The furore over the 14 March arrest and detention of Bolivia’s former coup president, Jeanine Anez, on charges of sedition and conspiracy, has once again exposed the hypocrisy and lies of the imperialists and their servile bourgeois press. Anez – who proclaimed herself president following the imperialist-backed coup of November 2019 – presided over a year of terror and repression in which at least 36 people were killed and hundreds wounded at the hands of the security forces, and thousands more rounded up, tortured and imprisoned. Yet the coup-monger is portrayed as the innocent victim of a vengeful state, her crimes glossed over.
The Secretary General of the Organisation of American States, Luis Almagro, stepped into the fray, describing Anez as a victim of political persecution and demanding her release. It was of course the OAS that falsely called fraud after the 2019 presidential election, giving the green light to the coup plotters to orchestrate violent protests across the country, forcing President Evo Morales to step down. The reactionary US-based Human Rights Watch also called the arrest of Anez ‘a sad spectacle of political persecution’ – while condemning the socialist government for offering an amnesty to anyone accused of ‘crimes’ against the Anez regime.
This narrative is echoed in the bourgeois press. Tom Phillips in The Guardian regretted what he described as a ‘cycle of retribution’; in 2019, The Guardian was a cheerleader for the ousting of Evo Morales. The BBC portrays Anez as yet another victim of an authoritarian state. At times the charade descends into farce: for example, the images of Anez announcing to a plethora of microphones from the world’s major news channels that she was being held ‘incommunicado’. The press enthusiastically reported Anez’s claim to be on hunger strike – only for the prison to publish a photo of her chowing down on Burger King.
The Bolivian masses are under no illusions. The arrest of Anez has brought them out on the streets in almost daily protests to demand justice for those massacred at Sacaba and Senkata in the first days of the coup. Bolivia’s biggest trade union federation says it will mobilise protests across the country every Monday until Anez is convicted for her crimes.
Since the October 2020 elections swept the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) back into power, the progressive government of Luis Arce has taken crucial steps to shore up the country’s democratic structures and purge reactionary elements from state institutions. Within weeks of taking office, Arce had replaced the entire top echelon of the armed forces, which supported the coup and repressed the working class in its aftermath. The former chief of the armed forces and a police chief have been arrested. So too has Yassir Molina, the head of the fascistic Resistencia Juvenil Cochala, responsible for the hideous attack in which an indigenous mayor, Patricia Arce, was beaten, doused in red paint and petrol and dragged through the streets. Molina was also personally responsible for the torching of the indigenous Kawsachun radio station in Cochabamba. Many of the mass demonstrations are clamouring for the arrest of the Santa Cruz right wing coup leader Luis Camacho. Two of Anez’s senior ministers were also arrested. The government now plans to restructure the judiciary. These are necessary steps if Bolivia’s progressive forces are to withstand the continuing efforts by the ruling class and its imperialist supporters to destabilise the country. The largest and most militant indigenous coalition, the Six Federations of the Tropics, says it is in a state of permanent mobilisation against provocations by the right wing; the main indigenous campesino union, the CSUTCB, says the same. On 16 March, indigenous women drove a rally by the far right out of the main square in Cochabamba. The people of Bolivia remain ready to fight.
For regular updates on Bolivia, follow Ollie Vargas @KawsachunNews
British dirty tricks in Bolivia
Documents unearthed by the investigative journalism website Declassified* show how the British state supported the coup in order to further its long-term interests in Bolivian lithium. Bolivia holds some of the world’s largest known reserves of the mineral, essential for the development of ‘green’ energy, particularly electric cars. Eight months before the coup, the British Embassy in La Paz organised a major event on cybertechnology to which 150 executives from Bolivia’s financial sector were invited and which was addressed by Darktrace – an organisation founded by MI5 and GCHQ and employing members of the CIA. Additionally, the British Embassy brought in Reuters journalists ahead of the 2019 election to ‘train’ Bolivian journalists in ‘impartial’ reporting, and set up ‘civil society organisations’ to carry out ‘citizens’ observations’ of the election. Information from these groups was passed on to the OAS to help it ‘identify irregularities’. The British government immediately recognised Anez as president of Bolivia; within four months, the coup regime was organising a series of new initiatives ‘with the UK as a strategic partner’. In March 2020, the embassy partnered with the coup government’s Ministry of Mining to hold a conference for the global extractives industry. A presentation was given by British company Watchman, on how it could bring the ‘creative solutions’ it had pioneered in the African mining sector to Bolivia. The company has links to British intelligence and carries the logo of the British Foreign Office on its website.
* Declassified UK, 8 March 2021
Cat Allison
