The Bolivian Coup Is Not a Coup--Because US Wanted It to Happen

[Judi Lynn]

NOVEMBER 11, 2019

ALAN MACLEOD



Army generals appearing on television to demand the resignation and arrest of an elected civilian head of state seems like a textbook example of a coup. And yet that is certainly not how corporate media are presenting the weekend’s events in Bolivia.

No establishment outlet framed the action as a coup; instead, President Evo Morales “resigned” (ABC News, 11/10/19), amid widespread “protests” (CBS News, 11/10/19) from an “infuriated population” (New York Times, 11/10/19) angry at the “election fraud” (Fox News, 11/10/19) of the “full-blown dictatorship” (Miami Herald, 11/9/19). When the word “coup” is used at all, it comes only as an accusation from Morales or another official from his government, which corporate media have been demonizing since his election in 2006 (FAIR.org, 5/6/09, 8/1/12, 4/11/19).

The New York Times (11/10/19) did not hide its approval at events, presenting Morales as a power-hungry despot who had finally “lost his grip on power,” claiming he was “besieged by protests” and “abandoned by allies” like the security services. His authoritarian tendencies, the news article claimed, “worried critics and many supporters for years,” and allowed one source to claim that his overthrow marked “the end of tyranny” for Bolivia. With an apparent nod to balance, it did note that Morales “admitted no wrongdoing” and claimed he was a “victim of a coup.” By that point, however, the well had been thoroughly poisoned.

CNN (11/10/19) dismissed the results of the recent election, where Bolivia gave Morales another term in office, as beset with “accusations of election fraud,” presenting them as a farce where “Morales declared himself the winner.” Time’s report (11/10/19) presented the catalyst for his “resignation” as “protests” and “fraud allegations,” rather than being forced at gunpoint by the military. Meanwhile, CBS News (11/10/19) did not even include the word “allegations,” its headline reading, “Bolivian President Evo Morales Resigns After Election Fraud and Protests.”

Delegitimizing foreign elections where the “wrong” person wins, of course, is a favorite pastime of corporate media (FAIR.org, 5/23/18). There is a great deal of uncritical acceptance of the Organization of American States’ (OAS) opinions on elections, including in coverage of Bolivia’s October vote (e.g., BBC, 11/10/19; Vox, 11/10/19; Voice of America, 11/10/19), despite the lack of evidence to back up its assertions. No mainstream outlet warned its readers that the OAS is a Cold War organization, explicitly set up to halt the spread of leftist governments. In 1962, for example, it passed an official resolution claiming that the Cuban government was “incompatible with the principles and objectives of the inter-American system.” Furthermore, the organization is bankrolled by the US government; indeed, in justifying its continued funding, US AID argued that the OAS is a crucial tool in “promot[ing] US interests in the Western hemisphere by countering the influence of anti-US countries” like Bolivia.

In contrast, there was no coverage at all in US corporate media of the detailed new report from the independent Washington-based think tank CEPR, which claimed that the election results were “consistent” with the win totals announced. There was also scant mention of the kidnapping and torture of elected officials, the ransacking of Morales’ house, the burning of public buildings and of the indigenous Wiphala flag, all of which were widely shared on social media and would have suggested a very different interpretation of events.

More:
https://fair.org/home/the-bolivian-coup-is-not-a-coup-because-us-wanted-it-to-happen/

[SamKnause]

1. Thank you so much !

Keep fighting the good fight.

[alwaysinasnit]

2. K&R Thanks for posting.

[dalton99a]

3. Kick

[Aaron Pereira]

4. Another one of those days I'm grateful for FAIR.

Now we have a handy record of at least some of the disinformation major media outlets have spread regarding the coup in Bolivia.

[lostnfound]

5. Another one bites the dust

The list of Central and South American leftist leaders taken out of office is very, very long.

Naively I had thought there was reason for hope, for a brief time, when there were several such leaders who seemed to be cooperating or collaborating to make a left-of-center block that could withstand the manipulation and aggression of certain superpowers.

I had once thought that the dark days of the western powers toppling democratically elected leaders to the south were over.

[Judi Lynn]

7. Don't know how it happened by they were elected by enthusiastic multitudes in their countries.

You might remember that era was called the "Pink Tide" which appeared when George W. Bush turned his eye to Iraq and went wild against Afghanistan and Iraq and all the heat on the Latin Americas was lightened for a good while, and Hugo Chavez was elected in Venezuela, Fernando Lugo, a former Bishop in Paraguay, beloved by the masses, was elected, an excellent progressive, Tabaré Vázquez, of Uruguay, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, considered by so many to be the most beloved President in the world for a time, so intensely loved, Néstor Kirchner, of Argentina, and Michelle Bachelet, of Chile. Of these Presidents, Lula of Brazil, Kirchner of Argentina, Bachelet, of Chile, and Fernando Lugo, and Hugo Chavez all got cancer within a window of several years, all were treated for their various tumors, oh, also in the cancer line was Lula da Silva's Presidential successor, Dilma Rousseff, also treated for cancer with the same window. Of these presidents, Kirchner, Bachelet, Lugo, Chavez, Rousseff, and Lula, had also all been prisoners of previous fascist dictators, an unexpected, and deeply interesting fact. Their families had been persecuted, some exiled, all tortured, and Michelle Bachelet's mother and father, a General in the Chilean military who remained loyal to his socialist President the US had overthrown, Salvador Allende, were all tortured, her father dying because of his extreme torturing.

All things considered, how rare it was to see all those formerly tortured and tormented progressives stand up, come forward, and get elected, and how stranger yet it was to see such an amazing proportion of them suddenly being hit by cancer, with Hugo Chavez living in pain for years as he established education, medical treatment, and housing for the huge majority of very impoverished Venezuelans, before he stepped off the curb.

It is so deeply important to see that more and more U.S. Americans are starting to recognize they've been fed a lot of pure fiction their whole lives about what the U.S. has been doing in the Americas for so many decades. As soon as they realize they have been fooled by perception management by the gov't, as in brain washing, and start looking for the truth behind the outlandish pure baloney they've been fed, and start researching, and thinking for themselves, they have turned the corner. So many people are awakening from the American Dream of sheer stupidity, and they will lead others to the truth, and eventually all that brainwashing is going to be unravelled, stomped flat, and kicked to the curb. It will take a time, just as it took our whole lives to become so thoroughly misled!

As you see, when Trump started tearing apart every bit of progress made by President Obama, on cleansing the record with Cuba, and working toward a new day for the first time since 1959, things started going south in a hurry when we were given a monster for the White House. He unleashed Hell on the Southern Hemisphere, and immediately fascist President leaped into view in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Chile, etc.

The progressives are still all over the place but the US, under Trump, has been busy trying to put the racist oligarchs all back in place to start privatizing everything all over again, and oppressing the masses, while enriching the elites again.

It's just going to take a while to run them all off to hide again. Probably a lot of them will end up in South Florida, along with the oligarchs who've been dug in there already. Some clever person once said that Florida's population sometimes makes it look as if Fascist American countries have vomited up their monsters on the Florida shores.

Don't give up, the murderous grifters are all wildly outnumbered. In time, the people are going to win, after all.

[Uncle Joe]

6. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread Judi Lynn.

[Judi Lynn]

8. The clear US role in Bolivia's tragic hard-right coup

Fiona Edwards
14th November 2019

With the backing of the US government, a highly sophisticated and well-resourced coup has succeeded in overthrowing Bolivia’s legitimate and democratically elected president Evo Morales. This massive blow against democracy and social progress comes after more than a decade of US intervention aimed at destabilising Bolivia and overthrowing its successful socialist government.

A wave of fascist violence
On 10 November, Morales resigned after escalating violent attacks from the right and the Bolivian military’s demand that he step down. Under threat of being illegally arrested by the organisers of the coup, and with serious concerns that he would be assassinated by fascist thugs, Morales left Bolivia for Mexico. What the US-backed right-wing opposition could not achieve at the ballot box, they had finally attained through violence and military pressure.

The fascist groups that took the lead in overthrowing Morales’s government did so by unleashing a wave of racist violence. As the coup plot unfolded, there was a large-scale, coordinated operation to kidnap relatives of prominent left-wing politicians to force them to resign their positions. At the same time, the homes of some members of the ruling Movement For Socialism (MAS) were burnt as arsonists went on the rampage. Hours after Morales stepped down, his own home was invaded and vandalised. The Bolivian police did nothing to prevent this lawlessness, giving a clear green-light to the coup.

Around 24 hours before the Bolivian military made the decisive ‘request’ that Morales resign, the coup plotters shut down Bolivia TV and Nueva Patria Radio. The director of the radio station, José Aramayo, was even tied to a tree by right-wing activists. As a result, there has been a media blackout of progressive TV channels in the country since 9 November. Freedom of speech has been suppressed by the far right in order to prevent the truth from getting out to the population.

Racism boosted
The coup has also stimulated an outpouring of violent racist hatred directed against Bolivia’s Indigenous peoples. Right-wing opponents of Morales celebrated his resignation by burning the Wiphala flag, which is a symbol of resistance of the Indigenous peoples and Bolivia’s second official flag. The pro-coup Bolivian police, meanwhile, have been filmed cutting the indigenous flag off their uniforms.

More:
https://www.thecanary.co/global/world-analysis/2019/11/14/the-clear-us-role-in-bolivias-tragic-hard-right-coup/

[Judi Lynn]

9. What the coup against Evo Morales means to indigenous people like me

Nick Estes

The indigenous-socialist project accomplished what neoliberalism has repeatedly failed to do: redistribute wealth to society’s poorest sectors

@nick_w_estes
Thu 14 Nov 2019 02.00 ESTLast modified on Thu 14 Nov 2019 10.32 EST

Evo Morales is more than Bolivia’s first indigenous president — he is our president, too. The rise of a humble Aymara coca farmer to the nation’s highest office in 2006 marked the arrival of indigenous people as vanguards of history. Within the social movements that brought him to power emerged indigenous visions of socialism and the values of Pachamama (the Andean Earth Mother). Evo represents five centuries of indigenous deprivation and struggle in the hemisphere.

A coup against Evo, therefore, is a coup against indigenous people.

Evo’s critics, from the anti-state left and right, are quick to point out his failures. But it was his victories that fomented this most recent violent backlash.

Evo and his party, the indigenous-led Movement for Socialism (MAS in Spanish), nationalized key industries and used bold social spending to shrink extreme poverty by more than half, lowering the country’s Gini coefficient, which measures income inequality, by a remarkable 19%. During Evo’s and MAS’s tenure, much of Bolivia’s indigenous-majority population has, for the first time in their lives, lived above poverty.

The achievements were more than economic. Bolivia made a great leap forward in indigenous rights.

Once at the margins of society, Indigenous languages and culture have been thoroughly incorporated into Bolivia’s plurinational model. The indigenous Andean concept of Bien Vivir, which promotes living in harmony with one another and the natural world, was written into the country’s constitution becoming a measure for institutional reform and social progress. The Wiphala, an indigenous multicolor flag, became a national flag next to the tricolor, and 36 indigenous languages became official national languages alongside Spanish.

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/14/what-the-coup-against-evo-morales-means-to-indigenous-people-like-me