Bolivia’s use of its wealth to advance the interests of the people rather than corporations was an abomination to the United States, which egged on the coup that illegally overthrew the elected government in November last year, write Vijay Prashad and Alejandro Bejarano.
Bolivia
Federico Fuentes compares how the left-wing government of Venezuela and the right-wing coup government of Bolivia are responding to the COVID-19 epidemic.
Given the exponentially rising death toll from COVID-19 and the devastating social and economic effects of brutal lockdowns, what could a humane and progressive response to the global pandemic look like?
Federico Fuentes outlines a detailed and comprehensive plan for tackling COVID-19 developed by Bolivia’s Movement Towards Socialism (MAS).
Bolivians will return to the polls on May 3, almost five months after former president Evo Morales was ousted in a coup. Having been declared the winner of the October 20 election, the leader of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) was forced to resign three weeks later after opposition protests denouncing fraud culminated in the police and military calling on Morales to step down.
Evo Morales was the first democratically elected Indigenous president of a nation that has the highest percentage of Indigenous people in all of South America. He gave people hope, and he made people believe Indigenous people can be leaders and teachers, and that we can be taken seriously, too. That’s why he is so precious to us.
Protests against the civic-military coup have been growing in strength across the country and security forces have responded with brutal repression.
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 events in Bolivia
The following joint statement from the Asian left and progressive groups was issued on November 11, in response to the coup in Boliva.
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Stand with Evo Morales and the Movement Towards Socialism!
Resist the US-backed coup!
We stand with Evo Morales and Bolivia’s Movement Towards Socialism (Movimiento al Socialismo, MAS) and condemn in the strongest possible terms the United States-backed coup against Bolivia’s democratically elected president, the government, the progressive social movements, trade unions and indigenous peoples.
The following message was released by the the Political Committee of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) in Bolivia:
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Resist, so that tomorrow we can fight again
Today, November 10, the humble, the workers, the Aymaras and Quechuas, begin the long path of resistance, to defend the historic achievements of the first indigenous government, which ended today with the forced resignation of our president Evo Morales as a result of the civic-police coup.
World leaders and organisations expressed their solidarity on November 10 with former Bolivian President Evo Morales under the hashtag #ElMundoconEvo (the World with Evo) and strongly condemned the right-wing coup which forced Morales to resign.
The ongoing coup attempt by the United States-backed opposition in Bolivia has reached boiling point. Sections of the police have declared mutiny and far-right protesters attacked and shut down the government’s media outlets, assaulting its journalists. Now new elections have been called by the Bolivian government in an attempt to defuse the situation.
Bolivian President Evo Morales has announced new elections will be held, following two weeks of violence and an attempted coup, as the right-wing opposition seeks to overturn the election results of October 27 that returned him to office.
Bolivian president Evo Morales, whose government has overseen improving living standards and a dramatic reduction in poverty while in power, has been re-elected. This is yet another blow for the ongoing United States campaign to get rid of left-of-centre governments in Latin America and boost their austerity-supporting opponents.
Bolivia will head to the polls on October 20 to elect its next president. Recent polls indicate the incumbent leftist president Evo Morales has a substantial lead over his closest opponent, right wing Carlos Mesa and his Citizen Community (Comunidad Ciudadana) party.
Bolivian President Evo Morales addressed the United Nations General Assembly on February 1 for the opening ceremony of the International Year of Indigenous Languages, where he warned about the accelerated destruction such languages are suffering.
Bolivian President Evo Morales said “the US is the real threat to humankind” on September 7 in response to US Senator Marco Rubio's talk of using the US Armed Forces against the Venezuelan government. Rubio had said Venezuela “has become a threat for the region and even for the United States”.
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