Valdai Club

The current political and social virulence presented by several Latin American economies almost simultaneously forces me to a recommendation before continuing reading: you should not try to understand the current crisis without considering the context. Neither the Bolivian crisis nor any other. And that context takes us back to the first part of the 21st century, when in several countries of the continent we attend our “spring”, which aroused much popular adherence and, in parallel, a fierce rejection of native rights wings. Lula and Dilma in Brazil, Néstor Kirchner first and then Cristina in Argentina, Chavez in Venezuela, Zelaya in Honduras, Lugo in Paraguay, Evo Morales in Bolivia and Correa in Ecuador, among others, were governments that worked for a more wealth distribution equitable Not only that, but tried (and tries) to institutionalize part of the project by creating organizations that interpret this new logic of accumulation of political capital (like UNASUR and CELAC, among other organizations). Today we are witnessing, it is known, a strong attempt at conservative restoration, neoliberal, which attacked and strongly attacks those governments and their representations: UNASUR no longer exists, and CELAC is dying in the hands of the revived OAS, an old politician US instrument who has gained unusual relevance by being the central protagonist of the uprising against Morales. 

The persecution with much of lawfare, the fingerprints of the State Department throughout the subcontinent and a significant amount of local minions and very conservative social groups (Catholic Christians, evangelists) and racists, all together acting to change the axis that has made wobble their privileges and equate some of the most inequitable societies in the world (such as Chile, for example), are all forces now operating in Bolivia. That conservative reaction, which imprisoned and / or illegitimately removed control of power from that progressive current, in Bolivia is rightly the head of one of the most successful projects of this experience. The numbers that Evo Morales' management can show surprise, but nobody is naive: it is the first time that a Bolivian president resembles his people, by ethnicity, culture and political trajectory. In the mouth of Evo Morales himself, “they do not accept that the social and indigenous movements are president. They do not accept our social programs that, under a policy of redistribution of wealth, lower extreme poverty. They did not forgive us the nationalization of hydrocarbons and natural resources. ” The synthesis sometimes also works: lithium is in Bolivia, copper in Chile, in Venezuela oil and in Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil, soybeans. 

With a great pen, Fernando Molina argues that Latin America has the most depraved, faint-hearted, corrupt and illiterate right wing in the world, and notes that it is willing to burn a whole country at the stake in order not to yield a penny of its already monumental benefits. Backed by Washington, allied with the coup militarism and embedded in an involutive ideology, "continental rights wings act as if the countries from which they extract their wealth were for them a mere exile and not the original homeland". It was pointed out today in my country that due to the multidimensional nature of the coup process, it could never be said that there is only one person in charge, since there are always many actors who participate in this task, from whom begins a campaign of attrition with a fake news to whom it ends assuming the presidency. With Honduras the phase of the new coup was inaugurated through the massive construction of a polluting story, and 15 years later we find the Bolivian case, where we no longer hesitate to spread death and repression to remove a political option from power, beyond its rhetoric, it resembled more a social democracy with a redistributive profile than a socialist revolution. 

There is brutality and violence manifested in the forced resignation of Morales, and it’s evident the illegitimacy of the political and institutional actors who intervened immediately and do so today, trying to legitimize themselves facing the power vacuum they generated. Here is Carlos Mesa, Morales's main opponent and defeated in these elections, who was instrumental in this coup process, ignoring results in advance and declaring fraud long before the elections took place. Other important actors have economic power but no political representativeness (Camacho), racism that makes it so obvious that in Bolivia many intend to return to the precapitalist era. Today it is difficult to think what will be the definitive design of the institutional channeling of the country, because at this moment there are popular uprisings in many neighborhoods where the party of Morales (MAS) was a large majority, and they have decided to resist. Those who substantially improved their standard of living in this almost decade and a half of national and redistributive policies are not going to surrender easily. There is a self-proclaimed government but hardly recognized by a handful of countries until today but, of course, important and eager to forget Morales: the US and Brazil, among a few others. Not even the conservative Argentine government of Macri (who does not even want to consider the issue as a "coup d'etat") has yet recognized the self-proclaimed president.

orales went into exile in Mexico and resigned in the eagerness not to run blood in his country. Before that, the so-called "civic committee" (especially from the rich department of Santa Cruz de la Sierra), the OAS, the US government, local police, the media, much of the business and the armed forces, all together made a pincer movement to put the popular government against the sword and the wall that had won the elections for approximately 10% just a handful of days ago. At this time they have just appointed a president who receives the attributes of the army general, surrounded by police, while preventing access to Parliament of the representatives of the Morales party. In sum, one act after another vitiated by legal nullity. Molina synthesizes it like this: “Our caveman rights wings never crossed the Age of Lights. They remain anchored in the times of ideological barbarism and darkness. They just tried it in Bolivia.”