Fascists and State Department Team Up To Stage ‘Maidan’ Coup in Bolivia
Nov. 11, 2019 (EIRNS)—As occurred with the 2014 coup in Ukraine, in Bolivia the U.S. State Department has teamed up with avowed fascists to bring down the government of President Evo Morales, creating another “Maidan”—this time in South America.
Since he took power in 2006, Morales has been a thorn in the side of the now-collapsing, colonialist and neo-liberal old order. His dirigist policies have ushered in an era of economic prosperity, impressive poverty reduction, and application of advanced science and technology to create enormous pride and optimism among the population.
For those imperial financiers in the City of London and on Wall Street, Morales had to go. Through the combined forces of the fascist Catholic leader of the Pro-Santa Cruz civic committee, Luis Fernando Camacho, who promotes the independence of Santa Cruz because of its “whiteness,” and the intervention of the State Department to guide the process every step of the way, Bolivia has now been thrown into complete instability, with a total power vacuum, no government to speak of, and continued terror attacks on the population by fascist hordes.
The State Department has systematically worked for Morales’s ouster. After the Oct. 20 elections, it expressed its “deep concern over the irregularities” in the vote counting and demanded an “accurate accounting of the votes ... or a second round that is credible and transparent.” On Nov. 6, Michael Kozak, Acting Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs, threatened in Congressional testimony that if Bolivia didn’t respect the vote of its citizens, “we’ve made clear that there will be serious consequences in their relations with the region.”
After the Organization of American States (OAS) delegation carrying out the vote audit in Bolivia announced its preliminary findings Nov. 9 that “the team can’t validate the results of the current elections,” due to “grave irregularities,” on Nov. 10, prior to Morales’s resignation, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gushed over “the professional work” of the OAS technical mission, called for new elections, and told the OAS to send a new mission to Bolivia “to oversee the new electoral process.”
As of this writing, Jeanine Anez Chavez, a member of the opposition from Santa Cruz, who is second vice-president of the Bolivian Senate, has announced she will form a government, provided enough legislators show up to vote on Morales’s resignation and agree to form a transitional government. Many legislators from Morales’s MAS party fear for their lives if they show up in public, as Camacho’s shock troops have targetted Morales’s supporters, former cabinet members, and government employees for violent attack, burning their homes, threatening and beating their family members. Morales’s home in Cochabamba was burned and looted. Camacho, meanwhile, is justifying persecution of former government employees and MAS members as “divine justice,” not vengeance. He has manically tweeted that there is an arrest warrant out of Morales—which the head of the police has denied—warning that Morales and his Vice President Alvaro García Linera will be put on trial and punished.