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<h1 class="reader-title">Bolivia's racist coup is trying to
drown resistance in blood</h1>
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<div> <time><span content="2019-11-17T00:00:00+00:00">Sunday,
November 17, 2019</span></time> </div>
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<p>BOLIVIA’S coup regime seems determined to drown the
opposition in blood. Protesters demonstrating for
the return of elected president Evo Morales have
been gunned down in La Paz and while marching on
Cochabamba.</p>
<p>Accurate figures are hard to come by, since the
Bolivian government is clamping down on free
reporting. Journalists have been attacked by police;
foreign reporters threatened with deportation,
according to the Inter-American Commission on Human
Rights (IACHR).</p>
<p>The IACHR and the UN High Commissioner for Human
Rights might sound the alarm over lethal force by
the security forces, but “president” Jeanine Anez
wants more of it: signing a decree exempting troops
from criminal responsibility for anything they might
do during “the restoration of order and public
stability.”</p>
<p>Given that Anez is now notorious for a tweet in
which she declared La Paz “no place for Indians” and
demanded that indigenous peoples go back to the
mountains or the plains, it is hardly surprising she
is unconcerned at shedding indigenous blood. </p>
<p>The coup in Bolivia has been explicitly racist,
burning the indigenous Wiphala flag, involving
bizarre prayer ceremonies celebrating the “return of
Christ” and expulsion of Pachamama, or Mother Earth,
from the presidential palace and parliament in a
symbolic victory of the descendants of white Spanish
Catholic colonists over native American heathens who
had the effrontery to elect one of their own as
president.</p>
<p>But there are further reasons why Anez needs to
smash opposition quickly. Of all the US-inspired
reactionary takeovers in Latin America in recent
years, that in Bolivia is the most blatant.</p>
<p>Brazil’s president Dilma Rousseff was removed in a
“constitutional coup” where crooked senators and
parliamentarians combined to override the popular
vote. But there is nothing constitutional about
either Morales’s overthrow or Anez’s investiture. </p>
<p>As the US-based Centre for Economic & Policy
Research (CEPR) confirms in a <a
href="http://cepr.net/publications/reports/bolivia-elections-2019-11">detailed
study,</a> Morales’s first-round victory in last
month’s presidential elections was in no way
irregular. The result was in line with most polls. A
late surge for him was predictable and normal, the
result of the rural and indigenous districts that
have always disproportionately supported him taking
longer to count.</p>
<p>There was no justification for the Organisation of
American States claim that there were problems with
the vote. Even if it had been correct, nobody — the
OAS included — disputed Morales’s first-place
position, only whether he had won by enough to avoid
a second round. </p>
<p>The certain knowledge that he had both won the
election and would win any re-election lay behind
opposition leaders’ refusal to countenance his offer
of dialogue and a second vote. Today it lies behind
Anez’s insistence that he will not be allowed to run
in any new election and will be arrested if he tries
to return.</p>
<p>The fury of Bolivians cheated of their elected
government has to be subdued with terror before
events in what is now a volatile continent spiral
out of the Bolivian military’s control. A
collaborator over the border in Argentina leaves
office on December 10; his successor Alberto
Fernandez has denounced the coup. </p>
<p>Protests against Chile’s right-wing regime are
again erupting as President Sebastian Pinera
backtracks on concessions. In Ecuador, Lenin
Moreno’s bid to blame mammoth protests against his
own neoliberal regime on Cuban medical aid projects
shows how panicky the Latin American right is. </p>
<p>A bid by Venezuelan wannabe Juan Guaido to revive
the anti-government movement there was outnumbered
in Caracas by a “march against fascism” that
condemned the terror in Bolivia, while the
horrifying nature of the right’s revenge in the
latter country is a taster of what would follow a
successful Venezuelan coup.</p>
<p>Calls for restraint from organisations such as the
UN don’t cut it. Bolivian protesters face violence
because they are exposing the illegitimate character
of the government. International solidarity must
include immediate pressure for an end to the
violence — but should extend to demanding the return
of the country’s elected leader.</p>
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