this dude’s parents are 1st gen (his name is
too Slavic) and that they were Ustashe (read: Nazi) sympathizers fleeing
Tito’s Communists after WWI.”
The Stratfor analyst excerpted a 2006 article
<https://www.thenation.com/article/letter-bolivia-morales-moves/> by
journalist Christian Parenti, who had visited Marinkovic at his ranch in
Santa Cruz. Evo Morales’ “land reform could lead to civil war,”
Marinkovic warned Parenti in the Texas-accented English he picked up
while studying at the University of Texas, Houston.
Today, Marinkovic is an ardent supporter of Brazil’s far-right leader
Jair Bolsonaro
<https://correodelsur.com/politica/20190107_branko-arremete-contra-evo-y-mira-bien-a-bolsonaro.html>,
whose only complaint about Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was that he
“didn’t kill enough
<https://www.brasilwire.com/chilean-fury-as-bolsonaro-praises-murder-of-michelle-bachelets-father/>.”
Marinkovic is also a public admirer of Venezuela’s far-right opposition.
“Todos somos Leopoldo <http://archive.ph/nsY5I>” — “we are all
Leopoldo,” he tweeted in support of Leopoldo López, who has been
involved in numerous coup attempts against Venezuela’s elected leftist
government.
While Marinkovic denied any role in armed militant activity in his
interview with Parenti, he was accused in 2008 of playing a central role
in an attempt to assassinate Morales and his Movement Toward Socialism
party allies.
He told the New York Times less than two years before the plot
developed, “If there is no legitimate international mediation in our
crisis, there is going to be confrontation. And unfortunately, it is
going to be bloody and painful for all Bolivians.”
*An assassination plot links Bolivia’s right to international
fascists*
In April 2009, a special unit of the Bolivian security services barged
into a luxury hotel room and cut down three men who were said to be
involved in a plot to kill Evo Morales. Two others remained on the
loose. Four of the alleged conspirators had Hungarian or Croatian roots
and ties to rightist politics in eastern Europe, while another was a
right-wing Irishman, Michael Dwyer
<http://www.indymedia.ie/article/92865>, who had only arrived in Santa
Cruz six months before.
The ringleader of the group was said to be a former leftist journalist
named Eduardo Rosza-Flores who had turned to fascism and belonged to
Opus Dei, the traditionalist Catholic cult that emerged under the
dictatorship of Spain’s Francisco Franco. In fact, the codename
<https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/bolivia/5185198/My-meeting-with-the-man-accused-of-plotting-the-assassination-of-Evo-Morales.html>
Rosza-Flores assumed in the assassination plot was “Franco,” after the
late Generalissimo.
During the 1990s, Rosza fought on behalf of the Croatian First
International Platoon, or the PIV, in the war to separate from
Yugoslavia. A Croatian journalist toldTime that the “PIV was a notorious
group: 95% of them had criminal histories, many were part of Nazi and
fascist groups
<http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1892945,00.html>,
from Germany to Ireland.”
By 2009, Rosza returned home to Bolivia to crusade on behalf of another
separatist movement in Santa Cruz. And it was there that he was killed
in a luxury hotel with no apparent source of income and a massive
stockpile of guns.
The government later released photos of Rosza and a co-conspirator
posing with their weapons. Publication of emails between the ringleader
and Istvan Belovai
<https://www.csmonitor.com/1998/0311/031198.intl.intl.1.html>, a former
Hungarian military intelligence officer who served as a double agent for
the CIA, cemented the perception that Washington had a hand in the
operation.
Marinkovic was subsequently charged
<https://www.irishtimes.com/news/opposition-linked-to-alleged-morales-death-plot-1.759504>with
providing $200,000 to the plotters. The Bolivian-Croatian oligarch
initially fled to the United States, where he was given asylum, then
relocated to Brazil <http://archive.ph/1gmMN>, where he lives today. He
denied any involvement in the plan to kill Morales.
As journalist Matt Kennard reported, there was another thread that tied
the plot to the US: the alleged participation of an NGO leader named
Hugo Achá Melgar.
“Rozsa didn’t come here by himself, they brought him,” the Bolivian
government’s lead investigator told Kennard. “Hugo Achá Melgar brought him.”
*The Human Rights Foundation destabilizes Bolivia*
Achá was not just the head of any run-of-the-mill NGO. He had founded
the Bolivian subsidiary of the Human Rights Foundation (HRF), an
international right-wing outfit that is known for hosting a “school for
revolution” for activists seeking regime change in states targeted by
the US government.
HRF is run by Thor Halvorssen Jr.
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/oslo-freedom-forum-founders-ties-islamophobes-who-inspired-mass-killer-anders-breivik/12451>,
the son of the late Venezuelan oligarch and CIA asset Thor Halvorssen
Hellum. The first cousin of the veteran Venezuelan coup plotter Leopoldo
Lopez, Halvorssen was a former college Republican activist who crusaded
against political correctness and other familiar right-wing hobgoblins.
After a brief career as a firebrand right-wing film producer, in which
he oversaw a scandalous “anti-environmentalist” documentary
<https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/19/movies/19stra.html> financed by a
mining corporation, Halvorssen rebranded as a promoter of liberalism and
the enemy of global authoritarianism. He launched the HRF with grants
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/oslo-freedom-forum-founders-ties-islamophobes-who-inspired-mass-killer-anders-breivik/12451>
from right-wing billionaires like Peter Thiel, conservative foundations,
and NGOs including Amnesty International. The group has since been at
the forefront of training activists for insurrectionary activity from
Hong Kong to the Middle East to Latin America.
Though Achá was granted asylum in the US, the HRF has continued pushing
regime change in Bolivia. As Wyatt Reed reported for The Grayzone
<https://thegrayzone.com/2019/08/29/western-regime-change-operatives-launch-campaign-to-blame-bolivias-evo-morales-for-the-amazon-fires/>,
HRF “freedom fellow” Jhanisse Vaca Daza helped trigger the initial stage
of the coup by blaming Morales for the Amazon fires that consumed parts
of Bolivia in August, mobilizing international protests against him.
At the time, Daza posed as an “environmental activist” and student of
non-violence who articulated her concerns in moderate-seeming calls for
more international aid to Bolivia. Through her NGO, Rios de Pie, she
helped launch the #SOSBolivia hashtag, which signaled the imminent
foreign-backed regime-change operation.
*Courting the regional right, prepping the coup*
While HRF’s Daza rallied protests outside Bolivian embassies in Europe
and the US, Fernando Camacho remained behind the scenes, lobbying
right-wing governments in the region to bless the coming coup.
In May, Camacho met with Colombia’s far-right President Ivan Duque
<http://www.la-razon.com/nacional/civico-duque-corteIDH-repostulacion-bolivia-evo-morales_0_3152084817.html>.
Camacho was helping to spearhead regional efforts at undermining the
legitimacy of Evo Morales’ presidency at the Inter-American Court of
Human Rights, seeking to block his candidacy in the October election.
That same month, the rightist Bolivian agitator also met with Ernesto
Araújo
<https://revistaforum.com.br/global/golpista-boliviano-que-se-reuniu-com-ernesto-araujo-manda-prender-evo-morales/>,
the chancellor of Jair Bolsonaro’s ultra-conservative administration in
Brazil. Through the meeting, Camacho successfully secured Bolsonaro’s
backing for regime change in Bolivia.
This November 10, Araújo
<https://twitter.com/ernestofaraujo/status/1193683822312902661>
enthusiastically endorsed the ouster of Morales, declaring that “Brazil
will support the democratic and constitutional transition” in the country.
Then in August, two months before Bolivia’s presidential election,
Camacho held court with officials from Venezuela’s US-appointed coup
regime. These included Gustavo Tarre
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYy-lBV4cxI>, Guaido’s faux Venezuelan
OAS ambassador, who formerly worked at the right-wing Center for
Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
<https://thegrayzone.com/tag/csis/> think tank in Washington.
After the meeting, Camacho tweetedgratitude to the Venezuelan
coup-mongers, as well as to Colombia and Brazil
<http://web.archive.org/web/20191111213940/https:/twitter.com/LuisFerCamachoV/status/1166319600394539008>.
No vamos a parar hasta tener una democracia real! Seguimos avanzando!
Vamos sumando apoyo… ahora lo hace Venezuela…Gracias a Dios.. hay
esperanza!
Gracias Colombia!
Gracias Venezuela!
Gracias Brasil! pic.twitter.com/v9TQ2Fi2Sa <https://t.co/v9TQ2Fi2Sa>
— Luis Fernando Camacho (@LuisFerCamachoV) August 27, 2019
<https://twitter.com/LuisFerCamachoV/status/1166319600394539008?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>
*Mesa and Camacho: a marriage of capitalist convenience*
Back in Bolivia, Carlos Mesa occupied the spotlight as the opposition’s
presidential candidate.
His erudite image and centrist policy proposals put him in a seemingly
alternate political universe from fire-breathing rightists like Camacho
and Marinkovic. For them, he was a convenient front man and acceptable
candidate who promised to defend their economic interests.
“It might be that he is not my favorite, but I’m going to vote for him,
because I don’t want Evo,” Marinkovic told a right-wing Argentine
newspaper
<https://www.clarin.com/mundo/evo-morales-dice-oposicion-prepara-golpe-gana-elecciones-bolivia_0_yfrF0R2o.html>five
days before the election.
Indeed, it was Camacho’s practical financial interests that appeared to
have necessitated his support for Mesa.
The Camacho family has formed a natural gas cartel in Santa Cruz. As the
Bolivian outlet Primera Linea reported
<https://www.primeralinea.info/camacho-promueve-el-paro-para-volver-a-aduenarse-del-negocio-del-gas-en-santa-cruz/>,
Luis Fernando Camacho’s father, Jose Luis, was the owner of a company
called Sergas that distributed gas in the city; his uncle, Enrique,
controlled Socre, the company that ran the local gas production
facilities; and his cousin, Cristian, controls another local gas
distributor called Controgas.
According to Primera Linea, the Camacho family was using the Pro-Santa
Cruz Committee as a political weapon to install Carlos Mesa into power
and ensure the restoration of their business empire.
Mesa has a well-documented history of advancing the goals of
transnational companies at the expense of his own country’s population.
The neoliberal politician and media personality served as vice president
when the US-backed President Gonzalo “Goni” Sanchez de Lozada provoked
mass protests
<https://corpwatch.org/article/bolivian-president-falls-over-gas-sale-california>
with his 2003 plan to allow a consortium of multinational corporations
to export the country’s natural gas to the US through a Chilean port.
Bolivia’s US-trained security forces met the ferocious protests with
brutal repression
<https://ccrjustice.org/home/press-center/press-releases/new-allegations-government-planning-2003-bolivian-massacre>.
After presiding over
<https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-2003-11-23-0311230173-story.html>the
killing of 70 unarmed protesters, Sanchez de Lozada fled to Miami and
was succeeded by Mesa.
By 2005, Mesa was also ousted by huge demonstrations
<http://www.coha.org/the-imf-and-the-washington-consensus-a-misunderstood-and-poorly-implemented-development-strategy/>
spurred by his protection of privatized natural gas companies. With his
demise, the election of Morales and the rise of the socialist and rural
Indigenous movements behind him were just beyond the horizon.
US government cables released by WikiLeaks show that, after his ouster,
Mesa continued regular correspondence with American officials. A 2008
memo <https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08LAPAZ2311_a.html> from the US
embassy in Bolivia revealed that Washington was conspiring with
opposition politicians in the lead-up to the 2009 presidential election,
hoping to undermine and ultimately unseat Morales.
The memo noted that Mesa had met with the chargé d’affaires of the US
embassy, and had privately told them he planned to run for president.
The cable recalled: “Mesa told us his party will be ideologically
similar to a social democratic party and that he hoped to strengthen
ties with the Democratic party. ‘We have nothing against the Republican
party, and have in fact gotten support from IRI (International
Republican Institute) in the past, but we think we share more ideology
with the Democrats,’ he added.”
wikileaks bolivia carlos mesa
Today, Mesa serves as an in-house “expert”
<https://www.thedialogue.org/experts/carlos-mesa/>at the Inter-American
Dialogue, a neoliberal Washington-based think tank focused on Latin
America. One of the Dialogue’s top donors is the US Agency for
International Development (USAID), the State Department subsidiary that
was exposed in classified diplomatic cables published on Wikileaks for
strategically directing millions of dollars
<https://www.mintpressnews.com/wikileaks-us-government-plotted-to-kill-bolivian-president-evo-morales/210255/>to
opposition groups including those “opposed to Evo Morales’ vision for
indigenous communities.”
Other top funders of the Dialogue
<https://www.thedialogue.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/IAD_BiennialReport_WEB.pdf>
include oil titans like Chevron and ExxonMobil; Bechtel, which inspired
the initial protests against the administration in which Mesa served;
the Inter-American Development Bank, which has forcefully opposed
Morales’ socialist-oriented policies; and the Organization of American
States (OAS), which helped delegitimize the Morales’s re-election
victory with dubious claims of irregular vote counts.
*Finishing the job*
When Carlos Mesa touched off nationwide protests in October by accusing
the Evo Morales government of committing electoral fraud, the right-wing
firebrand hailed by his followers as “Macho Camacho” emerged from the
shadows. Behind him was the hardcore separatist shock force that he led
in Santa Cruz.
Mesa faded into the distance as Camacho emerged as the authentic face of
the coup, rallying his forces with the uncompromising rhetoric and
fascist symbology that defined the Unión Juvenil Cruceñista paramilitary.
As he declared victory over Morales, Camacho exhorted his followers to
“finish the job, let’s get the elections going, let’s start judging the
government criminals, let’s put them in jail.”
Back in Washington, meanwhile, the Trump administration released an
official statement
<https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/statement-president-donald-j-trump-regarding-resignation-bolivian-president-evo-morales/>
celebrating Bolivia’s coup, declaring that “Morales’s departure
preserves democracy.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
/*Max Blumenthal* <https://thegrayzone.com/author/max-blumenthal/> is an
award-winning journalist and author, and the founder and editor of The
Grayzone./
/*Ben Norton <https://thegrayzone.com/author/ben-norton/>* is a
journalist, writer, and filmmaker, and the assistant editor of The
Grayzone./
--
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415
863.9977 https://freedomarchives.org/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20191112/dfae6d49/attachment.htm>
More information about the News
mailing list