Can an arrest be considered an “opposition crackdown” if the individual is a U.S.-backed coup plotter who served as alleged “acting president” in the ousting of former Bolivian President Evo Morales?
According to mainstream media, the designation is legitimate. Leading headlines from Europe have been swift to legitimize statements from Jeanine Anez, former interim president, or dictator, depending on how one views the foray by the USA to meddle in Latin America by replicating the foreign interference of past decades.
Anez, who was not handcuffed at the time of her arrest and escorted by the Bolivian police for questioning, downplayed her role in the U.S.-backed coup. “This is an abuse,”Anez claimed. “There was no coup d’etat, but a constitutional succession.”
But the White House under former U.S. President Donald Trump stated otherwise, in a thinly veiled statement which signaled involvement, and a warning to other Latin American countries.
These events send a strong signal to the governments in Venezuela and Nicaragua that democracy will always prevail. We are now one step closer to a completely democratic, prosperous, and free Western Hemisphere.
The UN and Human Rights Watch (HRW) have lent their support to Anez and other Bolivian officials involved in the 2019 coup. HRW’s Americas Division Director, Jose Miguel Vivanco, stated that the arrest warrants issued for Anez and other officials do not contain evidence of terrorism.
If the “crackdown” discourse was reversed, the recent amnesty granted by the Bolivian government to over 1,000 people rounded up by Anez’s government speaks volumes about which political entity embarked upon state terrorism and persecution.
Not to mention the violence unleashed upon Bolivia’s indigenous population in the aftermath of the coup, as well as the massacres of Sacaba, for which the former Police Commander Jaime Zurita is being charged.
What is missing is the political context which human rights organizations mostly prefer not to wade through.
While Morales lost support over his decision to stand for a fourth presidential term, Anez herself lacked any political majority in Bolivia and it was through state-sanctioned terror that the interim period was governed, at the expense of Bolivia’s indigenous.
In October 2020, Bolivians voted the MAS back into power, restoring order under a new presidency and repudiating U.S. influence.
Standing against what the coup sought to achieve, which included bringing Bolivia under the clutches of the International Monetary Fund, is what the international community should have done.
The monopoly instigated by the USA of what constitutes a democracy has been subverted by the USA’s own purportedly “democratic” involvement in foreign intervention to bring dictatorships into action.
Reconstructing democracy, for Anez, meant a government without indigenous representation, despite the fact that over 60% of Bolivians are indigenous.
Pacification, for the right-wing coup, was built upon ostracization and oblivion. If the indigenous are not represented, the government can deny their existence.
Opponents of Morales and the MAS heeded Anez’s call, burning the indigenous flag in the streets as a prelude to the violence unleashed in the aftermath.
If human rights were really a concern for those opposing Anez’s arrest, the same critics would have intervened on an equal level over the violence unleashed in the aftermath of the coup.
But that wouldn’t do for the likes of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, for example, who expressed concern over the arrest and failed to spare any for Anez’s victims – the indigenous, same as Bolsonaro’s targets and victims.
Bolivia has upheld its promise to deliver justice over foreign intervention through a democratic framework, and its critics would do well to heed the process.
This way, Elon Musk and his CIA gang members have failed to complete their mission of getting total grip on the highly valuable, but extremely polluting lithium mines in Bolivia, which has the biggest reserves on the planet, leaving Afghanistan and Australian behind.
Strategic-Culture / ABC Flash Mining Minerals Point News 2021.
Another failed attempt of plundering the Latin American nation.
It was about about getting the hand on the lithium mines of Bolivia?