In the weeks since the US-backed, right-wing coup in Bolivia began on 10 November, the illegitimate government of Jeanine Añez has shown its true colours. Within days it had launched a programme of repression and reaction, including a licence to kill for security forces, attacks on the media, rounding up key members of the governing Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) of Evo Morales and promising the wholesale privatisation of public institutions. Yet it finds itself up against the mass resistance of the majority indigenous working class and campesinos who have blockaded major cities and oil refineries and forced the government to the negotiating table. As we go to press, it is yet to be seen how far this coup government will be able to push through its reactionary agenda before the new elections, for which no date has yet been set.
Since declaring herself interim president, Jeanine Añez – ostensibly in place only to call ‘free and fair elections’ and whose political party garnered just 4% of the vote in the recent elections – has:
- cut diplomatic ties with the elected government of Venezuela and recognised the US proxy Juan Guaido as president;
- rounded up leading MAS members on bogus charges of sedition and terrorism, with her interior minister announcing a witch-hunt against other ‘subversives’;
- arrested and harassed anti-coup journalists on the grounds of ‘sedition’;
- forced pro-MAS state media and Telesur Spanish off air, and encouraged the right-wing press to collaborate with the military;
- expelled 700 Cuban doctors involved in offering health services to the poor;
- pulled Bolivia out of ALBA;
- granted immunity to the security forces for any action they take to quell protests against the coup – a law that she has now been forced to withdraw;
charged Morales with sedition and terrorism; - forced 68 elected MAS officials to resign.
Despite the murder of at least 30 protesters, the bourgeois British media – such as the BBC and The Guardian – refuse to call this a coup. They belittle the massacre of indigenous people as ‘clashes between security forces and protesters.’
Yet despite the willingness of the coup regime to use brute force against any opposition, it is struggling to maintain control in the face of sustained mass protests by the predominantly indigenous working class and campesinos, mobilising in their hundreds of thousands. The main unions in Bolivia, led by miners, farmers and teachers, held a two-week blockade of the administrative capital La Paz, preventing supplies from entering, and of the main gas refinery in Senkata. As food and fuel stocks in major cities dwindled, Añez was forced to meet with leaders from 20 districts of La Paz and 14 districts of El Alto. These forces have consistently denounced the illegitimate government and said that if their demands were not met there would be civil war. The coup regime has had to concede that MAS will stand in the forthcoming election, albeit without Morales or any senior MAS candidates. It is clear Morales continues to have support of the masses, and Añez cannot allow him to return to galvanise the people.
The protesters agreed to pause their blockade, unless Añez reneges on her promises. No new date has been set for elections and it is reported that they will not be held for at least four months – time for a new voter register and electoral college to be set up, whilst previous members are detained on charges of ‘fraud’. MAS, which agreed to Añez’s terms, is divided, with some forces willing to compromise and enter into an electoral process that will be entirely dominated by the US proxy, the Organisation of American States. Luis Fernando Camacho, a leading fascist behind the coup, has announced he will stand for election.
What has emerged in the past few weeks is the degree of US involvement in this coup. As we reported in November (https://tinyurl.com/wdqg82l), the head of the Bolivian army, Williams Kaliman, who precipitated the coup, was a former military attaché to Washington on behalf of the previous pro-US Bolivian government in 2003. A number of senior army and police figures were trained at the notorious US School of the Americas and by the FBI. Following the coup, Kaliman moved to the US; he and other senior military and police officers received between $1m and $500,000 each via US chargé d’affaires Bruce Williamson. Audiotape evidence has emerged implicating US senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio in the coup.
This coalition between profoundly right-wing forces in Bolivia, backed and funded by the US, was the driving force behind the coup. Whether it succeeds will be dependent on the capacity of Bolivia’s working class and its highly organised indigenous peasant movement to learn from the past and drive the pace of class struggle against the forces of reaction and racism. As Atilio Boron, writing in Granma, the state newspaper of socialist Cuba, put it: ‘the Bolivian tragedy eloquently offers us lessons that our peoples and popular social and political forces must learn and record in our consciousness forever’. He argues that progressive governments need to understand from the outset that the imperialist forces will stop at nothing to unseat them. This will inevitably involve character assassination, a media war, the funding of violent reactionary forces and, crucially, subverting the armed forces. This was, he says, a coup ‘by the book, straight from the book’ and suggests that all progressive forces in Latin America must learn from the experience of the Morales government.
Elections in Bolivia will only take place when the forces of reaction believe they can secure a victory and, backed by imperialism, they are prepared to unleash repression on a massive scale to achieve that end. Whether Morales can return to Bolivia or stand in elections will depend on the forces on the ground, and those sections of MAS who are prepared to make common cause with them. New leaders will also emerge. The future of Bolivia hangs in the balance.
Cassandra Howarth
