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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element" dir="ltr"> <font
size="-2"><a class="domain reader-domain"
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/01/24/what-the-right-wing-in-latin-america-means-by-democracy-is-violence/">https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/01/24/what-the-right-wing-in-latin-america-means-by-democracy-is-violence/</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">What the Right Wing in Latin America
Means by Democracy Is Violence<br>
</h1>
<div class="credits reader-credits">by Vijay Prashad - January
24, 2020<em><strong><br>
</strong></em></div>
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<p>It was a curious exchange. Frustrated by the attacks on
his party—the Movement for Socialism (MAS)—former
president of Bolivia Evo Morales made an audio recording
in which he called upon his supporters to form militias.
Maximilian Heath of Reuters went to Argentina to speak
with Morales about this leaked recording; Morales <a
href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bolivia-evo/bolivia-exiled-ex-president-morales-calls-on-radio-for-armed-militias-idUSKBN1ZC066">said</a>,
“In Bolivia, if the armed forces are shooting the
people, killing the people, the people have the right to
organize their security.”</p>
<p>Morales’ anxiousness is rooted in fact. The
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights—a body of the
pro-U.S. Organization of American States—<a
href="https://tinyurl.com/sbr258t">reported</a> in
December 2019 that there have been a series of massacres
conducted by the armed forces of the current interim
government in Bolivia. The use of the word “massacre” in
this report is significant; these were not clashes or
conflicts, but the targeted murder of civilians who
supported MAS and Morales.</p>
<p>The interim president of Bolivia, Jeanine Áñez Chávez,
has made inflammatory statements about the indigenous
support base of MAS and Morales. She has frequently
spoken of them with derision, even <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/14/what-the-coup-against-evo-morales-means-to-indigenous-people-like-me">saying</a>
that she dreams of a Bolivia without “satanic indigenous
rites” and that “the city is not for the Indians.” Áñez
signed Supreme Decree no. 4078 that exempted the
military from any criminal responsibility for its use of
force; she wants to ban MAS, and her interior minister
has filed a warrant for the <a
href="https://twitter.com/ArturoMurilloS/status/1207354063349800962?s=20">arrest</a>
of Morales. This is a rapid and disturbing attack on the
political fabric of Bolivia.</p>
<p><b>Apology</b></p>
<p>Morales’ statement about militias came merely as a way
to say that he worried about the repression and violence
occasioned by the interim government and the military,
now immune from prosecution. U.S. President Donald
Trump’s main envoy to Latin America—Mauricio
Claver-Carone (who organized the bankrupting $57 billion
<a
href="https://www.thetricontinental.org/dossier-10-argentina-goes-back-to-the-imf/">loan
to Argentina</a> when he was the U.S. director at the
International Monetary Fund)—went to Bolivia and <a
href="https://www.paginasiete.bo/nacional/2020/1/19/es-inaceptable-que-evo-use-argentina-para-fomentar-inestabilidad-violencia-243909.html">attacked</a>
Morales. Morales, Claver-Carone said, is fomenting
insurrection from Argentina. This is a bizarre
statement.</p>
<p>Morales was re-elected in 2014. There was not a whiff
of impropriety in that election. He had a mandate to
remain in office until January 2020. Even if there was a
problem in the 2019 election, he should have remained in
office until this month. But he was removed by a
U.S.-backed military coup. That coup is not the
insurrection that worries Claver-Carone. What worries
him is that Morales is concerned about his supporters
who are being <a href="https://www.defensoria.gob.bo/">intimidated
and killed</a>. It was not the coup, but Morales’
statement of anguish that became the scandal. Morales
then <a
href="https://www.eldiario24.com/nota/argentina/443421/evo-morales-se-disculpa-polemica-propuesta-crear-milicias-populares-bolivia.html">apologized</a>
for his statement.</p>
<p><b>Elections</b></p>
<p>Bolivia will face an election on May 3. The Movement
for Socialism Party nominated Luis Arce Catacora,
Bolivia’s former minister for the economy, as its
presidential candidate, and David Choquehuanca,
Bolivia’s former foreign minister, as its
vice-presidential candidate. MAS has been deeply
bruised. More than 100 government officials from the MAS
party are either in detention or face criminal charges,
while a handful are in the Mexican embassy in La Paz
(they have been denied safe passage to the airport).</p>
<p>The anti-coup uprising in Chapare province led the
interior minister Arturo Murillo to make a <a
href="https://www.lostiempos.com/actualidad/pais/20191211/murillo-advierte-al-tropico-cuidado-que-ponerse-duros-no-tengan-elecciones">statement</a>
that he would perhaps disenfranchise the entire province
if the rebellion continues (the rebels <a
href="https://www.opinion.com.bo/articulo/cochabamba/hotel-quemado-murillo-es-vigilado-lugarenos/20191210220056740770.html">burned
down</a> a hotel that he owns). Supporters of MAS and
its party workers are afraid to leave their homes, let
alone campaign in the election. Morales’ statement came
as a mirror of their own anxiousness.</p>
<p>No one imagines that there is going to be a “fair
election.” The Trump administration has said it will
send a USAID team to Bolivia to monitor the situation,
and then to resume U.S. aid to the country; the U.S.
will also monitor the elections. Between the U.S.
monitors and Supreme Decree no. 4078, the conditions for
a fair election simply do not apply.</p>
<p>And not many outside the region seem to have any
problem with this attack against democracy.</p>
<p><b>‘Staggering Number’</b></p>
<p>On January 14, the UN’s human rights body released a
brief <a
href="https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=25461&LangID=E">statement</a>
on the killings of human rights activists in Colombia.
The UN said that a “staggering number of human rights
defenders” were killed last year in Colombia; by the
UN’s count, between 107 and 120 activists were murdered.
In 2018, 115 human rights defenders were killed, and in
the first two weeks of January of this year, 10 human
rights defenders have already been murdered. Most of
them are from left-wing people’s organizations.</p>
<p>The UN numbers are conservative. For 2018, the Center
for Research and Popular Education Peace Program, based
in Colombia, <a
href="https://www.cinep.org.co/Home2/component/k2/690-informe-ddhh-violencia-camuflada-la-base-social-en-riesgo.html">documented</a>
1,151 death threats, 648 assassinations, and 304 cases
of physical injuries. But the UN’s trendline is correct.
Of the murders last year, 98 percent took place in very
poor rural areas. The killers, the UN suggests, are
“criminal groups and armed groups linked to illicit
economies in areas vacated by the <a
href="https://www.thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/newsletter-50-2019-war/">FARC-EP</a>.”
In other words, right-wing paramilitary groups and their
affiliated drug gangs have taken advantage of the peace
treaty signed by the Left to terrorize the countryside.</p>
<p>In the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research <a
href="https://www.thetricontinental.org/peace-neoliberalism-and-political-shifts-in-colombia/">dossier</a>
on Colombia (December 2019), the argument is made that
the Colombian oligarchy does not want to move toward
peace because this would shift the needle of Colombian
politics toward the people’s movements and the Left. The
continuation of the war—now as assassination and
intimidation—favors the oligarchy. They prefer this
violence to democratic politics.</p>
<p>These targeted murders and this targeted intimidation
is only one part of the problem in Latin America. The
other is that this region—with its outrageous social
inequality—experiences violence at extreme levels. While
Latin America is home to only 8 percent of the world’s
population, <a
href="https://www.jornada.com.mx/2018/04/29/mundo/021n1mun">33
percent</a> of all homicides occur in the region. This
includes high violence against young men, and it
includes the highest rates of femicide in the world.
None of the right-wing governments are interested in
addressing this fundamental problem for the hemisphere.</p>
<p>What the government of Iván Duque is doing in Colombia
is what the interim government of Jeanine Áñez is doing
in Bolivia—both are using extreme state violence against
trade unionists and peasant organizers, against
socialist leaders and indigenous leaders. This extreme
violence undermines the possibility of democracy and
allows the oligarchy to be re-elected in polling booths
where the Left not dare enter.</p>
<p><b>Héroes del Ñancahuazú</b></p>
<p>In 2016, Evo Morales inaugurated the General Juan José
Torres Anti-Imperialist Command School in the town of
Warnes. General Juan José Torres was the socialist
president of Bolivia in 1970-71. He was overthrown in a
coup by the Bolivian general favored by the CIA, Hugo
Bánzer. Bánzer had closely worked with the Nazi leader
Klaus Barbie to set up the CIA-run Operation Condor to
search out and kill any and every communist in the
hemisphere. They killed Torres in 1976. The combination
of the CIA, Nazis, and the oligarchies of the region is
not something from the past: Brazil’s culture
secretary—Roberto Alvim—recently <a
href="https://www.brasildefato.com.br/2020/01/17/roberto-alvim-e-demitido-da-secretaria-de-cultura-apos-copiar-discurso-nazista/">plagiarized</a>
a speech from the Nazi Joseph Goebbels.</p>
<p>The interim government’s interim Defense Minister Luis
Fernando López said that his government has renamed the
Anti-Imperialist school. “We are not anti-anything,” he
<a
href="https://erbol.com.bo/nacional/escuela-antiimperialista-pas%C3%B3-llamarse-h%C3%A9roes-del-%C3%B1ancahauz%C3%BA">said</a>,
as if his government is not anti-Morales, anti-MAS, and
anti-communist. The school has been renamed Héroes del
Ñancahuazú.</p>
<p>In 1967, Che Guevara and his National Liberation Army
of Bolivia operated near the Ñancahuazú River in
Bolivia’s southeast. The government of General René
Barrientos Ortuño, the CIA agent Félix Rodríguez, and
the Nazi Klaus Barbie ran the operation to destroy
Guevara’s campaign. They named their operation the
Ñancahuazú Campaign. The Anti-Imperialist School in
Bolivia now honors the men—led by a CIA agent and a
Nazi—who killed Che Guevara. It sends a message to the
Che Guevaras of today: We will get you. This is the
democracy of the oligarchy in Latin America today.</p>
<p><i>This article was produced by </i><a
href="https://independentmediainstitute.org/globetrotter/"><i>Globetrotter</i></a><i>,
a project of the Independent Media Institute.</i></p>
</div>
<p> <em><strong>Vijay Prashad’s</strong> most recent book
is No Free Left: The Futures of Indian Communism (New
Delhi: LeftWord Books, 2015).</em> </p>
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