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Comment by NERD_ALERT | Hacker News Reader

The 2019 Bolivian political crisis [1] came right off the heels of Evo Morales negotiating lithium trade with Russia and China. Bolivia happens to have the largest lithium reserves of any nation.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Bolivian_political_cris...

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This was because Evo was running again even when their constitution forbid it, basically every latin american president dream of eternal reelection.

Good context, but not a geopolitical crisis, it was an internal civil conflict.

The US/CIA has a long history of inciting coups, rigging elections, and funding far right terror organizations across Latin America for matters similar or lesser than this [1]. I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss this as unprovoked internal conflict. Especially given that only a year after this event, another election was held in which Luis Arce won in a landslide [2]. Luis Arce was importantly the finance minister for the Evo Morales administration [3]. There’s no evidence that popular support had ever waned for the Movement for Socialism in Bolivia. Yet Jeanine Añez was able to win in 2019 and exile Evo Morales in an election that involved, “irregularities and serious human rights abuses by security forces,” according to independent human rights organizations [4].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in...

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Bolivian_general_electi...

[3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Arce

[4] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/17/bolivia-govern...

> The US/CIA has a long history of inciting coups, rigging elections, and funding far right terror organizations across Latin America for matters similar or lesser than this [1].

More recently we've been supporting leftist elected candidates against right-wing coups.

We don't care Bolivia has lithium. We get lithium from Australia.

Third worldist leftists have many dumb ideas, but among them is the idea that wars are for resources or that we're exploiting third world countries by taking their resources. It's almost the opposite - they are poor because we aren't trading with them.

Which left wing governments has the US defended against right wing coups?

Brazil and Guatemala in 2023.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/01/12/bernardo-are...

And Guyana against invasion by Venezuela.

> Good context, but not a geopolitical crisis, it was an internal civil conflict.

Do you think clandestine services pursue their goals by declaring war on countries?

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