Coup Attempt in Bolivia
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
At some point hopefully someone with knowledge of Bolivian Army insignia will chime in and identify which units are participating in this coup.
"Bolivia is among the world’s most politically turbulent nations, having had nearly 200 coups and revolutions since it won independence from Spain two centuries ago. Morales was ousted by the army as recently as 2019 after a disputed election."
And for those unable or unwilling to view The Site Formerly Known as Twitter, the payload is:
Elon Musk: "We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it."
Bolivia just stopped him from mining in their country. I'd say they dealt with it pretty well.
Ido Vock, who has the BBC byline, is a freelance journalist not a BBC reporter. https://muckrack.com/ido-vock
Marcelo Rochabrun from the Bloomberg piece is Bloomberg's Lima Bureau Chief. https://www.bloomberg.com/authors/AWGVgQgsdOs/marcelo-rochab...
South America has a history of military dictatorship but after the pendulum swings enough to the other side people seem to lose their memory a bit.
Democratic governments and political parties, unions, student organizations, journalists, artists, teachers, intellectuals, opponents to the military juntas and left-wing sympathizers (including socialists, peronists, anarchists and communists)
Arab leaders are likewise domestically widely regarded as sockpuppets of the USA. On the rare occasion a democratic election happens, the president suddenly dies, gets assasinated, or a coup d'état happens and gets hanged. Off the top of my head see [2] for an example.
This is not to say democracy would work in a Russia- or China- dominant world. It seems democracy only works for the nations who can sufficiently defend against infiltration by the NSA/foreign intelligence agency of the dominant power. And I don't think that's easy, or feasible at all. You can't expect an African nation of 10M population who gained independence 2 decades ago to have the skilled people to be able to conduct this sort of intelligence operations.
And of course, the US is the peacekeeper of the world, only bringing democracy and welfare to the poor nations held back by their authoritarian leaders and backward ideologies and religions. Long live Imperium Americana!
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Egyptian_coup_d%27%C3%A9t...
And HN is anything but a random sample people from a given country; to be part of the tech scene you kinda have to take an interest in what is happening in the US and it certainly pays to be pro-SV since historically they provided a lot of well paid jobs. That'd be a huge bias in opinion.
I will say this, though, and it's a wild guess so take it as you will: the median opinion among American tech industry workers about the government of Bolivia is: not, in any way at all, ever once thinking or caring about the government of Bolivia.
The unions declared an indefinite general strike
https://x.com/redstreamnet/status/1806068831984783583
And as I write this it seems like they’re outnumbered in the plaza
What wouldn't surprise me even more is if this coup were staged to allow Arce the excuse to put the country into martial law before being voted out.
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Evo Morales’ party expels President Luis Arce and deepens political war in Bolivia
https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-10-05/evo-mora...
In Bolivia, an “Intense” Battle Between Arce and Morales
https://www.americasquarterly.org/article/in-bolivia-an-inte...
This isn't so much my take as that of the European Parliament and Human Rights Watch.
I do not care. Later studies contradicted and criticized OAS conclusion. OAS was a player in the 2019 coup:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/02/26/bolivia-d...
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3621475
> Anez, an unapologetic right-winger appointed by standard constitutional succession rules,
What rules? She was not Evo Morales successor. The correct successors were being persecuted and had access denied to the government buildings. And during Anez illegitimate government, she used violence and the police to attack protesters and to persecute the opposition [1]. They tried to postpone the election, but they had no popular support and their coup was unsustainable.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senkata_and_Sacaba_massacres
And, again: Anez called prompt elections and peacefully handed power back to MAS less than a year later. She had every opportunity to avoid that: the election took place during the start of the COVID pandemic.
Anez is not good. I don't dispute MAS appears to be the better steward of Bolivia. But Morales had plenty of time to set up a constitutional succession and build a long-term movement (note that Morales and Arce hate each other, and there are rumors that the coup has more to do with that relationship than anything else). Instead, he tried to secure an unprecedented 4th term, after his unprecedented 3rd term, after his unprecedented 2nd term. Is it any wonder that there was chaos in 2019? If Morales had just annointed a successor, MAS would have won in a walk.
Salvatierra explicitly tells in interviews that one of the reasons for her resignation was the threat of the coup violence. That in the moment of her resignation there were already outside her house a violent mob ready to attack if she did not resign. In a context where other MAS members already had their houses attacked, their relatives kidnapped and tortured.
> And, again: Anez called prompt elections and peacefully handed power back to MAS less than a year later. She had every opportunity to avoid that: the election took place during the start of the COVID pandemic.
She tried to avoid the elections during pandemic, but was forced to retreat the proposal.And as I said, all recent soft coups in Latin America involve making elections some time later, just after ensuring that the overthrown group would not win (which failed in Bolivia because of MAS popular support).
Yes, Morales should have annointed a successor. But even his extra terms were more democratic than what the opposition did in response. And it is a little naive thinking that this would have prevented a coup or some other reaction if the parties that Morales defeated in the elections still were defeated by his successor.
This same script is being used at least for 20 years now (I remember being used in Equador). But its last part failed in Bolivia.
They criticized the statistical analysis which was not actually the main evidence OAS gave. It's just what everyone focused on.
The main evidence was someone replaced the servers used to transcribe/verify tally sheets bypassing auditing and accessed the machines while they were counting and a they found changes in the minutes and the forgeries of poll officials' signatures.
1. recognizing the wrongheadedness of the kirchners' policies, we elected an opposition leader who favors capitalism. unfortunately, he's a total nutbag, and his advocacy of freedom seems to be strictly limited to freedom of enterprise (not, for example, freedom of abortion, freedom to protest, or freedom to use public transit anonymously)
2. we aren't a petro-state
Hence, you can't evaluate other countries governments based on whether they're aligned with the Kirchners or not, it says almost nothing other than they're not on the extreme right. You have to judge them on their own terms.
many such cases!
i mean people have elected all kinds of madmen as heads of state, so that's not the unprecedented part. but i don't think any country has ever elected a minarchist as a head of state. two weeks ago he gave a speech at a cato forum here describing the state he now heads as by nature a violent and criminal organization. he may be right about that, but generally believing such things makes you unelectable
we are in uncharted waters. this is going to be exciting!
certainly external financial interests are helping him a great deal, and there's been significant plundering historically, but it remains to be seen what happens with that. since perón, investing in non-portable assets in argentina has historically been a 'heads i win, tails you lose' deal with the government; your losses will be privatized, but your profits will be nationalized. so generally it's the argentine politicians doing the plundering, not barrick gold or the ypf investors