Moreles, Evo pres

<div>1119 bak format coup</div><div></div><div>hu right to water thru UN</div><div>=</div><div>academic</div><div>see cochabamba water war 2000</div><div>2014 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANg-GkRghU4">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANg-GkRghU4</a></div><div>road thru amazon?</div><div><a class="fl" href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:pQ4OA6SwV6EJ:https://www.rapidtransition.org/stories/the-rights-of-nature-in-bolivia-and-ecuador/+&cd=6&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search%3Fq%3Dcache:pQ4OA6SwV6EJ:https://www.rapidtransition.org/stories/the-rights-of-nature-in-bolivia-and-ecuador/%2B%26cd%3D6%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus&ved=2ahUKEwjhl5Gks9XtAhVERKwKHfAYCDgQIDAFegQIDhAH" style="text-decoration-line: none; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1); display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;">=</a><a class="fl" href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:pQ4OA6SwV6EJ:https://www.rapidtransition.org/stories/the-rights-of-nature-in-bolivia-and-ecuador/+&cd=6&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search%3Fq%3Dcache:pQ4OA6SwV6EJ:https://www.rapidtransition.org/stories/the-rights-of-nature-in-bolivia-and-ecuador/%2B%26cd%3D6%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus&ved=2ahUKEwjhl5Gks9XtAhVERKwKHfAYCDgQIDAFegQIDhAH" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1); display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;">https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/trump-coup-2649595275/</a>IMI<a class="fl" href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:pQ4OA6SwV6EJ:https://www.rapidtransition.org/stories/the-rights-of-nature-in-bolivia-and-ecuador/+&cd=6&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search%3Fq%3Dcache:pQ4OA6SwV6EJ:https://www.rapidtransition.org/stories/the-rights-of-nature-in-bolivia-and-ecuador/%2B%26cd%3D6%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus&ved=2ahUKEwjhl5Gks9XtAhVERKwKHfAYCDgQIDAFegQIDhAH">I</a>n recent weeks, Donald Trump has been ridiculed, slathered with contempt, and repeatedly branded a "liar," as well as an existential threat to democracy in the United States, by the biggest media outlets in the country. This is in response to his attempts to reverse the results of the U.S. presidential election, and claiming—without evidence—that it was stolen. He still clings to these allegations, but he will be leaving the White House on January 20.But just over a year ago, a similar effort was launched in Bolivia, and it actually prevailed. The country's democratically elected president, Evo Morales, was toppled three weeks after the October 20 vote, before his term was finished. He left the country after the military "asked" him to resign.The similarities are remarkable. Leaders of the Bolivian opposition indicated before the votes were counted, as Trump did, that they would <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-50119655" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">not accept</a> the result if they lost. Like Trump, they had <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/07/world/americas/bolivia-election-evo-morales.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">no evidence</a> for their <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/02/26/bolivia-dismissed-its-october-elections-fraudulent-our-research-found-no-reason-suspect-fraud/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">allegations</a> of fraud when the votes were counted. And as with Trump, the falseness of their charges was obvious from <a href="https://cepr.net/press-release/oas-should-retract-its-press-release-on-bolivian-election-cepr-co-director-says/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">day one</a>.Some readers may question the relevance of the comparison with a developing country whose democratic institutions have a shorter history, and are in important ways weaker than those in the U.S. government. But the Bolivian right would not have succeeded, where Trump has failed, if not for another important difference: the Bolivian right had powerful help from outside the country in pulling off their coup.Not surprisingly some of this help came from the Trump administration, which <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/statement-president-donald-j-trump-regarding-resignation-bolivian-president-evo-morales/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">stated</a> the day after the coup that "Morales's departure preserves democracy and paves the way for the Bolivian people to have their voices heard."Even more important help came from the Organization of American States (OAS), which, not coincidentally, gets 60 percent of its funding from the United States. The OAS also currently has a leader, Luis Almagro, who at the time of Bolivia's election needed the support of Trump and his allied right-wing governments in the Americas in order to be reelected as the head of the organization. The OAS issued a <a href="https://www.oas.org/en/media_center/press_release.asp?sCodigo=E-085/19" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">statement</a> the day after the election, expressing "deep concern and surprise at the drastic and hard-to-explain change in the trend of the preliminary results."This allegation turned out to be "false," as the New York Times would later <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/07/world/americas/bolivia-election-evo-morales.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">report</a>; but as the Times noted, this false allegation "changed the South American nation's history." It changed history because it served as the political foundation for the military coup on November 10, 2019.Another similarity: remember when Trump and his Republican allies were <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-says-he-will-win-if-legal-votes-are-counted-says-dems-are-trying-to-steal-election" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">saying</a> that the Democrats were "stealing" the election here because the later, mostly mail-in votes were coming in overwhelmingly from Democrats? Of course this was false; the truth was simply that more Democrats than Republicans were voting by mail.The OAS allegation in Bolivia was the same: for various reasons—including geography—votes in the pro-Morales areas came in later than those for the opposing candidates. This was obvious from the day after the election by simply looking at the areas where the earlier and later votes were coming from; the data was all on the web. That's why 133 economists and statisticians from various countries—the majority from the United States—signed a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/02/the-oas-has-to-answer-for-its-role-in-the-bolivian-coup" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">letter</a> demanding that the OAS retract its false statements.That's why four members of the U.S. Congress <a href="https://schakowsky.house.gov/sites/schakowsky.house.gov/files/OAS%20Boliva_Final.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">asked</a> the OAS if they ever considered the possibility—which amazingly was not mentioned in three more OAS reports—that the later-reporting precincts were politically different from the earlier ones.It's been a year, and the OAS still hasn't answered.In October, the de facto government, which took power after last year's coup, held elections, after postponing them twice. Luis Arce, Evo Morales's economy minister for 13 years, won by a margin of more than 26 percentage points.But the people killed by the post-coup government, including at least 22 people killed in two <a href="https://bit.ly/3p2Z9P2" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">massacres</a> committed by security forces, cannot be brought back to life. Thevictims were all Indigenous.Like the effort of Trump in the United States—as seen in the recent Republican <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/18/us/politics/michigan-election-results.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">attempt</a> to throw out hundreds of thousands of votes from Detroit, Michigan, where nearly 80 percent of residents are Black—the assault on democracy in Bolivia is also tied to systemic racism.Evo Morales is the first Indigenous president in a country with the largest percent of Indigenous population in the Americas, who have overwhelmingly supported him and his party; the leaders of the coup are <a href="https://bit.ly/38gFwfE" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">infused</a> with white supremacists and seek to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/15/world/americas/morales-bolivia-Indigenous-racism.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">restore</a> the dominance of the mostly white elite who ruled the country before Morales was first elected in 2005.U.S. Representatives Jan Schakowsky and Jesus "Chuy" Garcia, both of Chicago, have called for Congress to <a href="https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/515085-congress-should-investigate-oas-actions-in-bolivia" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">investigate</a> the role of the OAS in Bolivia following the 2019 election.This is vitally important, because the coup, and the violence and political repression that followed, might never have happened without the OAS's pivotal role. Perhaps most importantly, the OAS had an enormous impact on the international and domestic media, with many journalists mistakenly believing that the OAS Electoral Observation Mission was impartial, and that therefore their allegations were true.But the Bolivian coup is not the first time that the OAS has abused its authority as an electoral observer, in order to support a U.S.-backed effort to topple a democratically elected government. This <a href="https://cepr.net/documents/publications/haiti-oas-2011-10.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">happened</a> in Haiti between 2000 and 2004. And also in Haiti, the OAS did something in 2011 that perhaps no election observers had ever done: they reversed the results of a first-round presidential election, <a href="https://cepr.net/documents/publications/haiti-oas-2011-10.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">without</a> even a recount or a statistical analysis.The OAS and its leadership must be held accountable, or these crimes will keep happening.<a href="https://cepr.net/staff-member/mark-weisbrot/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Mark Weisbrot</a> is co-director of the <a href="https://www.cepr.net/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Center for Economic and Policy Research</a> in Washington, D.C. He is the author of <a href="https://www.cepr.net/publications/failed-what-the-experts-got-wrong-about-the-global-economy" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Failed: What the "Experts" Got Wrong About the Global Economy</a> (Oxford University Press, 2015).This article was produced in partnership by the <a href="https://cepr.net/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Center for Economic and Policy Research</a> and <a href="https://independentmediainstitute.org/economy-for-all/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Economy for All</a>, a project of the Independent Media Institute.<div class="around-the-web" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="from-your-siteheadline" style="font-weight: 700; text-transform: uppercase;">FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES</div><ul class="around-the-weblist" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: inline-block; width: 589.446px; list-style: none;"><li class="from-your-siteitem"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/trumps-coup-attempt-is-very-real-but-there-are-several-gaping-holes-in-the-plan/" class="from-your-sitelink" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; font-weight: lighter; line-height: normal; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;">Trump's coup attempt is very real — but there are several gaping ... ›</a></li><li class="from-your-siteitem"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/trump-coup-2648865938/" class="from-your-sitelink" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; font-weight: lighter; line-height: normal; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;">Trump's purge at the Pentagon is increasing fears of a coup-in ... ›</a></li><li class="from-your-siteitem"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/trump-coup-2649538441/" class="from-your-sitelink" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; font-weight: lighter; line-height: normal; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;">Four chilling signs Trump's attempted coup is escalating - Alternet.org ›</a></li></ul><div class="around-the-webheadline" style="font-weight: 700; text-transform: uppercase; margin-top: 10px;">RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB</div><ul class="around-the-weblist" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: inline-block; width: 589.446px; list-style: none;"><li class="around-the-webitem"><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/12/09/trump-coup-election-dispute/" class="around-the-weblink" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; font-weight: lighter; line-height: normal; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;">Coup or no coup, Trump sets dangerous precedents - The ... ›</a></li><li class="around-the-webitem"><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/trumps-coup-attempt-isnt-over" class="around-the-weblink" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; font-weight: lighter; line-height: normal; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;">Trump's Coup Attempt Isn't Over | The New Yorker ›</a></li><li class="around-the-webitem"><a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/12/trump-coup-sidney-powell-martial-law-michael-flynn-meltdown.html" class="around-the-weblink" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; font-weight: lighter; line-height: normal; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;">Trump Floats Coup Plan So Wild Even Giuliani Is Terrified ›</a></li><li class="around-the-webitem"><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/12/trumps-farcical-inept-and-deadly-serious-coup-attempt/617309/" class="around-the-weblink" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; font-weight: lighter; line-height: normal; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;">Is Trump Trying to Stage a Coup? - The Atlantic ›</a></li></ul></div><a class="fl" href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:pQ4OA6SwV6EJ:https://www.rapidtransition.org/stories/the-rights-of-nature-in-bolivia-and-ecuador/+&cd=6&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search%3Fq%3Dcache:pQ4OA6SwV6EJ:https://www.rapidtransition.org/stories/the-rights-of-nature-in-bolivia-and-ecuador/%2B%26cd%3D6%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus&ved=2ahUKEwjhl5Gks9XtAhVERKwKHfAYCDgQIDAFegQIDhAH" style="text-decoration-line: none; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1); display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;"></a></div><div><div></div><div>dn 920</div><div>
</div><div><span style="color: rgb(25, 31, 36); font-family: Roboto, " helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Bolivia, self-proclaimed interim President Jeanine Áñez has suspended her campaign in an attempt to unify conservative votes against the <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box; vertical-align: top; color: rgb(25, 31, 36); font-family: Roboto, " helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">MAS<span style="color: rgb(25, 31, 36); font-family: Roboto, " helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"> party, formerly led by ousted longtime President Evo Morales. This comes less than a year after the extremist right-wing leader rose to power following a military coup against Morales. Áñez’s reign has been marked by skyrocketing military and police repression and violence against Indigenous communities and supporters of Morales. The presidential election is scheduled for October 18.</div><div>=</div></div><div>=<div><a href="https://theintercept.com/2020/07/23/the-u-s-supported-coup-in-bolivia-continues-to-produce-repression-and-tyranny-while-revealing-how-u-s-media-propaganda-works/">https://theintercept.com/2020/07/23/the-u-s-supported-coup-in-bolivia-continues-to-produce-repression-and-tyranny-while-revealing-how-u-s-media-propaganda-works/</a>
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</div><div>U.S.-SUPPORTED MILITARY COUP in Bolivia has largely disappeared from western news outlets ever since the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/20/bolivia-el-alto-violence-death-protest" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">November 2019 massacres</a> of pro-democracy protesters by the right-wing faction that seized power. But for Bolivians, the repression and tyranny that replaced their stable and thriving democracy endures. And, predictably, the “interim president” installed after the coup, Jeanine Áñez, continues to rule the country 10 months later, despite no possibility of being democratically elected, while she and her party plot how to prevent an election which all <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/20200316-morales-pick-leads-in-bolivia-opinion-polls" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">polls show</a> will result in victory for the socialist party of toppled President Evo Morales.What makes the coup in Bolivia and its aftermath so worthwhile to explore is not just the inherent importance of Bolivia itself: a country of 11 million people with a rich and unique ethnic, cultural and religious diversity, as well as an ample supply of the now-vital resource of lithium. It is also instructive because of how <a href="https://theintercept.com/2020/06/08/the-nyt-admits-key-falsehoods-that-drove-last-years-coup-in-bolivia-falsehoods-peddled-by-the-u-s-its-media-and-the-nyt/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">U.S. discourse evolved in support of the coup</a>, with supposed “foreign policy experts” across the political spectrum — The Atlantic’s Yascha Mounk, Mother Jones’ Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery, former Obama official and Stanford Professor Michael McFaul, along with the Economist, the New York Times, and the Washington Post — spouting outright falsehoods to depict the destruction of Bolivian democracy as the salvation of it.Since the coup last October, many of the key claims used to justify the ousting of Morales — most particularly claims by the Organization of American States that the election resulting in Morales’s victory was fraudulent — have been proven <a href="https://theintercept.com/2020/06/08/the-nyt-admits-key-falsehoods-that-drove-last-years-coup-in-bolivia-falsehoods-peddled-by-the-u-s-its-media-and-the-nyt/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">to have been lies</a>. Yet not a single one of the foreign policy “experts” or media outlets have acknowledged their errors or even addressed these subsequent revelations, because they know that there are never any consequences for journalists and analysts as long as they remain subservient to the U.S. government agenda (while the New York Times reported on the studies proving the OAS claims to be baseless, they never acknowledged that their own reporting and editorializing treated those claims as true).Bolivia is but the latest of a long line of thriving, stable democracies destroyed with the support if not the outright participation of the U.S. government, while jingoistic media figures disseminated the propaganda used to justify it all. And the suffering, violence, repression and tyranny left in its wake are then simply ignored by those who helped bring it about.Today’s SYSTEM UPDATE, which debuts at 2:00 pm ET on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgxK9w5DSvQ" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">The Intercept’s YouTube channel</a>, explores all of these issues, provides an update on post-coup Bolivia, and dissects the key role played by propaganda from U.S. political and media venues. I’m joined by two of the most knowledgeable specialists on Bolivia: Kathryn Ledebur, director of the Andean Information Network, who has lived and worked with coca farmers in Bolivia for the last 30 years, and Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic & Policy Research, the first group to debunk the OAS claims of election fraud. For so many reasons, Bolivia matters, not just to people in the region but also in the U.S. <div>=</div></div></div></div><div><div>=</div><div>well, it's official libtard fuckwit [boy kings? // GoT?]</div><div>
</div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/we-will-coup-whoever-we-want-elon-musk-and-the-overthrow-of-democracy-in-bolivia/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/we-will-coup-whoever-we-want-elon-musk-and-the-overthrow-of-democracy-in-bolivia/</a></div><div>
</div><div>On July 24, 2020, Tesla’s Elon Musk <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1286673686821515266" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">wrote</a> on Twitter that a second U.S. “government stimulus package is not in the best interests of the people.” Someone <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1286867520314642443" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">responded</a> to Musk soon after, “You know what wasn’t in the best interest of people? The U.S. government organizing a coup against Evo Morales in Bolivia so you could obtain the lithium there.” Musk then <a href="https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/elon-musk-confesses-to-lithium-coup-in-bolivia-20200725-0010.html" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">wrote</a>: “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.”Musk refers here to the coup against President Evo Morales Ayma, who was removed illegally from his office in November 2019. Morales had just won an election for a term that was to have begun in January 2020. Even if there was a challenge against that election, Morales’ term should rightfully have continued through November and December of 2019. Instead, the Bolivian military, at the behest of Bolivia’s far right and the United States government, threatened Morales; Morales went into exile in Mexico and is now in Argentina.At that time, the “evidence” of fraud was offered by the far right and by a “preliminary <a href="https://tinyurl.com/swn5q2q" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">report</a>” by the Organization of American States; only after Morales was removed from office was there grudging acknowledgment by the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/07/world/americas/bolivia-election-evo-morales.html" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">liberal</a> media that there was in fact no evidence of fraud. It was too late for Bolivia, which has been condemned to a dangerous government that has suspended democracy in the country.Lithium CoupOver his 14 years in office, Morales fought to use the wealth of Bolivia for the Bolivian people, who saw—after centuries of oppression—remarkable advances in their basic needs. Literacy rates rose and hunger rates dropped. The use of Bolivia’s wealth to advance the interests of the people rather than North American multinational corporations was an abomination to the U.S. embassy in La Paz, which had egged on the worst elements of the military and the far right to overthrow the government. This is just what happened in November 2019.Musk’s admission, however intemperate, is at least honest. His company Tesla has long wanted access at a low price to the large <a href="https://peoplesdispatch.org/2019/11/13/after-evo-the-lithium-question-looms-large-in-bolivia/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">lithium</a> deposits in Bolivia; lithium is a key ingredient for batteries. Earlier this year, Musk and his company revealed that they wanted to build a Tesla factory in Brazil, which would be supplied by lithium from Bolivia; when we <a href="https://peoplesdispatch.org/2020/03/10/elon-musk-is-acting-like-a-neo-conquistador-for-south-americas-lithium/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">wrote</a> about that we called our report “Elon Musk Is Acting Like a Neo-Conquistador for South America’s Lithium.” Everything we wrote there is condensed in his new tweet: the arrogance toward the political life of other countries, and the greed toward resources that people like Musk think are their entitlement.Musk went on to delete his tweet. He then <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1286867520314642443" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">said</a>, “we get our lithium from Australia”; this will not settle the issue, since eyebrows are being raised in Australia regarding the environmental <a href="https://www.wired.co.uk/article/lithium-batteries-environment-impact" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">damage</a> from lithium mining.Suspension of DemocracyAfter Morales was removed, an insignificant far-right politician named Jeanine Áñez set aside the constitutional process and seized power. She showed the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/16/world/americas/bolivia-anez-morales.html" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">character</a> of her politics when she signed a presidential decree on November 15, 2019, that gave the military the right to do whatever it wanted; even her allies found this to be too far and repealed it on November 28.Arrests and intimidation of activists from the Movement for Socialism (MAS)—the party of Morales—began in November 2019 and still continue. On July 7, 2020, seven U.S. senators published a <a href="https://www.murphy.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/murphy-dem-senators-to-pompeo-call-for-free-and-fair-elections-in-bolivia-criticize-interim-government-for-abusive-oversteps" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">statement</a> that said, “We are increasingly concerned by the growing number of human rights violations and curtailments of civil liberties by the interim government of Bolivia.” “Without a change in course by the interim government,” the senators wrote, “we fear that basic civil rights in Bolivia will be further eroded and the legitimacy of the crucial upcoming elections will be put at risk.”There’s no need to worry about that, since the government of Áñez seems unwilling to hold an election. By all polls, Áñez looks likely to be defeated in the general elections. A recent poll by El Centro Estratégico Latinoamericano de Geopolítica (CELAG) <a href="https://www.celag.org/encuesta-bolivia-julio-2020/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">says</a> that Áñez will get a mere 13.3 percent, far behind the Movement for Socialism’s Luis Arce (41.9 percent) and the center right’s Carlos Mesa (26.8 percent). The election was supposed to have taken place in May, but it was rescheduled for September 6; it has now been <a href="https://www.jornada.com.mx/2020/07/24/mundo/025n2mun" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">postponed</a> once more, this time to October 18. Bolivia would not have had an elected government for an entire year.Luis Arce of MAS recently <a href="https://peoplesdispatch.org/2020/04/30/bolivias-socialist-presidential-candidate-luis-arce-speaks-about-elections-covid-19-and-fascist-oppression/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">told</a> Oliver Vargas, “We face persecution, we face surveillance… we are facing a very difficult campaign.” But, he said, “we are sure that we will win these elections.” If elections are permitted.The CELAG study shows that 9 out of 10 Bolivians have seen their incomes decline due to the coronavirus recession. Because of this—and of the attack by this government on the MAS—65.2 percent of Bolivians have a negative appraisal of Áñez. It is important to note that due to the positive policies of Morales’ MAS, there is widespread support for a socialist orientation; 64.1 percent of Bolivians support taxes against the rich, and Bolivians in general support the resource socialism of the MAS and Morales.CoronaShock and BoliviaThe government of Áñez has been utterly incompetent regarding the coronavirus. The number of <a href="https://boliviasegura.gob.bo/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">confirmed</a> cases of COVID-19 in this country of 11 million people is 66,456; since <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZaNoHvT3xw" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">testing</a> is low, the number is likely much higher.Musk returns to our story. Earlier this year, on March 31, Bolivia’s Foreign Minister Karen Longaric wrote an obsequious <a href="https://twitter.com/sanktpauliner/status/1286877123815378944/photo/1" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">letter</a> to Musk asking him about the “offer of cooperation posted by you regarding ventilators ready to be dispatched to countries where they are needed the most.” Longaric said, “If it is not possible to send it to Bolivia, we can arrange its receipt in Miami, FL. and transport them from there as quickly as possible.” No such ventilators came.Instead, the government bought ventilators from a Spanish supplier for <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-bolivia-ventilator/bolivia-investigates-health-officials-over-ventilator-deal-after-public-outcry-idUSKBN22W337" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">$27,000</a> for each of the 170 devices; Bolivian producers had said they could supply ventilators for $1,000 per unit. The health minister in the Áñez government—Marcelo Navajas—was <a href="https://www.paginasiete.bo/sociedad/2020/5/20/con-cartas-navajas-instruyo-comprar-los-respiradores-trasladarlos-por-boa-256083.html" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">arrested</a> for this scandal.MoralesEvo Morales read Musk’s tweet about the coup in Bolivia and <a href="https://twitter.com/evoespueblo/status/1287064230835957762" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">responded</a>: “Elon Musk, the owner of the largest electric car company, says about the coup in Bolivia: ‘We will coup whoever we want.’ Another proof that the coup was about Bolivian lithium; at the cost of two massacres. We will always defend our resources!”The reference to the massacres is important. In November, from Mexico City, Morales watched as the government of Áñez let loose the dogs of war against the people of Bolivia from Cochabamba to El Alto. “They are killing my brothers and sisters,” Morales <a href="https://www.yucatan.com.mx/mexico/evo-morales-estan-matando-a-mis-hermanos-en-bolivia" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">said</a> at a press conference. “This is the kind of thing the old military dictatorships used to do.” It is the toxic character of the government of Áñez, backed fully by the U.S. government and Elon Musk.Protests across Bolivia began on July 27 for the restoration of democracy.Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at <a href="https://independentmediainstitute.org/globetrotter/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Globetrotter</a>, a project of the Independent Media Institute. He is the chief editor of <a href="https://mayday.leftword.com/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">LeftWord Books</a> and the director of <a href="https://www.thetricontinental.org/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research</a>. He has written more than 20 books, including <a href="https://smile.amazon.com/Darker-Nations-Peoples-History-Third/dp/1595583424/?tag=alternorg08-20" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">The Darker Nations</a> and <a href="https://smile.amazon.com/Poorer-Nations-Possible-History-Global/dp/1781681589/?tag=alternorg08-20" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">The Poorer Nations</a>. His latest book is <a href="https://mayday.leftword.com/catalog/product/view/id/21820" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Washington Bullets</a>, with an introduction by Evo Morales Ayma.Alejandro Bejarano is a Bolivian musician, documentarian, and social media manager. In 2016, he received the Medal of Honor for Cultural Merit of the Plurinational Legislative Assembly of Bolivia.This article was produced by <a href="https://independentmediainstitute.org/globetrotter/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Globetrotter</a>, a project of the Independent Media Institute.</div></div><div>
</div><div><div></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/bolivia-coup-was-based-on-false-claims-of-election-fraud/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/bolivia-coup-was-based-on-false-claims-of-election-fraud/</a></div><div>
</div><div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>Bolivia coup was based on false claims of election fraud</div><div>
</div><div>Written by Eoin Higgins / Common Dreams February 28, 2020</div><div>
</div><div>A new study released by a pair of MIT researchers Thursday reveals that, contrary to claims from the U.S.-backed Organization of American States, there was no fraud in Bolivia’s Oct. 20, 2019 elections — an accusation used by the OAS and others as a pretext for supporting the coup in the country that deposed President Evo Morales and replaced him with an unelected right-wing government.</div><div>
</div><div>“Good lord,” tweeted MSNBC journalist Chris Hayes. “Given the fact the entire Morales government was toppled over accusations of election fraud, the OAS has a lot to answer for.”</div><div>
</div><div>The Intercept’s Jon Schwarz took a similar approach to the findings and the OAS’ conclusions.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Jon Schwarz</div><div>@schwarz</div><div>In a surprising development, it appears that the same political forces and media that have lied about absolutely everything about Latin America for the past 100 years were lying again https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/02/26/bolivia-dismissed-its-october-elections-fraudulent-our-research-found-no-reason-suspect-fraud/ …</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Analysis | Bolivia dismissed its October elections as fraudulent. Our research found no reason to...</div><div>Bolivians will hold a new election in May — without ousted President Evo Morales.</div><div>
</div><div>washingtonpost.com</div><div>593</div><div>9:01 AM - Feb 27, 2020</div><div>Twitter Ads info and privacy</div><div>248 people are talking about this</div><div>
</div><div>MIT researchers John Curiel and Jack R. Williams reviewed the OAS report on the election for the Washington Post and found that the “election irregularities” cited by the group were based on “problematic” statistical claims. The OAS report rested its claim on the assumption that these so-called irregularities gave Morales a boost in numbers that raised his results over 10% higher than any other candidate, precluding a runoff election.</div><div>
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</div><div>The researchers say they requested a response from the OAS about their findings, but received no reply.</div><div>
</div><div>Curiel and Williams’ study was commissioned by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). The group’s co-director, Mark Weisbrot, said in a statement that the OAS has a lot of explaining to do after facilitating the coup through faulty information.</div><div>
</div><div>“The OAS greatly misled the media and the public about what happened in Bolivia’s elections, and helped to foster a great deal of mistrust in the electoral process and the results,” said Weisbrot.</div><div>
</div><div>The orgnaization’s report bolstered the accusations of fraud in the Nov. 10 OAS report that precipitated the coup and the institution of hard-right legislator Jeanine Añez as president. The ensuing unrest and threats against he and his family, as Common Dreams reported at the time, forced Morales to flee the country for Mexico.</div><div>
</div><div>According to Curiel and Williams, the data used by OAS doesn’t line up with the organization’s conclusion:</div><div>
</div><div>Our results were straightforward. There does not seem to be a statistically significant difference in the margin before and after the halt of the preliminary vote. Instead, it is highly likely that Morales surpassed the 10-percentage-point margin in the first round. …</div><div>
</div><div>There is not any statistical evidence of fraud that we can find — the trends in the preliminary count, the lack of any big jump in support for Morales after the halt, and the size of Morales’ margin all appear legitimate. All in all, the OAS’ statistical analysis and conclusions would appear deeply flawed.</div><div>
</div><div>CEPR’s Weisbrot declared the researchers’ findings troubling and questioned the OAS’ credibility.</div><div>
</div><div>“This important analysis from MIT election researchers is the latest to show that the OAS’ statements were without basis, and that simple arithmetic shows that there is no evidence that fraud or irregularities affected the preliminary results, or the official results ? the ones that actually matter,” Weisbrot said. “The OAS needs to explain why it made these statements and why anyone should trust it when it comes to elections.”</div><div>
</div><div>“So much for that Bolivian election fraud,” tweeted the Intercept’s Ryan Grim.</div><div>
</div><div>The OAS is set to monitor new national elections in Bolivia set for May 3. Morales, still in exile, has effectively been barred from running.</div><div>
</div><div>Williams told Common Dreams that his and Curiel’s findings cast doubt on the organization’s impartiality and ability to act as a neutral arbiter.</div><div>
</div><div>“The OAS’s report has basic methodological and statistical errors that make it difficult to see the OAS as an impartial election observer,” said Williams. “The fact that they did not respond to researchers asking about their report on Bolivia seems to suggest they know this.”</div><div>
</div><div>National Nurses United director of communications Charles Idelson said on Twitter that the findings throw cold water on an attack line deployed by right-wing opponents of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2020 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, who have used his statement at Tuesday’s debate that the U.S. meddles in other countries against him.</div><div>
</div><div>“The fraudulent right wing military coup in Bolivia was carried out with Trump administration support,” said Idelson, “but some apparently still pretend the U.S. never overthrows governments of other countries.”</div><div>
</div><div>Curiel and Williams also point to the role in the media for uncritically regurgitating OAS claims on face value as the coup against Morales’ Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS-IPSP) party was underway.</div><div>
</div><div>“The media has largely reported the allegations of fraud as fact,” the researchers write. “And many commentators have justified the coup as a response to electoral fraud by MAS-IPSP.”</div><div>
</div><div>Utah-based progressive activist Tom Taylor called for accountability on the part of the media.</div><div>
</div><div>“Our news outlets took what known liars like John Bolton said about Morales at face value,” said Taylor. “Zero critical thinking. The journalists were old enough to remember when we were lied into the Iraq War.”</div><div>
</div><div>“There’s no other way to put it,” Taylor added. “Our media supported a coup.”</div><div>
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</div></div><div></div></div><div><div></div><div><a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/01/24/what-the-right-wing-in-latin-america-means-by-democracy-is-violence/">https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/01/24/what-the-right-wing-in-latin-america-means-by-democracy-is-violence/</a></div><div>
</div><div><div>ctrpunch no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>jaNUARY 24, 2020</div><div>What the Right Wing in Latin America Means by Democracy Is Violence</div><div>by VIJAY PRASHAD</div><div>
</div><div>It was a curious exchange. Frustrated by the attacks on his party—the Movement for Socialism (MAS)—former president of Bolivia Evo Morales made an audio recording in which he called upon his supporters to form militias. Maximilian Heath of Reuters went to Argentina to speak with Morales about this leaked recording; Morales said, “In Bolivia, if the armed forces are shooting the people, killing the people, the people have the right to organize their security.”</div><div>
</div><div>Morales’ anxiousness is rooted in fact. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights—a body of the pro-U.S. Organization of American States—reported in December 2019 that there have been a series of massacres conducted by the armed forces of the current interim government in Bolivia. The use of the word “massacre” in this report is significant; these were not clashes or conflicts, but the targeted murder of civilians who supported MAS and Morales.</div><div>
</div><div>The interim president of Bolivia, Jeanine Áñez Chávez, has made inflammatory statements about the indigenous support base of MAS and Morales. She has frequently spoken of them with derision, even saying that she dreams of a Bolivia without “satanic indigenous rites” and that “the city is not for the Indians.” Áñez signed Supreme Decree no. 4078 that exempted the military from any criminal responsibility for its use of force; she wants to ban MAS, and her interior minister has filed a warrant for the arrest of Morales. This is a rapid and disturbing attack on the political fabric of Bolivia.</div><div>
</div><div>Apology</div><div>
</div><div>Morales’ statement about militias came merely as a way to say that he worried about the repression and violence occasioned by the interim government and the military, now immune from prosecution. U.S. President Donald Trump’s main envoy to Latin America—Mauricio Claver-Carone (who organized the bankrupting $57 billion loan to Argentina when he was the U.S. director at the International Monetary Fund)—went to Bolivia and attacked Morales. Morales, Claver-Carone said, is fomenting insurrection from Argentina. This is a bizarre statement.</div><div>
</div><div>Morales was re-elected in 2014. There was not a whiff of impropriety in that election. He had a mandate to remain in office until January 2020. Even if there was a problem in the 2019 election, he should have remained in office until this month. But he was removed by a U.S.-backed military coup. That coup is not the insurrection that worries Claver-Carone. What worries him is that Morales is concerned about his supporters who are being intimidated and killed. It was not the coup, but Morales’ statement of anguish that became the scandal. Morales then apologized for his statement.</div><div>
</div><div>Elections</div><div>
</div><div>Bolivia will face an election on May 3. The Movement for Socialism Party nominated Luis Arce Catacora, Bolivia’s former minister for the economy, as its presidential candidate, and David Choquehuanca, Bolivia’s former foreign minister, as its vice-presidential candidate. MAS has been deeply bruised. More than 100 government officials from the MAS party are either in detention or face criminal charges, while a handful are in the Mexican embassy in La Paz (they have been denied safe passage to the airport).</div><div>
</div><div>The anti-coup uprising in Chapare province led the interior minister Arturo Murillo to make a statement that he would perhaps disenfranchise the entire province if the rebellion continues (the rebels burned down a hotel that he owns). Supporters of MAS and its party workers are afraid to leave their homes, let alone campaign in the election. Morales’ statement came as a mirror of their own anxiousness.</div><div>
</div><div>No one imagines that there is going to be a “fair election.” The Trump administration has said it will send a USAID team to Bolivia to monitor the situation, and then to resume U.S. aid to the country; the U.S. will also monitor the elections. Between the U.S. monitors and Supreme Decree no. 4078, the conditions for a fair election simply do not apply.</div><div>
</div><div>And not many outside the region seem to have any problem with this attack against democracy.</div><div>
</div><div>‘Staggering Number’</div><div>
</div><div>On January 14, the UN’s human rights body released a brief statement on the killings of human rights activists in Colombia. The UN said that a “staggering number of human rights defenders” were killed last year in Colombia; by the UN’s count, between 107 and 120 activists were murdered. In 2018, 115 human rights defenders were killed, and in the first two weeks of January of this year, 10 human rights defenders have already been murdered. Most of them are from left-wing people’s organizations.</div><div>
</div><div>The UN numbers are conservative. For 2018, the Center for Research and Popular Education Peace Program, based in Colombia, documented 1,151 death threats, 648 assassinations, and 304 cases of physical injuries. But the UN’s trendline is correct. Of the murders last year, 98 percent took place in very poor rural areas. The killers, the UN suggests, are “criminal groups and armed groups linked to illicit economies in areas vacated by the FARC-EP.” In other words, right-wing paramilitary groups and their affiliated drug gangs have taken advantage of the peace treaty signed by the Left to terrorize the countryside.</div><div>
</div><div>In the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research dossier on Colombia (December 2019), the argument is made that the Colombian oligarchy does not want to move toward peace because this would shift the needle of Colombian politics toward the people’s movements and the Left. The continuation of the war—now as assassination and intimidation—favors the oligarchy. They prefer this violence to democratic politics.</div><div>
</div><div>These targeted murders and this targeted intimidation is only one part of the problem in Latin America. The other is that this region—with its outrageous social inequality—experiences violence at extreme levels. While Latin America is home to only 8 percent of the world’s population, 33 percent of all homicides occur in the region. This includes high violence against young men, and it includes the highest rates of femicide in the world. None of the right-wing governments are interested in addressing this fundamental problem for the hemisphere.</div><div>
</div><div>What the government of Iván Duque is doing in Colombia is what the interim government of Jeanine Áñez is doing in Bolivia—both are using extreme state violence against trade unionists and peasant organizers, against socialist leaders and indigenous leaders. This extreme violence undermines the possibility of democracy and allows the oligarchy to be re-elected in polling booths where the Left not dare enter.</div><div>
</div><div>Héroes del Ñancahuazú</div><div>
</div><div>In 2016, Evo Morales inaugurated the General Juan José Torres Anti-Imperialist Command School in the town of Warnes. General Juan José Torres was the socialist president of Bolivia in 1970-71. He was overthrown in a coup by the Bolivian general favored by the CIA, Hugo Bánzer. Bánzer had closely worked with the Nazi leader Klaus Barbie to set up the CIA-run Operation Condor to search out and kill any and every communist in the hemisphere. They killed Torres in 1976. The combination of the CIA, Nazis, and the oligarchies of the region is not something from the past: Brazil’s culture secretary—Roberto Alvim—recently plagiarized a speech from the Nazi Joseph Goebbels.</div><div>
</div><div>The interim government’s interim Defense Minister Luis Fernando López said that his government has renamed the Anti-Imperialist school. “We are not anti-anything,” he said, as if his government is not anti-Morales, anti-MAS, and anti-communist. The school has been renamed Héroes del Ñancahuazú.</div><div>
</div><div>In 1967, Che Guevara and his National Liberation Army of Bolivia operated near the Ñancahuazú River in Bolivia’s southeast. The government of General René Barrientos Ortuño, the CIA agent Félix Rodríguez, and the Nazi Klaus Barbie ran the operation to destroy Guevara’s campaign. They named their operation the Ñancahuazú Campaign. The Anti-Imperialist School in Bolivia now honors the men—led by a CIA agent and a Nazi—who killed Che Guevara. It sends a message to the Che Guevaras of today: We will get you. This is the democracy of the oligarchy in Latin America today.</div><div>
</div><div>This article was produced by Globetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute.</div></div><div></div></div><div><div></div><div>dn 120</div><div>B<a data-ga-action="Home Headlines: Headline" href="https://www.democracynow.org/2020/1/31/headlines/bolivia_s_movement_for_socialism_candidate_luis_arce_returns_to_bolivia" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: rgb(241, 242, 243); color: rgb(64, 78, 92); text-decoration-line: none; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: Roboto, " helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" font-weight="font-weight" text-align="text-align" center="center">olivia’s Movement for Socialism Candidate Luis Arce Returns to Bolivia</a></div><div></div></div><div><div>=</div><div><a href="http://inthesetimes.com/article/22164/evo-morales-bolivia-right-wing-coup-united-states-media">http://inthesetimes.com/article/22164/evo-morales-bolivia-right-wing-coup-united-states-media</a></div><div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.66667; vertical-align: baseline;">article first appeared in <a href="https://fair.org/home/the-bolivian-coup-is-not-a-coup-because-us-wanted-it-to-happen/" style="font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; transition: all 0.2s ease 0s;">FAIR</a>.<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.66667; vertical-align: baseline;">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.<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.66667; vertical-align: baseline;">No establishment outlet framed the action as a coup; instead, President Evo Morales “resigned” (ABC News, <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/latest-bolivias-military-morales-resign-66894544?cid=clicksource_4380645_null_headlines_hed" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">11/10/19</a>), amid widespread “protests” (CBS News, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShBju8Ubhc" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">11/10/19</a>) from an “infuriated population” (New York Times, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/10/world/americas/evo-morales-bolivia.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">11/10/19</a>) angry at the “election fraud” (Fox News, <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/world/bolivia-president-evo-morales-resigns-election-fraud-allegations" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">11/10/19</a>) of the “full-blown dictatorship” (Miami Herald, <a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/andres-oppenheimer/article237168994.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">11/9/19</a>). 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, <a href="https://fair.org/uncategorized/press-ignorance-competes-with-distortions-on-bolivia/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">5/6/09</a>, <a href="https://fair.org/home/the-threat-again-of-left-wing-latin-american-democracy/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">8/1/12</a>, <a href="https://fair.org/home/dictator-media-code-for-government-we-dont-like/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">4/11/19</a>).<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.66667; vertical-align: baseline;">The New York Times (<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/10/world/americas/evo-morales-bolivia.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">11/10/19</a>) 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.<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.66667; vertical-align: baseline;">CNN (<a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/10/americas/bolivia-new-election-audit/index.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">11/10/19</a>) dismissed the results of the <a href="https://fair.org/home/media-conceal-chiles-state-criminality-delegitimize-bolivian-democracy/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">recent election</a>, 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 (<a href="https://time.com/5723562/evo-morales-bolivia-resigns/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">11/10/19</a>) presented the catalyst for his “resignation” as “protests” and “fraud allegations,” rather than being forced at gunpoint by the military. Meanwhile, CBS News (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShBju8Ubhc" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">11/10/19</a>) did not even include the word “allegations,” its headline reading, “Bolivian President Evo Morales Resigns After Election Fraud and Protests.”<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.66667; vertical-align: baseline;">Delegitimizing foreign elections where the “wrong” person wins, of course, is a favorite pastime of corporate media (FAIR.org, <a href="https://fair.org/home/media-delegitimize-venezuelan-elections-amid-complete-unanimity-of-outlook/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">5/23/18</a>). 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, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-50365340" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">11/10/19</a>; Vox, <a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2019/11/10/20957613/evo-morales-bolivia-president-resigns-protests-report" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">11/10/19</a>; Voice of America, <a href="https://www.voanews.com/americas/oas-finds-irregularities-disputed-bolivia-vote-calls-new-elections" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">11/10/19</a>), 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 <a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/intam17.asp" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">passed an official resolution</a> 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 <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/2018/06/01/oas-anti-venezuela-pro-us-bias-right-wing-hypocrisy/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">argued</a> 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.<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.66667; vertical-align: baseline;">In contrast, there was no coverage at all in US corporate media of the <a href="http://cepr.net/publications/reports/bolivia-elections-2019-11" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">detailed new report</a> 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 <a href="https://twitter.com/BenjaminNorton/status/1193730263924256768" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">kidnapping</a> and <a href="https://peoplesdispatch.org/2019/11/07/bolivian-opposition-carries-out-racist-misogynist-attacks-against-government-supporters/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">torture</a> of elected officials, the <a href="https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1193696946961211393" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">ransacking</a> of Morales’ house, the burning of <a href="https://peoplesdispatch.org/2019/11/02/bolivian-right-wing-activates-electoral-fraud-contingency-plan-against-morales/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">public buildings</a> and of the indigenous <a href="https://twitter.com/The_Red_Nation/status/1193690391372955648" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">Wiphala flag</a>, all of which were widely shared on social media and would have suggested a very different interpretation of events.<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.66667; vertical-align: baseline;">Words have power. And framing an event is a powerful method of conveying legitimacy and suggesting action. “Coups,” almost by definition, cannot be supported, while “protests” generally should be. Chilean President Sebastian Piñera, a conservative US-backed billionaire, has <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-chile-protests/chiles-pinera-to-crack-down-on-vandals-looters-amid-unrest-idUSKBN1XH2BE" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">literally declared war</a> on over a million people demonstrating against his rule. Corporate media, however, have framed that uprising not as a protest, but rather a “riot” (e.g., NBC News,<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/riots-chile-leave-least-three-dead-state-emergency-declared-n1069111" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;"> 10/20/19</a>; Reuters, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-chile-pinera/chiles-pinera-acknowledges-abuses-in-handling-of-riots-media-idUSKBN1XJ0C0" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">11/9/19</a>; Toronto Sun, <a href="https://torontosun.com/news/world/how-a-transit-fare-hike-sparked-protests-and-deadly-riots-in-chile" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">11/9/19</a>). In fact, Reuters (<a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-chile-protests/chiles-pinera-to-crack-down-on-vandals-looters-amid-unrest-idUSKBN1XH2BE" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">11/8/19</a>) described the events as Piñera responding to “vandals” and “looters.” Who would possibly oppose that?<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.66667; vertical-align: baseline;">Morales was the first indigenous president in his majority indigenous nation—one that has been ruled by a white European elite since the days of the conquistadors. While in office, his Movement Towards Socialism party has <a href="http://cepr.net/press-center/press-releases/new-report-reviews-changes-in-bolivia-s-economy-under-evo-morales-s-presidency" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">managed to</a> reduce poverty by 42% and extreme poverty by 60%, cut unemployment in half and conduct a number of impressive public works programs. Morales saw himself as part of a decolonizing wave across Latin America, rejecting neoliberalism and nationalizing the country’s key resources, <a href="http://www.coha.org/eleven-years-of-the-process-of-change-in-evo-morales-bolivia/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">spending the proceeds</a> on health, education and affordable food for the population.<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.66667; vertical-align: baseline;">His policies drew the great ire of the US government, Western corporations and the corporate press, who function as the ideological shock troops against leftist governments in Latin America. In the case of Venezuela, Western journalists unironically <a href="https://www.thecanary.co/feature/2019/05/03/corporate-journalists-see-themselves-as-ideological-shock-troops-in-the-war-against-venezuela-says-media-expert-alan-macleod/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">call themselves</a> “the resistance” to the government, and describe it as their No. 1 goal to “get rid of Maduro,” all the while presenting themselves as neutral and unbiased actors.<p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.66667; vertical-align: baseline;">The media message from the Bolivia case is clear: A coup is not a coup if we like the outcome.</div><div>
</div><div>=</div></div><div>=</div><div><a data-ga-action="Home Headlines: Headline" href="https://www.democracynow.org/2019/12/19/headlines/bolivia_issues_arrest_warrant_for_evo_morales" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: rgb(241, 242, 243); text-decoration-line: none; border: 0px; font-weight: 700; text-align: center;">Bolivia Issues Arrest Warrant for Evo Morales</a></div><div>=
<div><div>evangelicals burning houses?</div><div>=</div><div>
</div><div><header style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 165px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; position: relative;"><div class="article--header" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;"><h2 style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; float: none; line-height: 1em;"><a href="https://theconversation.com/bolivia-after-morales-an-ungovernable-country-with-a-power-vacuum-126998" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none;">Bolivia after Morales: An ‘ungovernable country’ with a power vacuum</a></h2><p class="byline" style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 2px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; line-height: 1.2; clear: both;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;"><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/marten-w-brienen-886119" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none;">Marten W. Brienen</a>, <span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">Oklahoma State University</div></header><div class="content" data-raw="" style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 165px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">Evo Morales is at least the ninth Bolivian president to by forced out of office by a mass uprising. But even in exile he remains by far the most popular politician in the country.</div></div><div><h1 property="dc:title" datatype="" class="node-title"></h1><div>the <a class="Homepage-HomepageSubjectSecondaryNode-container" relay="[object Object]" href="https://theintercept.com/2019/11/15/bolivia-evo-morales-coup-brazil-intercepted/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline-color: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; margin-bottom: 40px; padding-top: 20px; position: relative; border-top: 1px solid rgb(238, 238, 238); display: inline !important;">Coup That Ousted Bolivia’s Evo Morales Is Another Setback for Latin American Socialism</a></div></div><div><h1 property="dc:title" datatype="" class="node-title"></h1><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/old-religious-tensions-re-surge-in-bolivia-after-ouster-of-longtime-indigenous-president/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/old-religious-tensions-re-surge-in-bolivia-after-ouster-of-longtime-indigenous-president/</a></div><div>
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</div><div>Old religious tensions re-surge in Bolivia after ouster of longtime indigenous president</div><div>Evo Morales, Wikipedia</div><div>Written by Matthew Peter Casey, The Conversation November 21, 2019</div><div>Days after the powerful Bolivian leader Evo Morales was forced to resign as president after allegations of election fraud, Bolivia’s new interim president made her first public appearance.</div><div>
</div><div>Climbing to the balcony of the Presidential Palace in La Paz, Jeanine Áñez – formerly a senator representing Bolivia’s weak political opposition – grabbed a Bible.</div><div>
</div><div>“This Bible is very important to us. Our strength is God,” said the 52-year-old politician from the lowlands province of Beni, holding the modern, pink-covered book up for the cameras. “Power is God.”</div><div>
</div><div>Invoking a Christian god as the source of political power, while commonplace in many countries, is a radical departure in Bolivia after Morales’ 14-year tenure.</div><div>
</div><div>Morales, a native Bolivian of Aymara indigenous descent, was the South American country’s first indigenous leader since independence from Spanish colonial rule in 1825. Indigenous people and symbols – like the multicolored Wiphala flag that represents the many Andean indigenous groups, and the Andean cross, or chakana – filled the halls of power in Bolivia during his three terms.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Indigenous religiosity</div><div>Bolivia, a mountainous country north of Argentina, is 41% indigenous, according to the 2012 census. Most of the rest of Bolivia’s 11 million people consider themselves to be mixed race, though analysts say that self-reported census data tends to undercount the indigenous population.</div><div>
</div><div>Religion does not map neatly onto ethnic divisions in Bolivia. Only around 4% of Bolivians claim to practice indigenous religions. The majority – about 75% – are Catholic, and 18% belong to evangelical or other Protestant denominations.</div><div>
</div><div>However, as my ongoing research shows, religion, ethnicity and culture are tightly woven together in the Andes region. In Bolivia, as elsewhere in Latin America, indigenous people may belong to Christian churches and also observe native religious practices.</div><div>
</div><div>Since independence, Bolivian political leaders have promoted the country’s Hispanic and Catholic heritage, not in addition to its indigenous history but to the exclusion of it. In the 20th century, indigenous people who revolted against their economic and social marginalization were brutally repressed.</div><div>
</div><div>Throughout the Cold War, Bolivian Fascist party members pushed for a Catholic republic modeled on Francisco Franco’s Spain. Generations of Catholic school students were taught Christian nationalism from their Spanish Jesuit teachers.</div><div>
</div><div>Morales, a former coca farmer, recognized indigeneity as the heart of Bolivian nationhood.</div><div>
</div><div>Under Morales’ leadership, Bolivia’s name was changed to the Plurinational State of Bolivia in 2009, and the law now recognizes 36 indigenous languages and ethnicities. Morales also protected the right of indigenous communities to practice their religion. August became the Month of Pachamama, the Andean mother earth – 30 days of ancestral celebrations kicked off by the ritual sacrifice of llamas and other animals on the banks of Lake Titicaca.</div><div>
</div><div>Morales also built a new government building designed to acknowledge the country’s indigenous heritage. The 29-story Casa Grande del Pueblo – “Big House of the People” – blends hyper modern design with indigenous artistic flourishes. The interior decor is inspired by the ceremonial ruins of the pre-Inca civilization of Tiahuanaco, located 40 miles east of La Paz.</div><div>
</div><div>Distancing Bolivia from Catholicism</div><div>Morales, who has taken asylum in Mexico since resigning as president, also worked to separate church from state in Bolivia. Bolivia’s new constitution, written in 2009, formally ended the Catholic Church’s designation as the protected religion of the state.</div><div>
</div><div>Morales is Catholic. But he is openly critical of the Catholic Church, which supported the Spanish colonization of Latin America in the 16th century and, throughout the 20th century, aided Fascist party organizing.</div><div>
</div><div>In 2015, he famously gave Pope Francis a hammer and sickle crucifix designed by the Bolivian priest Luis Espinal before his assassination in 1980 – a symbol of Liberation Theology, a progressive Latin American strand of Catholicism that challenged dictatorships and championed the cause of the poor during the 1970s and 1980s.</div><div>
</div><div>Morales’ secular agenda was met with criticism from conservative Christian groups. Some viewed the reforms as fomenting “paganism.” Others said he promoted atheistic socialism.</div><div>
</div><div>A Christian nationalist revival</div><div>The interim administration in Bolivia has ties to the conservative Christian groups that were highly critical of Morales throughout his administration.</div><div>
</div><div>As senator, interim President Áñez made openly anti-indigenous statements. In a 2013 tweet, now deleted, she referred to native Aymara celebrating their new year with ancestral rituals as “satanic.”</div><div>
</div><div>And just five days before her innaugeration, Áñez mocked a group of indigenous Quechua men on Twitter because they were dressed in ritual vestments with modern shoes and blue jeans, writing, “Original Peoples???”</div><div>
</div><div>Her rise to power has reignited some of the anti-indigenous sentiment that was so dominant in Bolivia before Morales’ administration. Since Morales’ ouster, there are reports of Wiphalas flags being torn down and burned. Police officers and military members were filmed cutting the indigenous flag from their uniforms.</div><div>
</div><div>“Bolivia for Christ, Pachamama will never again enter this palace,” said the protest leader Luis Fernando Camacho, an Áñez ally, kneeling before the Bible on the Bolivian flag at the government palace on Nov. 10.</div><div>
</div><div>Indigenous Bolivians fearful</div><div>Indigenous Bolivians are concerned about the direction their country is headed under Áñez, though she may only be in power for a few months until new elections are called.</div><div>
</div><div>In the days since Morales left office, masses of Morales supporters have marched in from the countryside to convene in Bolivian cities, where they’re calling for the end to the interim government.</div><div>
</div><div>Many say they fear repression from the military under the interim government. They worry that the political violence that has gripped Bolivia since its Oct. 20 election will turn into a racialized, religious violence targeting indigenous people.</div><div>
</div><div>“All of us who have Indian-looking faces are signaled as part of Morales’ party, especially indigenous women,” the feminist activist Adriana Guzmán said to the news outlet Telesur news after Morales’ removal.</div><div>
</div><div>With dozens dead and more than 700 injured in military opperations ordered by Áñez “to re-establish order,” the political situation remains volatile.</div><div>
</div><div>Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend. Sign up for our weekly newsletter.</div><div>
</div><div>Matthew Peter Casey, Clinical Assistant Professor of History, Arizona State University.</div></div><div></div></div><div></div><div><div><a href="https://theconversation.com/bolivia-in-crisis-how-evo-morales-was-forced-out-126859">conversation.com/bolivia-in-crisis-how-evo-morales-was-forced-out-126859</a></div><div>
</div><div>evo Morales has <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-50383608" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">left Bolivia</a> on a plane for Mexico, a day after he resigned as president. </div><div>
</div><div>Morales and his vice-president, Álvaro García Linera, stood down <a href="https://www.paginasiete.bo/nacional/2019/11/11/la-renuncia-de-evo-deja-un-vacio-de-poder-no-se-sabe-quien-asumira-las-riendas-del-pais-237040.html" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">from office</a> on November 10, following a <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/11/political-vacuum-bolivia-morales-announces-resignation-191111043447380.html?fbclid=IwAR2ABXrp4JHOvKkokgBPsi5dQwXEP-7E2I9mXop7R9QSXXfefaXpRzs_08U" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">suggestion</a> by the head of the military, Williams Kaliman.</div><div class="grid-ten large-grid-nine grid-last content-body content entry-content instapaper_body" itemprop="articleBody" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 12px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; line-height: 1.6; float: left; width: 754px;"><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Met with jubilation and despair by different sectors of Bolivian society, the resignations were the culmination of weeks of <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-50134451" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">unrest following presidential and parliamentary elections</a> on October 20. Morales initially appeared to have won in the first round, but the whole process was overshadowed by accusations of electoral fraud and the spectre of military intervention.<p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Nothing at the moment is black and white. The events represent both a military coup d’état and a moment of mass protest that unseated the government.<h2 style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">For and against Morales</h2><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The social base of Morales’s political party, Movement Towards Socialism (MAS), are the peasant organisations of the Andean highlands <em style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">altiplano and the semi-tropical valleys of Cochabamba, alongside a group of unions and federations which represent peasants and rural proletarian labourers. They have an <a href="https://www.cis.gob.bo/publicacion/no-somos-del-mas-el-mas-es-nuestro-historias-de-vida-y-conversaciones-con-campesinos-indigenas-de-bolivia/" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">organic relationship</a> with the MAS and as such will all turn out to vote for and defend it on the streets.<p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">This hard core of social support is complemented by those who work in sectors that have benefited from the politics of the MAS. These include swaths of the informal petty commodity producers and hidden wage labourers found in the popular economy, miners employed by both the state and cooperatives, and sections of the lower middle and professional classes who feel Morales has reduced the stigma they confront in their day-to-day lives. These groups, as I <a href="https://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/60636" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">examined in my own PhD research</a>, felt excluded and unrepresented within the liberal parliamentary democracy before the election of Morales in 2006.<p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The opposition to Morales is also comprised of multiple different – and contradictory – currents. First, there is a group concerned with the abstract notion of representative democracy, comprised of the urban middle-classes and university students. This is probably the largest opposition group and is found in all nine departmental capitals.<p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The second are indigenous groups which do not share the developmental agenda of the MAS government, and are in the pathways of extractive or large-scale infrastructure projects. The most visible of this opposition has come from the lowland indigenous groups, particularly those in the Isiboro Sécure National Park and Indigenous Territory and groups in the Chaco regions affected by hydrocarbon extraction. Others include groups in the Madidi national park opposing the megadams Bala and Chapete and the <em style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ayllus, socio-territorial units of Aymara indigenous communities, of North Potosí.<p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Increasingly powerful regional opposition groups are also concerned with the distribution of power and resources within the country. The indigenous opposition to Morales in the city of Potosí can be categorised as part of this group, as can the civic committees of the departments of Beni, Pando, Santa Cruz and Tarija.<figure class="align-center " style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; position: relative;"><figcaption style="margin: 0px; padding: 6px 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; line-height: 18px; cursor: default;"><span class="caption" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">[Opponents of Evo Morales celebrate his resignation in La Paz on November 10. cop?]</figcaption></figure><h2 style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">Coup d'état?</h2><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Time accelerated in the period following presidential and parliamentary elections in Bolivia on October 20, with a decade’s worth of political events unfolding in the space of a couple of weeks, reorienting the political terrain. Yet time has also slowed down, with observers from afar looking on as if at a car crash in slow motion.<p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">That Morales and García Linera stood down at the behest of the military is no surprise, and the possibility of a coup became increasingly likely in the days of protests and civic strikes between election day and November 10.<p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But the story of a coup d’état is by no means the whole story – and the ability of the three opposition groups to construct a multitude of popular forces powerful enough to direct the political currents in this moment has been astounding. In the wake of the election, the city of Santa Cruz was shut down for weeks by <a href="https://eldeber.com.bo/155997_la-ciudad-es-una-boca-que-grita-un-cuerpo-que-no-duerme-ni-se-cansa" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">a general strike</a> – the longest in the city’s history – while the streets of La Paz, Oruro, Potosí and Cochabamba were also barricaded.<p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The disorganised masses who congregated and <a href="http://www.la-razon.com/nacional/animal_electoral/violencia-apoderan-Santa-Cruz-indefinido_0_3243275701.html" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">burnt down</a> vote counting stations in Oruro, Potosí, Santa Cruz and Tarija following the suspension of the quick count broadcast on the night of October 20, coalesced into a movement strong enough to coordinate and sustain political activity against the MAS government.<p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">During Morales’s final days in office, they were joined by social groups once supportive of the MAS, including the <a href="https://www.paginasiete.bo/nacional/2019/11/10/la-cob-pide-la-renuncia-de-evo-morales-236994.html" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Bolivian Workers’ Central</a>. In this sense, the resignation of Morales and García Linera follows weeks of massive social protest.<p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Probably the most remarkable dynamic in this sped-up unfurling of history is the emergence of Luis Fernando Camacho, head of the Pro Santa Cruz Committee, from the backwaters of regional, right-wing politics in Santa Cruz to a political figure on the national scene. The arrival of the evangelical right to Bolivian politics – first in the form of presidential candidate Chi Hyun Chung and now in the figure of Camacho – has been a long time coming, but is nothing to celebrate.<p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Camacho, who speaks of bringing the bible to Bolivian politics, has been one of the more prominent figures <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/20191103-bolivia-opposition-figure-calls-on-military-in-election-crisis" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">calling for military intervention</a>. The far-right currents in the opposition movements have created the conditions that allowed more extreme opposition groups to burn down the houses of <a href="https://www.elcomercio.com/actualidad/incendio-casa-hermana-evo-morales.html" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">several prominent MAS allies</a> during the night of November 9.<p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">These acts of violence, coupled with the initial findings of an audit of the election by the <a href="http://www.la-razon.com/nacional/animal_electoral/bolivia-elecciones-informe-oea-irregularidades-manipulacion_0_3255274450.html" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Organisation of American States</a> of the elections, led Morales to call for new elections, overseen by a reconstituted Supreme Electoral Tribunal. But by the day of Morales’s resignation the demands of many protesters had surpassed the call for new elections and now only Morales’s exit would do.<h2 style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">Power vacuum</h2><figure class="align-right " style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px 0px 18px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; position: relative; float: right; clear: right; width: 237px;"><figcaption style="margin: 0px; padding: 6px 0px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; line-height: 18px; cursor: default;"><span class="caption" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">[A handout photo from the Mexican foreign ministry of Evo Morales on a plane to Mexico. <span class="attribution" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">EPA</figcaption></figure><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In the wake of the resignations, both <a href="http://www.la-razon.com/nacional/animal_electoral/Mesa-OEA-confirmo-Evo-Alvaro_0_3255274462.html" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Carlos Mesa</a>, Morales’s main electoral opponent and Camacho demanded new elections without the participation of Morales. The urban support base of the MAS took to the streets in violent protest.<p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The preliminary report from the <a href="http://www.la-razon.com/nacional/animal_electoral/bolivia-elecciones-informe-oea-irregularidades-manipulacion_0_3255274450.html" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">OAS audit</a> into electoral fraud – whose methodology has been <a href="http://cepr.net/images/stories/reports/bolivia-elections-2019-11.pdf?v=2" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">questioned by some experts</a> – stated that even though there were numerous voting irregularities, it’s highly probable that Morales would have captured the largest share of the vote anyway.<p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Without Morales on the ballot paper in a future election, a large section of the electorate will not be able to vote for their candidate. This is a situation that some will call justice, given the way Morales skirted around the constitutional term limits, but that will leave a large, mainly rural, indigenous section of the population disenfranchised. Such frustration will lead to further violence if left unresolved.<p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The resignation of Morales and García Linera has now left a power vacuum. The deputy head of the senate, <a href="https://www.paginasiete.bo/nacional/2019/11/11/quien-es-jeanine-anez-la-posible-futura-presidente-bolivia-237051.html" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Jeanine Anez</a>, is likely to step into the breach as interim president, but the route to new elections under a reconstituted Supreme Electoral Tribunal remains far from clear.<p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In 1983, Bolivian social theorist René Zavaleta Mercado noted the inability of Bolivian democracy to represent its <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">sociedad abigarrada – its motley society. In 2019, the route forward appears to be the exclusion of a large proportion of Bolivians. The <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">wiphala, the square banner that has long been a symbol of indigenous peoples and resistance, has been torn from government buildings and <a href="https://twitter.com/BenjaminNorton/status/1193689050894475264?s=20" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">unceremoniously burnt</a>.<p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">If <a href="https://jornada.com.mx/2019/11/11/politica/008n2pol" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Camacho’s proclamation</a> that “Pachamama (indigenous people) will never return to the palace. Bolivia is Christ” is anything to go by, Bolivian democracy remains incapable of managing the country’s motley societ</div></div><div>=</div><div><a href="https://www.democracynow.org/2019/11/13/bolivia_evo_morales_coup_debate">https://www.democracynow.org/2019/11/13/bolivia_evo_morales_coup_debate</a></div><div>
</div><div>In  Bolivia, right-wing Senator Jeanine Áñez declared herself president Tuesday night despite a lack of quorum in Congress, amid a deepening political crisis in the country. Evo Morales, Bolivia’s first indigenous president, left the country Monday after being granted asylum in Mexico. Morales announced his resignation Sunday shortly after the Bolivian military took to the airwaves to call for his departure. His Movement Toward Socialism party is refusing to recognize Áñez as president, calling her claim illegal and decrying Evo Morales’s resignation over the weekend as a military coup. Last month, Morales was re-elected for a fourth term in a race his opponents claimed was marred by fraud. He ran for a fourth term after contesting a referendum upholding term limits. On Tuesday, the Organization of American States held an emergency meeting in Washington, where U.S. Ambassador Carlos Trujillo read a statement from President Donald Trump applauding Evo Morales’s resignation and warning it should “send a strong signal” to Venezuela and Nicaragua. Mexico, Uruguay, Nicaragua and the president-elect of Argentina have all denounced Morales’s departure as a coup. Morales’s departure has sparked demonstrations and clashes across Bolivia. We host a debate on the political crisis in Bolivia with Pablo Solón, former ambassador to the United Nations under President Evo Morales until 2011, and Kevin Young, assistant professor of history at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and the author of “Blood of the Earth: Resource Nationalism, Revolution, and Empire in Bolivia.”</div><div></div><div><h1 property="dc:title" datatype="" class="node-title"></h1><div>1119 morales 1st indig leader out in mil coup</div><div></div><div><h1 property="dc:title" datatype="" class="node-title"></h1><div>christian parenti uprising: morales ppl said we need 10 yrs to get power, happnened in one; reverse neo-libr, stand tough on climate tho US pulled millions in aid; </div><div></div></div><div>
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</div><div>In 2013, Julian Assange [in ecuador emb] of WikiLeaks played a pivotal role in helping National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden leave Hong Kong for Russia. During the U.S. hunt for Snowden, Bolivian President Evo Morales’ plane was forced to land in Austria for 14 hours after Spain, France, Portugal and Italy closed their airspace under pressure from the United States over false rumors Snowden was on board. Assange gives the inside story on why that plane was targeted.</div><div>...</div><div>But the U.S. picked up a statement, a supportive statement made in Moscow by President Evo Morales, and appears to have picked up our codeword for the actual operation, and put two and two together and made 22, and then pressured France—successfully pressured France, Portugal and Spain to close their airspace to President Evo Morales’s jet in its flight from Moscow to the Canary Islands for refueling and then back to Bolivia. And as a result, it was forced to land in Vienna. And then, once in Vienna, there was pressure to search the plane.</div><div>..AMY GOODMAN: Were you shocked when the U.S. forced down President Evo Morales’s plane?</div><blockquote class="collapsed-hide" style="margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px 3em; direction: ltr; overflow: auto; line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">JULIAN ASSANGE: Yes and no. I didn’t—we didn’t expect that they would do that. But we had seen from what they—Snowden was shocked—that we had seen in our battles over the past few years that similarly illegal conduct occurred. For example, they flew a private jet with six FBI agents and two prosecutors illegally into Iceland to interrogate people and commission them to try and steal information from us. So, we had seen this type of illegality before.</blockquote><div>
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</div><div>Juan Evo Morales Ayma (born October 26, 1959), popularly known as Evo (Spanish pronunciation: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA_for_Spanish" title="Help:IPA for Spanish" style="text-decoration: none !important; background: none;">[ˈeβo]</a>), is a Bolivian politician and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocalero" title="Cocalero" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">cocalero</a> activist who has served as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_of_Bolivia" title="President of Bolivia" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">President of Bolivia</a>since 2006. Widely regarded as the country's first president to come from the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_peoples_of_the_Americas" title="Indigenous peoples of the Americas" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">indigenous</a> population,<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#cite_note-8" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[a]</a>his administration has focused on the implementation of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-wing_politics" title="Left-wing politics" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">leftist</a> policies, poverty reduction, and combating the influence of the United States and multinational corporations in Bolivia. A <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_socialism" title="Democratic socialism" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">democratic socialist</a>, he is the head of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movement_for_Socialism%E2%80%93_Political_Instrument_for_the_Sovereignty_of_the_Peoples" title="Movement for Socialism – Political Instrument for the Sovereignty of the Peoples" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Movement for Socialism</a> (MAS) party.Born to an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aymara_people" title="Aymara people" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Aymara</a> family of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsistence_farming" title="Subsistence farming" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">subsistence farmers</a> in Isallawi, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orinoca_Canton" title="Orinoca Canton" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Orinoca Canton</a>, Morales undertook a basic education before mandatory military service, in 1978 moving to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chapare_Province" title="Chapare Province" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Chapare Province</a>. Growing<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca" title="Coca" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">coca</a> and becoming a trade unionist, he rose to prominence in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unique_Confederation_of_Rural_Laborers_of_Bolivia" title="Unique Confederation of Rural Laborers of Bolivia" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">campesino</a> ("rural laborers") union, campaigning against U.S. and Bolivian attempts to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca_eradication" title="Coca eradication" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">eradicate coca</a> as a part of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Drugs" title="War on Drugs" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">War on Drugs</a>, which he denounced as an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperialism" title="Imperialism" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">imperialist</a> violation of indigenous Andean culture. He repeatedly engaged in anti-government <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_action" title="Direct action" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">direct action</a> protests, resulting in multiple arrests. Entering electoral politics in 1995, he became the leader of the MAS and was elected to Congress. His campaign focused on issues affecting indigenous and poor communities, advocating land reform and the redistribution of gas wealth. Gaining increasing visibility through the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochabamba_protests_of_2000" title="Cochabamba protests of 2000" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Cochabamba protests</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolivian_gas_conflict" title="Bolivian gas conflict" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">gas conflict</a>, in 2002 he was expelled from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolivian_National_Congress,1997%E2%80%932002" title="Bolivian National Congress, 1997–2002" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Congress</a> for encouraging protesters, although he came second in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolivian_general_election,2002" title="Bolivian general election, 2002" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">that year's presidential election</a>.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolivian_general_election,2005" title="Bolivian general election, 2005" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Elected president in 2005</a>, Morales increased taxation on the hydrocarbons industry to bolster social spending, emphasising projects to combat illiteracy, poverty, racism, and sexism. Although vocally criticizing <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism" title="Neoliberalism" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">neoliberalism</a> and reducing dependence on the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Bank" title="World Bank" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">World Bank</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Monetary_Fund" title="International Monetary Fund" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">International Monetary Fund</a>, his administration retained a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_economics" title="Liberal economics" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">liberal economic</a> policy and oversaw strong economic growth. Scaling back U.S. influence in the country, he built relationships with leftist governments in the Latin American <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_tide" title="Pink tide" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">pink tide</a> and signed Bolivia to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolivarian_Alliance_for_the_Americas" title="Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas</a>. Attempting to moderate the left-indigenous activist community, his administration also opposed the right-wing autonomist demands of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_luna" title="Media luna" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Bolivia's eastern provinces</a>. Winning <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolivian_vote_of_confidence_referendum,2008" title="Bolivian vote of confidence referendum, 2008" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">a recall referendum in 2008</a>, he instituted a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Bolivia" title="Constitution of Bolivia" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">new constitution</a> that established Bolivia as a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plurinationalism" title="Plurinationalism" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">plurinational state</a> before being <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolivian_general_election,2009" title="Bolivian general election, 2009" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">re-elected in 2009</a>. His second term witnessed the continuation of leftist policies and Bolivia's joining of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_of_the_South" title="Bank of the South" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Bank of the South</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_of_Latin_American_and_Caribbean_States" title="Community of Latin American and Caribbean States" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Community of Latin American and Caribbean States</a>. After becoming the world's oldest <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_football" title="Association football" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">professional footballer</a> by signing to a Bolivian team, he was again reelected in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolivian_general_election,2014" title="Bolivian general election, 2014" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">2014 general election</a>.Morales is a controversial world figure, lauded by his supporters as a champion of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_rights" title="Indigenous rights" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">indigenous rights</a>,<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-imperialism" title="Anti-imperialism" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">anti-imperialism</a>, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmentalism" title="Environmentalism" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">environmentalism</a>. Praised for seriously reducing poverty and illiteracy in Bolivia, he has been internationally decorated with various awards. He has been criticised from many perspectives on the political spectrum: right-wing opponents have labelled his administration as authoritarian and radical, while leftist, indigenous, and environmentalist critics have accused him of failing to live up to many of his espoused values.
<div id="toc" class="toc" style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 7px; display: table; zoom: 1; background-color: rgb(249, 249, 249);"><div id="toctitle" style="direction: ltr; text-align: center;"><h2 style="margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border: none; display: inline; line-height: 1.3; background: none;">Contents</h2>  [<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#" id="togglelink" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">hide</a>] </div><ul style="list-style-type: none; margin: 0.3em 0px; padding: 0px; list-style-image: none;"><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-1" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#Early_life_and_activism" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">1 Early life and activism</a><ul style="list-style-type: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 2em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: none;"><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-2" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#Childhood.2C_education_and_military_service:1959.E2.80.9378" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">1.1 Childhood, education and military service: 1959–78</a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-3" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#Early_cocalero_activism:1978.E2.80.9383" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">1.2 Early cocalero activism: 1978–83</a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-4" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#General_Secretary_of_the_Cocalero_Union:1984.E2.80.9394" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">1.3 General Secretary of the Cocalero Union: 1984–94</a></li></ul></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-5" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#Political_Rise" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">2 Political Rise</a><ul style="list-style-type: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 2em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: none;"><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-6" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#The_ASP.2C_IPSP.2C_and_MAS:1995.E2.80.9399" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">2.1 The ASP, IPSP, and MAS: 1995–99</a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-7" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#Cochabamba_protests:2000.E2.80.9302" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">2.2 Cochabamba protests: 2000–02</a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-8" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#Rise_to_power:2003.E2.80.9305" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">2.3 Rise to power: 2003–05</a></li></ul></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-9" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#Presidency" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">3 Presidency</a><ul style="list-style-type: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 2em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: none;"><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-10" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#First_presidential_term:2006.E2.80.9309" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">3.1 First presidential term: 2006–09</a><ul style="list-style-type: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 2em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: none;"><li class="toclevel-3 tocsection-11" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#Economic_program" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">3.1.1 Economic program</a></li><li class="toclevel-3 tocsection-12" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#ALBA_and_international_appearances" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">3.1.2 ALBA and international appearances</a></li><li class="toclevel-3 tocsection-13" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#Social_reform" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">3.1.3 Social reform</a></li><li class="toclevel-3 tocsection-14" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#Domestic_unrest_and_the_new_constitution" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">3.1.4 Domestic unrest and the new constitution</a></li></ul></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-15" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#Second_presidential_term:2009.E2.80.9314" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">3.2 Second presidential term: 2009–14</a><ul style="list-style-type: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 2em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: none;"><li class="toclevel-3 tocsection-16" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#Domestic_protests" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">3.2.1 Domestic protests</a></li></ul></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-17" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#Third_presidential_term:2014.E2.80.93present" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">3.3 Third presidential term: 2014–present</a></li></ul></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-18" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#Political_ideology" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">4 Political ideology</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-19" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#Personal_life" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">5 Personal life</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-20" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#Influence_and_legacy" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">6 Influence and legacy</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-21" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#References" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">7 References</a><ul style="list-style-type: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 2em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: none;"><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-22" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#Notes" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">7.1 Notes</a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-23" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#Footnotes" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">7.2 Footnotes</a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-24" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#Bibliography" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">7.3 Bibliography</a></li></ul></li></ul></div><h2 style="font-weight: normal; margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 1.3; background: none rgb(255, 255, 255);">Early life and activism[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Evo_Morales&action=edit&section=1&editintro=Template:BLP_editintro" title="Edit section: Early life and activism" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">edit</a>]</h2><h3 style="margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; border-bottom-style: none; line-height: 1.6; background: none rgb(255, 255, 255);">Childhood, education and military service: 1959–78<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select: none; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; display: inline-block; white-space: nowrap; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate;">[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Evo_Morales&action=edit&section=2&editintro=Template:BLP_editintro" title="Edit section: Childhood, education and military service: 1959–78" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">edit</a>]</h3>
Morales was born in the small rural village of Isallawi in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orinoca_Canton" title="Orinoca Canton" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Orinoca Canton</a>, part of western Bolivia's <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oruro_Department" title="Oruro Department" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Oruro Department</a>, on 26 October 1959.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#cite_note-FOOTNOTEHarten201135Webber201162-10" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[9]</a> One of seven children born to Dionisio Morales Choque and Maria Ayma, only he and two siblings, Esther and Hugo, survived past childhood.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#cite_note-FOOTNOTEGutsch2006Sivak201032Harten201135-11" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[10]</a> His mother almost died from a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postpartum_hemorrhage" title="Postpartum hemorrhage" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">postpartum haemorrhage</a> following his birth.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#cite_note-FOOTNOTEHarten201135-9" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[8]</a> Ethnically identifying as a member of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_peoples_of_the_Americas" title="Indigenous peoples of the Americas" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">indigenous</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aymara_people" title="Aymara people" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Aymara people</a>, in keeping with Aymara custom, his father buried the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placenta" title="Placenta" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">placenta</a> produced after his birth in a place specially chosen for the occasion.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#cite_note-FOOTNOTEHarten201135-9" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[8]</a> His childhood home was a traditional <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe" title="Adobe" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">adobe</a>house,<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#cite_note-FOOTNOTESivak201033-12" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[11]</a> and he grew up speaking the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aymara_language" title="Aymara language" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Aymara language</a>, although later commentators would remark that by the time he had become president he was no longer an entirely fluent speaker.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#cite_note-FOOTNOTESivak201033Harten20117Webber201163-13" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[12
]</a>...<h3 style="margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; border-bottom-style: none; line-height: 1.6; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Cochabamba protests: 2000–02<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select: none; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; display: inline-block; white-space: nowrap; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Evo_Morales&action=edit&section=7&editintro=Template:BLP_editintro" title="Edit section: Cochabamba protests: 2000–02" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">edit</a>]</h3>In 2000, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tunari_Waters&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Tunari Waters (page does not exist)" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Tunari Waters</a> corporation doubled the price at which they sold water to Bolivian consumers, resulting in a backlash from leftist activist groups, including the cocaleros. Activists clashed with police and armed forces, in what was dubbed "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_Cochabamba_protests" title="2000 Cochabamba protests" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">the Water War</a>", resulting in 6 dead and 175 wounded. Responding to the violence, the government removed the contract from Tunari and placed the utility under cooperative control.<sup id="cite_ref-FOOTNOTESivak201082.E2.80.9383Harten2011112.E2.80.93118FarthingKohl201411_64-0" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#cite_note-FOOTNOTESivak201082.E2.80.9383Harten2011112.E2.80.93118FarthingKohl201411-64" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[63]</a> In ensuing years further violent protests broke out over a range of issues, resulting in more deaths both among activists and law enforcement.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#cite_note-FOOTNOTEHarten2011117-65" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[64]</a>Much of this unrest was connected with the widespread opposition to economic liberalization across Bolivian society, with a common perception that it only benefited a small minority.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#cite_note-FOOTNOTEHarten2011107-66" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[65]</a> In the Andean High Plateau, a cocalero group launched a guerrilla uprising under the leadership of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felipe_Quispe" title="Felipe Quispe" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Felipe Quispe</a>; an ethnic separatist, he and Morales disliked each other, with Quispe considering Morales to be a traitor and an opportunist for his willingness to cooperate with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Bolivians" title="White Bolivians" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">White Bolivians</a>.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#cite_note-FOOTNOTESivak201083.E2.80.9384-67" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[66]</a> Morales had not taken a leading role in these protests, but did use them to get across his message that the MAS was not a single-issue party, and that rather than simply fighting for the rights of the cocalero it was arguing for structural change to the political system and a redefinition of citizenship in Bolivia.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#cite_note-FOOTNOTEHarten2011126-68" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[67]</a>In August 2001, Banzer resigned due to terminal illness, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jorge_Quiroga" title="Jorge Quiroga" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Jorge Quiroga</a> took over as President.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#cite_note-FOOTNOTESivak201084-69" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[68]</a>Under U.S. pressure, Quiroga sought to have Morales expelled from Congress. To do so, he claimed that Morales' inflammatory language had caused the deaths of two police officers in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacaba" title="Sacaba" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Sacaba</a> near Cochabamba, however was unable to provide any evidence of Morales' culpability.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#cite_note-FOOTNOTESivak201084.E2.80.9385-70" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[69]</a> 140 deputies voted for Morales' expulsion, which came about in 2002.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#cite_note-FOOTNOTESivak201085-71" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[70]</a> Morales asserted that "This was a trial against Aymara and Quechas",<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#cite_note-FOOTNOTESivak201085-71" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[70]</a> while MAS activists interpreted it as evidence of the pseudo-democratic credentials of the political class.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#cite_note-FOOTNOTEHarten2011117-65" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[64]</a>The MAS gained increasing popularity as a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protest_party" title="Protest party" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">protest party</a>, relying largely on widespread dissatisfaction with the existing mainstream political parties among Bolivians living in rural and poor urban areas.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#cite_note-FOOTNOTEHarten201195.E2.80.9396-72" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[71]</a> Morales recognized this, and much of his discourse focused on differentiating the MAS from the traditional political class.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#cite_note-FOOTNOTEHarten2011102-73" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[72]</a> Their campaign was successful, and in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolivian_presidential_election,2002" title="Bolivian presidential election, 2002" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">2002 presidential election</a> the MAS gained 20.94% of the national vote, becoming Bolivia's second largest party, being only 1.5% behind the victorious MNR, whose candidate, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzalo_S%C3%A1nchez_de_Lozada" title="Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada</a>, became President.<sup id="cite_ref-FOOTNOTEMu.C3.B1oz-Pogossian2008149Sivak201090Harten201187Webber201163FarthingKohl201411.E2.80.9312_74-0" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#cite_note-FOOTNOTEMu.C3.B1oz-Pogossian2008149Sivak201090Harten201187Webber201163FarthingKohl201411.E2.80.9312-74" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[73]</a> They won 8 seats in the Senate and 27 in the Chamber of Deputies.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#cite_note-FOOTNOTEHarten201187-75" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[74]</a> Now the leader of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposition(parliamentary)" title="Opposition (parliamentary)" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">political opposition</a>, Morales focused on criticising government policies rather than outlining alternatives.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#cite_note-FOOTNOTESivak201094.E2.80.9395-76" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[75]</a> He had several unconstructive meetings with Lozada,<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#cite_note-FOOTNOTESivak201096-77" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[76]</a> but also met with Venezuela's democratic socialist President <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Ch%C3%A1vez" title="Hugo Chávez" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Hugo Chávez</a> for the first time.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#cite_note-FOOTNOTESivak201094-78" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[77]</a>Bolivia's U.S. embassy had become publicly highly critical of Morales; just prior to the election, the U.S. ambassador to Bolivia <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manuel_Rocha" title="Manuel Rocha" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Manuel Rocha</a> issued a statement declaring that U.S. aid to Bolivia would be cut if MAS won the election. However, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit_poll" title="Exit poll" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">exit polls</a> revealed that Rocha's comments had served to increase support for Morales.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#cite_note-FOOTNOTESivak201086.E2.80.9387Sivak2011158Harten201187-79" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[78]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#cite_note-Znet-80" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[79]</a> Following the election, the U.S. embassy maintained this critical stance, characterising Morales as a criminal and encouraging Bolivia's traditional parties to sign a broad agreement to oppose the MAS; Morales himself began alleging that the U.S.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Intelligence_Agency" title="Central Intelligence Agency" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Central Intelligence Agency</a> was plotting to assassinate him.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#cite_note-FOOTNOTESivak201095.2C_98Sivak2011159-81" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[80]</a><h3 style="margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; border-bottom-style: none; line-height: 1.6; background: none rgb(255, 255, 255);">Rise to power: 2003–05<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select: none; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; display: inline-block; white-space: nowrap; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate;">[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Evo_Morales&action=edit&section=8&editintro=Template:BLP_editintro" title="Edit section: Rise to power: 2003–05" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">edit</a>]</h3>
In 2003, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolivian_gas_conflict" title="Bolivian gas conflict" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Bolivian gas conflict</a> broke out as activists – including coca growers – protested against the privatization of the country's natural gas supply and its sale to U.S. companies below the market value. Activists blocked off the road into La Paz, resulting in clashes with police. 80 were killed and 411 injured, among them officers, activists, and civilians, including children.<sup id="cite_ref-FOOTNOTEMu.C3.B1oz-Pogossian2008164.E2.80.93167Sivak201099.E2.80.93103Harten2011118.E2.80.93124_82-0" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#cite_note-FOOTNOTEMu.C3.B1oz-Pogossian2008164.E2.80.93167Sivak201099.E2.80.93103Harten2011118.E2.80.93124-82" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[81]</a> Morales did not take an active role in the conflict, instead traveling to Libya and Switzerland, there describing the uprising as a "peaceful revolution in progress."<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#cite_note-FOOTNOTESivak2010100-83" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[82]</a> The government accused Morales and the MAS of using the protests to overthrow Bolivia's parliamentary democracy with the aid of organised crime, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FARC" title="FARC" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">FARC</a>, and the far left governments of Venezuela, Cuba, and Libya.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales#cite_note-FOOTNOTEHarten2011122.E2.80.93123-84" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">[83
]</a></div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div> <a href="http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3479-wikileaks-stratfor-vp-states-washington-would-have-assassinated-presidents-of-bolivia-and-venezuela-in-past-years">http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3479-wikileaks-stratfor-vp-states-washington-would-have-assassinated-presidents-of-bolivia-and-venezuela-in-past-years</a></div><div>
<table class="contentpaneopen" style="width: 679.599975585938px; border-spacing: 0px; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px; margin-bottom: 5px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><tbody><tr><td valign="top">Written by Cyril Mychalejko   </td></tr><tr><td class="createdate" valign="top" style="float: left;">Monday, 27 February 2012 16:19

</td></tr><tr><td valign="top">According to <a href="http://wikileaks.org/the-gifiles.html" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">internal company emails</a> published by WikiLeaks, Austin-based intelligence firm Stratfor's Vice President stated that in the past Washington would have assassinated the Presidents of Bolivia and Venezuela. “Back in the day, we would have been planning his (and Chavez's) helicopter 'accident,'” <a href="http://wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/1142108_re-insight-bolivia-st-dept-source-s-take-on-morales-.html" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">wrote</a> VP Fred Burton, a <a href="http://www.randomhouse.com/acmart/catalog/author.pperl?authorid=72572" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">former deputy chief</a> of the State Department's counter terrorism division, in an email regarding Bolivian President Evo Morales. “Guess I'm getting old.” Stratfor provides intelligence for corporations such as Coca-Cola, Bhopal's Dow Chemical Co., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, as well as to US government agencies. Their analysts are cited in major media outlets around the globe. In the same email thread regarding a State Department source's “take on [Bolivian President Evo] Morales,” Stratfor operative Korena Zucha calls Morales a “4th grade educated, narco-trafficking, murderous thug” whose actions are protected by the “left-leaning MSM [Mainstream] media.”The <a href="http://wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/1142108_re-insight-bolivia-st-dept-source-s-take-on-morales-.html" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">email goes on to state</a>: “His rhetoric is anti-US and anti-Capitalism, so he is the darling to the ultra-left and self-hating US citizens (Danny Glover, Sean Penn, Oliver Stone, etc.)...his 'Mother Earth' Summit [aka, vehement anti-US, anti-Capitalism (specifically targeting Coca Cola), anti-UN, pro-coca (sic cocaine) and narco-trafficking platform that was embraced by 22,000 anti-US, left-wing anarchists in attendance].” </td></tr></tbody></table></div><div></div></div></div></div></div></div>