Members of the Bolivian community and Latin America solidarity activists rallied in Sydney on November 17 to oppose the coup against Bolivia’s first Indigenous President Evo Morales.
Bolivia
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.
Cuba still stands as a symbolic pole, reminding us that human society can be organised on the basis of solidarity, cooperation, and respect. This is a profound vision that stands clearly at odds with the individualist, profit-driven mantras of far-right leaders like Trump and Bolsonaro.
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