Back in 2017, the alt media was glad to report that Bolivia managed to kick out the Rothschild’s banks out of the country and reclaim its financial independence, by not responding to financial pressure from the U.S government or Rothschild owned banking entities.
Before Evo Morales assumed the office of president, Bolivia was
suffering from the effects of IMF/ World Bank-imposed austerity and
privatization that exploited its people and resources. It was also South
America’s poorest nation.
Though the Bolivian people, through strong showings of popular
resistance over a period of years, were able to stop some of the worst
privatization efforts – particularly the privatization of the nation’s
water supply, many of the shackles imposed by these
Rothschild-controlled institutions remained.
Since 2006, a year after Morales came to power, social spending on
health, education, and poverty programs has increased by over 45
percent.
During a visit to Tarija in Southern Bolivia, Morales said:
“Before, in order to obtain credit from the IMF, we were forced to give
up a part of our country, but we have liberated ourselves economically
and politically and we are no longer dependent on other countries or
institutions.”
Bolivia’s President Evo Morales has been highlighting his government’s independence from international money lending organizations and their detrimental impact the nation.
“A day like today in 1944 ended Bretton Woods Economic Conference (USA),
in which the IMF and WB were established,” Morales tweeted.
“These organizations dictated the economic fate of Bolivia and the
world. Today we can say that we have total independence of them.”
This was back in 2017. Unfortunately, it was not meant to last.
Bolivia Is the Latest Successful US-Backed Coup in Latin America
According to MintPressNews,
“Bolivian President Evo Morales “resigned” at gunpoint Sunday, after
army generals publicly demanded his resignation, despite convincingly
winning re-election just three weeks ago.
The preceding 21 days were filled with fractious demonstrations and
counter-protests from Morales’ supporters and opponents. On October 20,
Morales had secured enough votes to win the election outright in the
first round without the need for a run-off against his closest
challenger, Carlos Mesa.
However, Mesa cried fraud, citing supposed irregularities in the
vote-counting procedure, claiming Morales did not receive the requisite
vote share to ensure his victory. The Organization of American States
(OAS) and the U.S. government repeated this claim, although neither
group provided evidence of fraud.
Morales invited the OAS to audit the election as he was confident of its
veracity. Indeed, a report by the Washington-based Center for Economic
Policy Research found that
the vote totals were “consistent” with those announced, finding no
irregularities whatsoever. Despite this, the local U.S.-backed
opposition went on the attack.
Right-Wing Rampage
On Saturday, veteran political scientists Noam Chomsky and Vijay Prashad warned that “a coup is brewing against the elected government” of Bolivia, expressing their concern at the “fascistic” violence percolating throughout the country.
In Santa Cruz, a stronghold of the wealthy white elite who oppose Morales, the office of the electoral authority was burned down.
Meanwhile, in Vinto, opposition groups kidnapped local mayor
Patricia Arce, cut her hair off and painted her body red, publicly
dragging her through the streets and abusing her, forcing her to commit
to leaving office.
Victor Borda, President of Bolivia’s Chamber of Deputies, was also forced to resign after coup forces attacked his house and kidnapped his brother.
As soon as Morales stepped down, the police, who had refused to serve his government, ordered his arrest and vandals ransacked his house.
Meanwhile, the conservative opposition joyously burned the flag
of Bolivia’s indigenous people (a majority of the country’s
population), in the clear hopes that the coup would mark a return to
rule by the white elite who had been in power since the time of the
Conquistadors.
The United States Applauds the Coup
The Trump administration released an official communication Monday, not just endorsing the coup, but all but stating “we did it.”
“The resignation yesterday of Bolivian President Evo Morales is a
significant moment for democracy in the Western Hemisphere,” it read,
claiming the events constituted the “preservation of democracy.” It also
sent a clear threat that more regime change operations were to come,
and they already knew who the targets were:
“These events send a strong signal to the illegitimate regimes in
Venezuela and Nicaragua that democracy and the will of the people will
always prevail. We are now one step closer to a completely democratic,
prosperous, and free Western Hemisphere.”
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also welcomed the events, claiming
that Bolivia could now be “ensured free and fair elections.” Michael
McFaul, Professor of Political Science at Stanford University and former
U.S. Ambassador to Russia, was even more pleased.
“Morales has fled. Excellent!” he exclaimed on Twitter.
The U.S. government has long opposed Morales and his Movement for
Socialism party’s agenda of nationalizing Bolivia’s resources to help
its people.
However, it inadvertently helped him get elected in the first place.
Shortly before the 2006 election, the U.S. embassy in La Paz put out a
public statement saying it could, under no circumstances, accept a
Morales presidency. This enormous election meddling backfired, however,
as his polling numbers surged as a result.
While the Trump administration intimates that this will not be the last,
the Bolivia case is merely the latest in a long line of U.S.-backed
coups in the region. Historian and former State Department employee
William Blum calculated that the U.S. has overthrown over 50 governments since 1945, many of them in the region it considers its “backyard.”
For example, in 2009, the U.S. supported a coup against the leftist
government of Manuel Zelaya, blocking any regional or international
response. Hillary Clinton later boasted that, in her role as Secretary of State, she had “rendered the question of Zelaya moot.”
Since 2009 the country has been ruled by a right-wing military dictatorship that brutalizes its population, leading to a mass exodus of refugees northward, one of the principal (but unspoken) drivers of the so-called refugee caravan crisis on the U.S./Mexico border.
In 2002, the U.S. sponsored and took part in
a briefly successful coup against Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, only for it
to be reversed by a massive display of collective solidarity from
Venezuela’s people who refused to accept the situation and inspired
loyal units to retake the presidential palace and rescue Chavez.
Haiti was not so lucky. President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, leader of a
grassroots people’s movement, was overthrown in U.S.-backed coups in 1991 and 2004,
leaving the nation with a corrupt puppet government that turned the
country into the huge, impoverished sweatshop for Western corporations
it is today.
This continual interference gave rise to the wry comment in Latin
America that the safest place in the world is the U.S. because it is the
only nation without an American embassy.
In 13 years in office, the Movement for Socialism has revolutionized
Bolivia, nationalizing the country’s key resources and putting the
proceeds towards social programs tackling the population’s most pressing
concerns.
Poverty was reduced by 42%, and extreme poverty by 60%, with unemployment halving. School enrollment and the provision of electricity has greatly increased, and the government has built over 150,000 social houses and has instituted a free state pension for all those over 60 years old.
However, Morales courted controversy when he lost a national referendum
that proposed to end term limits. Despite the result, the Supreme Court
ruled that he could stand anyway. He had also drawn criticism from
environmentalists for continuing Bolivia’s extractive economic model.
Corporate Media Obscuring Reality
There is a perfect word in the English language for when army
generals appear on television demanding the resignation of an elected
head of state while their allies detain and torture government
officials. Yet corporate media are steadfastly refusing to frame events
as a coup, instead uniformly describing Morales as “resigning.” Many did
not even mention the actions of the army generals.
CBS News, for example, claimed that Morales was “resigning” due to “election fraud and protests.” The New York Times asserted
he “stepped down” amid “weeks of mass protests by an infuriated
population that accused him of undermining democracy.” It expressed
relief that his “grip on power” had finally been weakened, giving space
to one commenter to claim that this marked “the end of tyranny.”
Thus, the media presented the military overthrow of a democratically-elected leader as the welcome demise of a “full-blown dictatorship” and the “restoration of democracy,” rather than just the opposite, highlighting their remarkable skill with language.
The CIA Has Interfered With Over 81 Foreign Elections in the Past Century (I Guess It’s 82 Now).
Denunciations of the Coup
On the other hand, there has been a forthright rejection of the events
from much of the Western left. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), for example, who
recently expressed her pride in endorsing Bernie Sanders, who, she said, promises to fight Western imperialism, stated via Twitter:
Sanders himself was “very concerned” about the coup against the leader who he met at the Vatican and who had praised him deeply. UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn was more forthright, claiming he was “appalled” by what happened:
Noam Chomsky and Vijay Prashad described what they saw as another U.S.-backed Latin American coup.
“The coup is driven by the Bolivian oligarchy, who are angered by the
fourth election loss by their parties to the Movement for Socialism. The
oligarchy is fully supported by the United States government, which has
long been eager to remove Morales and his movement from power.
“For over a decade, the US embassy’s Center of Operations in La Paz has
articulated the fact that it has two plans – Plan A, the coup; Plan B,
assassination of Morales. This is a serious breach of the UN Charter and
of all international obligations. We stand against the coup, and with
the Bolivian people.”
The Future
Morales has been offered asylum by the Mexican government. It is far
from clear whether the Bolivian people will accept the new events, but
what is clear is that the Trump administration is pursuing a much more
aggressive line than Obama with regards to regime change. Those who
follow Latin America will hope this is not a return to the days of the
dark days of dirty wars and coups d’etat.
Source: MintpressNews.com / References: MintpressNews.com; HumansAreFree.com; HumansAreFree.com
